Cara Delevingne: 'Harvey Weinstein told me to get a beard'
Cara Delevingne has always been pretty open about her private life. She’s been linked with Michelle Rodriguez, Jack O’Connell and Miley Cyrus and these days she’s in a long-term relationship with actress Ashley Benson.
But things might have been pretty different if she’d listened to disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein early on in her career.
“One of the first things Harvey Weinstein ever said to me was, ‘You will never make it in this industry as a gay woman – get a beard.” Adding, “This was a long time before he tried to touch me.” Delevingne never considered the suggestion of getting a fake boyfriend seriously though.
The actress and supermodel remembers the encounter in an interview with Porter this month, where she talks about labels, life and her new role in Amazon Prime’s new drama Carnival Row.
Commenting on the questioning she gets about her sexual identity, she admits that “The labels for everything bum me out. I hate to label myself. I’ve been to so many dinners where people are like, ‘So, what are you? L, G, B, T, Q?’ I’m like, ‘Guys, really? This is what we’re talking about?’ I change every day.”
Read more: Cara Delevingne opens up about relationship with girlfriend Ashley Benson
In the interview, she also revealed on how she found it difficult to define herself while modelling. “I didn’t really have any self-identity or self-worth. It was a struggle. I was taking so much from myself and giving it to everyone.”
She realised that she wanted to make a difference – to give something back – and started looking at acting roles.
Her first big break came in the indie hit Paper Towns, but it was Suicide Squad which got her noticed. Now she’s stepped into the role of Vignette Stonemoss, an Irish fairy, in fantasy crime drama Carnival Row alongside Orlando Bloom.
While the story is very much not of this world, she sees parallels with women’s suffrage, especially in an episode where her wings are bound to stop her escaping.
“It’s like what women were forced to go through,” cries Delevingne. “I had to wear a corset every day, and you lose your voice. I wonder, in the past, did men just sit round thinking, ‘What can we do? A muzzle? Is that a bit obvious? OK, we’ll just wrap something round their waists so they can’t breathe or speak.’”
Read more: Suicide Squad's Cara Delevingne: 'Superhero Movies Are Totally Sexist'
Carnival Row is available to watch now on Amazon Prime.
