Twiggy on the weight of being an icon

Some stories are funny, others are cut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question, Now, what you were appointed? I'm gonna say, if I get it right, Dame Commander of the British Empire, and that it was in twenty nineteen, there a ceremony. Did the kids all come? And good? The ceremonies? Unbelieving? It was very exciting. It was no, they actually only

allow you to take three people. So I took Lee, Carly and my step son Jason. And then I felt really bad because I've got two elder sisters who I'm really close to. And I was talking to one of the organizers a bit beforehand, and she said, how many of you got and I said too, and she said, oh, I think we can swing it. So I took my two elder sisters and my eldest sister. She cried through the whole thing for about three hours, but they did it at Buckingham Palace and I got mine from the

then Prince Charles, who of course is law our King. Yes, and he was really sweet because I was really nervous, and he just said to me, it's about time you got this. Oh, we're all very happy for you. My guest today is Dame Leslie Lawson, or Twiggy. She's been known for nearly six decades. Twiggy is an award winning actress, a singer, a model, and in many ways, the face of an entire generation. She became a global sensation at age sixteen when her picture was discovered by a journalist

at a London hair salon. Twiggie would go on to have a very prolific career as a model and news regularly gracing the pages of Vogue before pivoting to the stage and screen. Today, she's an author, a podcast host, a doting mom and grandma, and a wife to her wonderful husband Lee. I met them both thirty years ago, and I am so grateful that our bond has stood the test of time. So, without further ado, here is

one of my closest and coolest friends, Dame Twiggy. First of all, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Trying to think it's thirty years ago. We did that movie together called The Diamond Trap, unbelievable. I was a villain and you were a cup. I was a plea. But don't you remember we got so hysterical we last

because you I mean, you're how tall are you? You're I I think I was six feet then I've lost a lot of height, but okay, I'm five foot six and a half and you're sitting and we had a scene if you remember, where I was meant to arrest you in the in an elevator and we had we got such giggles because you said to me, I could not You're over in second pick you up with one arm, like you're not going to be able to subdue this big Well you're not just tall and much stronger than

we did. We did have it, and it was lovely because that program, you know, led us to become friends, which I will be forever grateful It was lovely. I'm so happy. I remember being really just excited but nervous and also just really wanting to you know, you don't know how much I respected you, and that's just sweet. When I look at your career and I look at mine, I do see some similar things, especially as a concerns like coming of age in the spotlight around the same time.

I mean, you became famous around what's sixteen? Yeah, and how old were you? You were younger? Weren't you? Well, you know, I was eleven, because I did when I did Pretty Baby. That really kind of just catapulted me into some were you that I was eleven in that moment, I thought you were like thirteen or forteen. You were eleven. You're a baby. I was a baby. I mean I was young, sixteen, but that's young. You had a life sort of prior, do you know? Do you know what

I mean? Do you remember was it a big shift? Well? When it first, you know, you've got to remember up until that moment, moment that it happened, and it literally did. I didn't plan to do it. I didn't. It wasn't a planned thing. It wasn't I was a school girl and I actually loved school. I was one of those people who loved school. I went to a grammar school. But I also loved clothes. I always made my own clothes.

And in that period, which was the early sixties, I was what was called a mod, and I was only allowed to go out in the evening on a Saturday night. There was a local dance or where the mods went, and my mum and dad would let me go as long as I was home by ten o'clock. Often I would make the clothes because I'd learned to sew for my mom and my sisters, and I was I was very into fashion. I love clothes like most teenagers, and I was always playing around with makeup, but I could

only wear makeup on that Saturday. And did you feel like core when you were the girl was hack of you? And yeah, it was a group of us girls minds. It wasn't minies then. This was even pre minis. Yeah, the pre white boots pre Yeah, this is like sixty two sixty three, so that was about to happen. I mean my first so called mini dress when I look at pictures, and I was probably about fourteen, went to a friend's wedding and actually it was only two inches

above my knee, so it wasn't that mini. But within like two years I was wearing hardly more than a big belt. Really, they're so sure, God, but so wait, take us back a little bit too. You go, that was then err and then you had long hair and you go into a salon, I'll try and make it sure.

