Actor Abbey Lee Talks Model Industry, Saying There's No Security In Getting Paid For Your Looks
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Anne is reading …
Abbey Lee: ‘There is no security in getting paid for your looksThe Guardian
Australian actor and model Abbey Lee (Kershaw) is blunt about the fashion industry in her sit-down with writer Alexandra Spring. Largely gone from the fashion spotlight these days, Abbey Lee is focused on her acting career, appearing in George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ an upcoming action flick ‘Gods of Egypt’ and now ‘Ruben Guthrie’.
Filmwriter-director Brendan Cowell’s “celebrated stage play”, will be a film about an alcoholic ad exec who receives an ultimatum to stop drinking by his supermodel girlfriend Zoya.
Lee says she could see Cowell’s point in an email delineating the parallels between Zoya and Abbey Lee for real. “[Zoya’s] decision to leave something that was bad for her – that might have been a really hard decision for her to make – and venture into something unknown was something I was going through at that very time.”
Coincidentally, Abbey Lee is writing her own semi-autobiographical film about addiction, although she refused to discuss it in this interview.
Abbey Lee on ‘insecurity’:
“Unfortunately I’m just as insecure as most women you speak to,” she says flatly. “I don’t think I feel any different to a woman who is not in my field. There is no security in the fact I get paid for my looks. It doesn’t resonate on a deep level with me. It doesn’t change the way I feel about myself – which is a shame.” She is hopeful this will change with age. “My dad always tells me that I’m way too hard on myself.” But for now restless, relentless self-doubt is what drives her: “I will feel successful when I feel content and I haven’t felt any level of contentment just yet. When I can say that in my life I am content, I think that’s when I’ll feel successful.”
Set to play a ‘washed-up older model … riddled with insecurities’ in Nicholas Winding Refn’s ‘The Neon Demon’, Abbey Lee explains that the film is a commentary on modern society’s pursuit of perfection. “It’s insane. You can no longer be thin anymore; you have to be thin and ripped. You’ve got to be muscly now; chicks are getting butt implants because that’s the hot thing.” (Related on AOC: Poppy Cross Goes To Hell & Back For A Victoria’s Secret Angel Body.)
You are so disposable as a model, there is no security in it and you don’t really believe people actually care about you.
Lanvin Rehearsal Spring/Summer 2011 Collections
Abbey Lee’s relationship with the fashion industry came to a head when Lanvin designer Albert Ebaz moved to cancel her runway appearance, saying she looked drunk and was unable to walk properly.
Lee glowers with anger at the memory, writes Spring. “If I could go back in time, I’d tell him to go fuck himself,” she (Abbey Lee) says. “I was so shocked at what was happening, I was muted from it. When I look back at it now, I get really angry I didn’t have the balls, the energy, to stand up to him.”
In fact, Abbey Lee strumbled in 2008 in a Rodarte show and fainted three weeks later, wearing a too-tight leather corset at an Alexander McQueen presentation.
She tore ligaments and underwent surgery in 2012 after an arthroscopy revealed bone fragments in one knee. The biannual fashion weeks – spread across New York, London, Milan and Paris – were particularly gruelling. For six week periods, models are often up until 3am for runway fittings, then expected to be ready for 6am call times. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life,” says Lee, remembering fellow models snatching sleep in corridors, on floors, in makeup chairs. “By the time you get to Paris, you can barely open your eyes. Your skin is red raw from all the makeup, your scalp hurts, you’re exhausted, you’re hungry, you are that broken down.”
In acting, Abbey Lee believes that she has found her passion. “I landed on the set of Mad Max and it seemed like the heavens opened up and it was exactly where I wanted to be.” She adds: “I was always envious of people who knew exactly what they wanted to do from the moment they were born … I always thought that would be so comforting and those people so lucky. I didn’t think I was one of them but at the same time I knew there was something waiting for me. I just didn’t know what it was… I realised how comfortable I was, how good it felt and how much I loved it.”
