London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 11, 2025

0:00
0:00

Kate Moss: A photographer asked me to strip when I was 15

Model Kate Moss was interviewed by the BBC and told about traumatic experiences she says shaped her early years in the modeling industry. She told, among other things, about a photographer who asked her to strip when she was a teenager, about her testimony in the Johnny Depp trial: "He never hit me. I had to tell the truth", about her drug use in the early 2000s and the "heroin chic" look that sparked the popularity of Kate Moss to the top of the international modeling world.
Kate Moss, one of the world’s most famous models, has spoken of her anger at the condemnation she received after publication of photographs of her taking cocaine in 2005. She took the blame, she believes, for the widespread acceptability of drug-taking in her circle.

“I felt sick and was quite angry,” the British supermodel revealed on Sunday in a rare radio interview, “because everybody I knew took drugs. So for them to focus on me, and to try to take my daughter away, I thought was really hypocritical.”

Although Moss was not charged for the offence, and she kept her daughter, Lila, she lost lucrative contracts with several top brands and later said “sorry” formally in a public statement. “I had to apologise really, if people were looking up to me,” she told Lauren Laverne, host of BBC Radio 4’s long-running Desert Island Discs programme.

For 30 years, Moss, 48, has represented the summit of British cool. But the woman whose motto “never complain, never explain” was borrowed from her former boyfriend, Johnny Depp, used the interview to speak out about the anxiety that crippled her teenage modelling years and of the abuse and mistreatment she suffered in the industry.

Moss also explained her decision to speak up for Depp in his recent American libel case against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, and talks about defending her old friend, the British fashion designer John Galliano, who was found guilty of racist abuse in 2011.

“I believe in the truth and I believe in fairness and justice,” she said. Her appearance at Depp’s trial was prompted by a wish to set the record straight. “I know the truth about Johnny,” Moss said. “I know he never kicked me down the stairs. I had to say that truth.”

The urge to stand by Galliano came from her belief that he is “not a bad person – he had an alcohol problem and people turn.”

“People aren’t themselves when they drink,” suggested Moss, “and they say things that they would never say when they were sober.”

At 14 years old, Moss was approached on an aeroplane journey by the owner of the Storm modelling agency, but she didn’t imagine herself as a model. “I thought it was vain,” Moss said.

The start of her career in 1988 was traumatic and “a hard slog”, she recalled. She had to travel across cities alone for photographing castings. At 15, she had the “horrible experience” of being asked to take off her top for a bra catalogue shoot. “I was really shy then about my body, and I could feel there was something wrong, so I got my stuff and I ran away.”

She says the experience “sharpened her instincts” – “I can tell a wrong ’un a mile away.”

Her 16-year-old face was suddenly in international demand after a photographic session for The Face magazine on Camber Sands in Sussex with her photographer friend, the late Corinne Day.

Moss admits crying “a lot” about being naked. “She [Day] would say, ‘If you don’t take your top off, I am not going to book you for Elle. It is painful. I loved her, she was my best friend, but she was a tricky person. But the pictures are amazing, so she got what she wanted and I suffered for them, but in the end they did me a world of good really. They changed my career.”

The American designer Calvin Klein chose Moss for a 1992 underwear campaign as a result, but her memories of this job, posing with actor Mark Wahlberg in New York, are “not good”. She took Valium for her anxiety to get out of bed for work.

Topless again, Moss felt “objectified and vulnerable and scared”, she told Laverne, adding: “They played on my vulnerability. Calvin loved that.”

Her friend Day was responsible for the controversial images taken for Vogue magazine a year later, which were decried for promoting “heroin chic”. Pictured in her own flat, the ever-slim Moss was shown in underwear. “I was a scapegoat for a lot of people’s problems,” Moss said. “I was never anorexic. I never have been. I had never taken heroin. I was thin because I didn’t get fed at shoots or in shows and I’d always been thin.”

A quote often attributed to Moss, that “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, was not her own coinage, she said. It came from a note stuck to the fridge door in a flat, designed to dissuade a dieting friend from snacking.

Born in 1974 to a travel agent father, Peter, and “glamorous” mother, Linda, who worked part-time in a bar, Moss said she suspects she was quite lonely. Her looks were not remarked on at home, and her mother was surprised when modelling work came her daughter’s way.