A friend of a friend, she had a friend who worked on a woman's magazine, and she said, you know, you've got a really interested in look because I'd always at the weekend, i'd put my eyelashes on and paint my eyes, which I got off of a rag doll. I had a rag doll in my bedroom and I used to copy that. And she introduced me to this editress of a woman's magazine and she sent she said, your hair's terrible because I used to die it myself and it was like an orangey color. It was awful.

And she said, you gotta, we got to do something your hair, and we'll have some test shots done of you. And so she sent me to a very posh hairdressing salon called the House of Leonard, and I actually went there to have my hair styled, and the owner, Leonard, saw me and came over and said, will you let me cut your hair? And it was weird because I didn't want my hair cut. I was a age girl.

I loved my long hair, but I was too frightened to say no because he was, you know, I was in this posh salon and that was the kind of look that you know, took off. But they sent me at the following week to have a photograph taken purely for Leonard to hang in his salon to show his

new haircut. So I went to this gorgeous photographer called Barry Lattican, and he was in a beautiful studio and he sat me in front of the camera and he was really sweet, and he took what has now become a very famous photo, just me looking in a fair arm sweater, looking into camera. And then a very famous fashion journalist saw the picture. She was a client, and said I love the haircut. Who's the girl? And Leonard said, well, she's a schoolgirl and her nicknames Twiggy, and she said

I want to meet her, and I met her. She interviewed me, and a week later in a big daily newspaper was Twiggy the face of sixty six and that's such a weird thing. I know what happened at school did a change her relationships with your friends? Yeah? It did, because people were ringing the newspaper to book me. Because I didn't have an agent or anything. I was a schoolgirl. So it all happened so so unbelievably fast. Was it in line with anything you'd ever thought you would be doing? No,

you know I was. It's so funny when I look at our home scrapbook, the old pictures are mainly my sisters who went to tap class and went to Brownies and girl guides, but none of me because I wouldn't go. I just wanted a bit at home with my mum. I was really shy. I hated doing anything without her. So the fact that what happened to me happened to me is was very very peculiar. Were you scared? I mean,

was anybody with you when you're flying? Yeah? I meant part of the deal, because you know, I was sixteen, which I was a very very young, unsophisticated sixteen, because I meet sixteen year olds an hour and they seem very grown up. So I had I had a manager, and my dad said, if I'm going to let you leave school and go to these places with photographers and things. He's got to go with you and be there all the time and with your boyfriend. He yeah, he became

my boyfriend. Yeah, and he was ten years older than me. God it was a bit scandalous, I suppose. But but but in a way, you know, when all the stuff started coming out over the last couple of decades of what has gone on to some were lots of poor actresses and models and how they were treated that that didn't happen to me because I had this guy always in standing at the back of the studio and he was quite a big guy, you know, muscular, and so

I never got hit on. And when when you look at that relationship, you say it became it became your boyfriend. What do you think about that relationship now, Well, it's so long ago, and I ended it in the end because I grew out of it very quickly. But what was complicated was that he was managing me, so it was very complicated. But you know, we sorted it out and then I went on to meet my first husband, Arlie's dad. Now, social class is a huge part of

British society. Oh yeah, your family, and you were very much working, working, very much. So yeah, but at the same time you've become sort of this face for a nation and in many ways an entire era. Well the person, the person who really cemented that for me was Diana of Reland, who she for people who don't know, she

was the editors of American Vogue. And I always say that Diana of Reland turned me global because I was very famous in England, but the rest of the world probably hadn't heard of me unless they got British papers. But why do you think that is, I mean, you had such a huge impact. Well, she brought me to New York when she read all the stuff going on in England. Within nine months I was in New York. And because of me going in a few years after the Beatles, I was like part of that British invasion.

