Kate Moss Talks Drugs, Anorexia, Johnny Depp & Marky Mark

Kate Moss is on the cover of Vanity Fair’s December issue and inside there is a rare and intimate interview with her, promoting her new book Kate: The Kate Moss Book (apparently a book by Kate, about Kate). 

Most interestingly, the iconic supermodel says that she "had never taken heroin" despite being the figurehead of the heroin chic look in the 90s. "It was nothing to do with me at all," she says of her reputation. "I think Corinne [Day] — she wasn't on heroin but always loved that Lou Reed song, that whole glamorizing the squat, white-and-black and sparse and thin, and girls with dark eyes. She loved that look." And what about those perpetual anorexia claims? "I was thin, but that's because I was doing shows, working really hard... Nobody took you out for lunch when I started... You don’t get fed. But I was never anorexic."

In the interview Kate opens up about her relationship with Johnny Depp. Apart from being one of the coolest couples of all time, she credits Johnny with helping her to find her feet. "There's nobody that's ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit. I believed what he said," Kate says. "Like if I said, 'What do I do?,' he'd tell me. And that's what I missed when I left. I really lost that gauge of somebody I could trust. Nightmare. Years and years of crying. Oh, the tears!"

She talks about the challenges she faced as a young model, revealing that her infamous Calvin Klein campaign with Marky Mark brought on a nervous breakdown. "It didn't feel like me at all. I felt really bad straddling this buff guy. I didn't like it. I couldn't get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die. I went to the doctor and he said: 'I'll give you some Valium', and Francesca Sorrenti [Moss' friend and mother of Mario Sorrenti], thank God, said: 'You're not taking that.'"

"I see a 16-year-old now, and to ask her to take her clothes off would feel really weird," she goes on to say. "But they were like: 'If you don't do it, then we're not going to book you again'. So I'd lock myself in the toilet and cry and then come out and do it." Presumably this was the one-and-only time someone has felt traumatised after seeing Marky Mark half-naked.

There's no mention of the cocaine saga and whether or not that comes up in the book, but she does talk about "getting Mossed" — a phenomenon that occurs when she leads people astray and parties down. Sounds a little like getting crasted. 

Alice Cavanagh