Her unruly “headstrong” teenage behaviour worsened, Moss remembers, once her parents split up: “I started smoking spliff and I hung out with older boys,” she says, confessing she was full of sadness. “Yes, I was heartbroken ... it was all a bit dark.”

Moss set up her own modelling agency in 2016, signing up her own daughter early on. “I’ve said to her, ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t want to do this shoot, if you don’t feel comfortable, if you don’t want to model, don’t do it.’ I take care of my models. I make sure they’re with agents at shoots so when they’re being taken advantage of, someone is there to say, ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate’.”

Moss has moved her main home to her Cotswolds country house and reveals she has become obsessed with gardening. Partying, she says, is “boring to me now”, adding, “I’m not into being out of control any more.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
ChatGPT CEO signals policy to alert authorities over suicidal youth after teen’s death
The British legal mafia hit back: Banksy mural of judge beating protester is scrubbed from London court
Surpassing Musk: Larry Ellison becomes the richest man in the world
Embarrassment for Starmer: He fired the ambassador photographed on Epstein’s 'pedophile island'
Manhunt after 'skilled sniper' shot Charlie Kirk. Footage: Suspect running on rooftop during panic
Effective Protest Results: Nepal’s Prime Minister Resigns as Youth-Led Unrest Shakes the Nation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
King Charles and Prince Harry Share First In-Person Moment in 19 Months
Starmer Establishes Economic ‘Budget Board’ to Centralise Policy and Rebuild Business Trust
France Erupts in Mass ‘Block Everything’ Protests on New PM’s First Day
Poland Shoots Down Russian Drones in Airspace Violation During Ukraine Attack
Brazilian police say ex-President Bolsonaro had planned to flee to Argentina seeking asylum
Trinidad Leader Applauds U.S. Naval Strike and Advocates Forceful Action Against Traffickers
Kim Jong Un Oversees Final Test of New High-Thrust Solid-Fuel Rocket Engine
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Macron Appoints Sébastien Lecornu as Prime Minister Amid Budget Crisis and Political Turmoil
Supreme Court temporarily allows Trump to pause billions in foreign aid
Charlie Sheen says his father, Martin Sheen, turned him in to the police: 'The greatest betrayal possible'
Vatican hosts first Catholic LGBTQ pilgrimage
Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Series, iPhone Air, Apple Watch 11 and More at 'Awe Dropping' Event
Pig Heads Left Outside Multiple Paris Mosques in Outrage-Inducing Acts
Nvidia’s ‘Wow’ Factor Is Fading. The AI chip giant used to beat Wall Street expectations for earnings by a substantial margin. That trajectory is coming down to earth.
France joins Eurozone’s ‘periphery’ as turmoil deepens, say investors
On the Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s Death: Prince Harry Returns to Britain
France Faces New Political Crisis, again, as Prime Minister Bayrou Pushed Out
Murdoch Family Finalises $3.3 Billion Succession Pact, Ensuring Eldest Son’s Leadership
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Court Staff Cover Up Banksy Image of Judge Beating a Protester
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
Elon Musk Poised to Become First Trillionaire Under Ambitious Tesla Pay Plan
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
Burning the Minister’s House Helped Protesters to Win Justice: Prabowo Fires Finance Minister in Wake of Indonesia Protests
Brazil Braces for Fallout from Bolsonaro Trial by corrupted judge
The Country That Got Too Rich? Public Spending Dominates Norway Election
Nearly 40 Years Later: Nike Changes the Legendary Slogan Just Do It
Generations Born After 1939 Unlikely to Reach Age One Hundred, New Study Finds
End to a four-year manhunt in New Zealand: the father who abducted his children to the forests was killed, the three siblings were found
Germany Suspends Debt Rules, Funnels €500 Billion Toward Military and Proxy War Strategy
EU Prepares for War
BMW Eyes Growth in China with New All‑Electric Neue Klasse Lineup
Trump Threatens Retaliatory Tariffs After EU Imposes €2.95 Billion Fine on Google
Tesla Board Proposes Unprecedented One-Trillion-Dollar Performance Package for Elon Musk
US Justice Department Launches Criminal Mortgage-Fraud Probe into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
Escalating Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America: A Growing Crisis
US and Taiwanese Defence Officials Held Secret Talks in Alaska
Report: Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission in North Korea Ordered by Trump in 2019 Ended in Failure
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Florida Murder Case: The Adelson Family, the Killing of Dan Markel, and the Trial of Donna Adelson
×