I was turned into a celebrity. But what happened in New York which we didn't count on. When I arrived at the airport, you know, there was a press conference and there were crowds of people with banners saying welcome tweet. It was like because I I came in after the Beatles, so it was very peculiar, a bit scary, and I can remember going for a walk one day and we had to escape into a shop because people were coming

up and saying could they touch me? And the girls started like getting bits of paper out and screaming, and that was scary. It was weird because you didn't spend that many years modeling, did you. I modeled for four years from nineteen sixty six to nineteen sixty nine seventy. But in the interim I met this amazing man called Ken Russell, you know, the film director, and he cast me in my first film, and The Boyfriend and One.

So we started filming and it was a musical and I got to sing and dance and it was like, oh my god, this is am this is what I want to do. So I made the decision at the grand old age of twenty that I would follow that route rather than the modeling route, because in those days there was a bit of a down or you know, models were pretty and thick and stupid, which is an absolute rubbish, but that's what the kind of feeling was, and that I thought, if I'm going to be taken

seriously as a performer, I probably got an model. Well, also, you're so recognizable and so on for you know, everybody's brain. And at a time of such high fashion, did you did they dress you? Did you pack your own clothes and dress yourself for these shows? And well I didn't. I never did catwalk. Actually, that was one thing I didn't do. I never did either. I did I did you know the top fashion magazines, so as you know, they send the clothes over you, model is sent for

you to wear. But was it the same way with you when it was in because they never used to give us anything Like the stuff you've usually had huge holes in it so that people wouldn't steal it or somehow. But we never, you know, we never given anything. I know because people always say, oh, you must have got such amazing clothes, but usually they were samples anyway, so they're not going to give you the samples, right, I mean I only fit into samples for a little while.

One of the reasons why I never did runway. But I was never really small enough to fit into the samples except for when I was much much younger. Well I was the I was the opposite. A lot of the samples didn't fit me because I was so tiny. I was you know, only five foot six and tiny, and was there pressure. You talk about it a lot. I mean you've you talk about sort of the idea of the physical and the industry's expectation of the female body, and you were the absolute center of what it meant.

I got blamed for anorexia, and I used to go on TV and explain that I understood because I was very skinny, but that I ate like a horse. I didn't put myself up there to say this. You've got to look like listen. I was as shocked as probably more than anyone. You know, what happened to me happened because you know I didn't. I thought I was well. I was a funny little thing, really very skinny legs, not what you'd call a figure. As one journalists said, Oh great, I love how those are the things that

stick out to us. But it's just but a lot of people, I think to assume that, and I think we have seen it a lot. You know, I hear those horror stories of models who eat cutton balls to fill their stomach up. I've hearing all these and you know, you look at the samples now and in the shows, and they're not getting better. I mean, I know that there's tough they say it's body inclusivity and that there's healthier bodies in there, but the clothes are not reflecting it.

And when the times that I've seen shows, it's amazing how thin I know, and it's worrying actually, And I always did come out and say, look, you know I am very thin, but I'm very young. I do eat. I eat very healthily. I eat most things. And you know, everyone is not born to be a certain shape, you know. I mean, it's not healthy to be obesely overweight, but I don't think everyone should be skinny. I really don't a body type though. It's really should not be a trend,

you know, I think absolutely not. And that whole that pressure was put on you. You know that that was the ideal that you had to be that way. And I think what helped me actually because I think the fact that I only modeled for those four years, it didn't become the be all and end all of life, do you know? I mean, because I met Ken Russell and he gave me the gift of casting me in this wonderful film that he made. Did he ever tell you what he thought? Like? Did he ever say to you,

this is why I want you to do this. You've never done it before, but this is what I want for you. I mean, his faith in me was extraordinary because I didn't have I didn't have an equity card, which in England I don't know about in America you couldn't do a film unless you had an equity card. And he picked it equity to get me a card because it was ridiculous they wouldn't give me a card because I was a model, and he got me one in the end, so I mean, he really did have faith.

And then the studios, as you can imagine, I think it was MGM, they didn't want me in the lead, which again you know they said she's a model. But luckily at that point Ken Russell was the most famous British film director. You know, he'd done Women in Love and The Devil's I mean he was he was huge megastar in that world and he was like the Steven Spielberg of England there absolutely, and so he just God bless him, said well, if I don't have her, I won't make it. So you get on this set and

it's a revelation to you. Oh, unbelievable scary. I was really can imagine how scared I was, because you know I was. It was all I knew a few actors I'd met, but I to walk on and knowing they were all professional actors, and you know, but they were all at Bar one. Everyone in that on that film were wonderful to me, and Christopher Gabele who was my leading man, and Tommy cho and that's where I met Tommy.

I got him cast in that Actually. You know, it's interesting because I never felt that I was in the pocket of what I was supposed to do until I discovered comedy and musical theater. Oh okay, when did you feel like your career aligned with your actual passions? Oh gosh, well, that's funny enough. I was so nervous about doing my one and only but like you, it was like again, it was like, oh my god, this is amazing. I don't really remember opening night because I was so scared,

but we got through it. I remember Tommy had hurt his back so he couldn't kick his leg as high as he wanted to, and I had I had, I had I'd got a sore throat because you know, when you put a show on You're so tired by the time you open. But anyway, we opened and they loved us, thank God. And My one and only was a musical that you did on Broadway as well, was in the West exactly. It is, yeah, amazing and you and Tommy tune ah, that's RISI BlimE. I grew to absolutely love

an Adore. It was. It was, and I'll always thank Tommy for giving me that chance because it was a world I never thought i'd enter that I could, and I did grow to really love in the door. We did it for eighteen months. Okay, I want to switch over to talk about your first husband, Michael Carly's dad. How old was she when he passed away. She was coming up to her fifth birthday. It was horrendous. But

that whole period was very difficult. I mean, he was an amazing man, a very talented man, but he did have an alcohol problem and it sadly, while I was doing the show on Broadway, it kind of got worse, I think because I was so busy doing that, and eventually he did have a massive heart attack and he

didn't make it. While you were away what I was doing, I was doing the show, but we were separated at that time because it had become so difficult with his problem, and bless his heart, he had gone to he'd stopped drinking for about nine months, I think, and gone to AA and things, so he was trying. But I think

the damage, well, we know the damage was done. But the heart, my heart really went out to Carlie because you know, I'd kind of made the decision not to Well, I couldn't be with him, I couldn't do the show, deal with the other problem. It had kind of broken, if you know what I mean. How do you keep

his memory positively alive for her? How do you well, we talk about him all the time and and you know, and she knows the problem he had, and well it's nobody's fault when the alcoholism takes over, I suppose, but he gave up a lot for that, you know, the bottle, if you know what I mean, which is what happens with people who have a drink problem. I think I always say to her, he loved you more than anything in the world, which he did. You know, she was

his angel. And the hardest thing for her, she can't really remember him that well because she's only five. Yeah, and I mean, that's that's the hard, hard pope. But then you're all of a sudden, I mean you probably felt like you were a single mom already. Yeah. And also I had to get I mean I took obviously, I took a couple of days off. My understudy went on to deal with the things you have to deal with and and make sure Carly was all right. And then I thought, well, hold on, I've got to go

back to work. You know, I'm I'm now the bread the number one breadwinner. I've got a daughter, you know. And actually the show helped, well, I carve the show now because it's about moments like that one that totally uproot your life. And I'm always very curious, um if there was a particular one or a few in your life that that really stick out to you. Well, we've just we've just talked about one. Yeah, And I made

that decision. I think, well, you'll understand this, and any mother out there, in the end, it's your baby, and you are the sole provider and loved one of that child. And she, you know, she became my world and to look after that world I had to. But as I said, it helped me as well. Of course, carrying on doing the show. Was your mom helpful with Carly? She was quite elderly when Carly came along, and also she had

depression issues. She was fine for a lot of the time, but then I think nowadays she'd probably be diagnosed as bipolar, but they didn't do it then, and she actually had shock treatment when she was in her fifties. Really, they gave a shock treatment. Francis Farmer and like Francis Farmer, yeah, exact, really beautiful actress. Yeah, so your sister's probably that when

you say she's like your older sister was like a mum. Yeah, that's why because if you can imagine, when I was five, my elder sister was twenty, so she used to take me on holiday, and you know, mum was and I loved I was really close to my mum, but she was kind of fragile, if you know what I mean. So by the time Carly came along, she was older and she, you know, dealing with whatever was going on

with her um. So you know, she I used to take Carly to see her when we were when we were in England because you know, but then we were living half the time in America and they had a nice relationship, but again, it wasn't like like the relationship I've got with Carli's too. When you're so young, you don't did you really know what was what it was like growing up in that environment with a mum who

who struggled. Not really, not until I was older, because my dad was amazing, right, And as I say, it would for months and months and months and months, mum would be fine and then she would have a dip. Yeah, until she wasn't. And they didn't really know how to diagnose that then and how to look at They gave her pills, the good old pills, give her a pill treatment.

But she lived till she was ninety ones. And I'm sure, even if she didn't quite know how to express it, that she was truly truly proud of her little Yeah she was, she was, and you know she did your sisters have babies? Oh yeah, they've got They had surely had three, and they've had two and now they're they're all having babies. So the extended family is endless, as as as it always is. So funny, Um, so you're

doing a documentary. How were you approached for the documentary? Well, funny enough, Sadie Frost and very sweet you agreed to be interviewed. Thank you. It's very honored to have been asked to appear in your documentary. Thank you. Well. I was doing my podcast, which you very kindly did, and I got a call through my producer saying, the public relations people for this new documentary on Mary Quant who was a famous British designer, directed by Sadie Frost, is

coming out. This is about eighteen months ago, and could Sadie come on my podcast to talk about And I said, oh, great, because I kind of I didn't know her ever so well, but I knew her. So she did my podcast and we were chatting and I said, are you going to do another documentary? And she said, oh, I should do you and we laughed, and then when we came off air, she said, what do you think would you let me

do you? And I said, WHOA, yeah, I suppose. I can't really stop being So then we went out for lunch the next week and she said, I think it's quite a good idea. What do you think? And I I said, well, you know, if you really want to, yeah, I mean it's it's your baby. Really, Oh, it's exciting it's it's going to be very emotional when you watch it, and I'd rather it be done by somebody that I kind of know, right, And also she did a brilliant job one quant. I don't know whether you watched it,

but it's a really good documentary. I can't wait till the process. This part of the process you get to experience because it's just so good for all the right reasons. And it's not praising, it's nothing, nothing about that. It's the depth of a life and you can appreciate that. If you were to look, when you look back on your many, many accomplishments in your life, what would you say your through line is? Oh, gosh, um, I think what's important in my life? I mean because of what

happened to me? And again a bit like what happened to you was so extraordinary and you couldn't have You couldn't have choreographed it. If you if you or written it, people say, oh, that's rubbish, that can't happen to somebody. So my through line really was always my family. It was always very important that I had a home life because I'd met many people in our business that had gone the other way, and that the work was the most important, and and they'd kind of lost the other

and they didn't seem very happy. And my personal life has always been incredibly important. I was very lucky to meet Lee, who my husband. We've been together now for thirty eight years this year. Well thank you. And that's always been my kind of rock, my home life, being mum to Carli, now being you know, grandpa. What's weird now? Because Joan is seven and other little girls in her class whose mums have probably said something because she came

home and said to me, are you stuymuch? Oh they're not? Oh God, here we go. I knew it would happen one day because somebody was going to say something, all right, And I said, well, you know, I've done a few things, but I'm still your mimi, so I don't worry about it exactly. And I wouldn't have it any other way. But my role, because I said, is my family. That was the one and only Twiggy. If you want to hear more from her, listen to her podcast Tea with

Twiggy Annie. iHeartRadio, app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. That's it for us. Tucked to you next week. Now What with Brookshields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and Abou Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Bahed Fraser.