I feel like the only person in the world who sees David Beckham modelling his swimming pants on the cover of Elle magazine and thinks – oh, how much better a handsome guy like you would look, David, without all those dumb ink stains stitched into your skin.
The way I looked when I started modelling – I was a skinny schoolgirl, stuffing tissues into my little 32A bra. I wasn’t trying to be that thin; I was perfectly healthy, but still – that look is a total impossibility for women over the age of 20. Fashion has a lot to answer for, doesn’t it?
Before I was attacked, I would write about the future – just goals, lists and plans. I’d scribble without depth or substance about the things I wanted to do with my life, whether short or long-term, and how I thought my future would be: a successful career in TV and modelling, marriage, a family.
Modelling, fashion and film have all encouraged me to learn more about issues and to feel empowered enough to do something about them.
Keynesian modelling relies on marginal propensity to consume and marginal propensity to invest. The idea that if we give more money to the poor, they have a propensity to consume that’s much higher than the wealthy, though I wish they would talk to my wife about that; she seems to have a propensity to consume.
I did a lot of lingerie modelling, like, for plus-size, like Macy’s and Dillard’s and Bloomingdale’s. I was, like, on a billboard in New York one time in, like, a bra and underwear. Yeah.
Modelling, initially, is interesting. I think acting is a long process and it is far more interesting a job. In acting you play a particular character for a particularly long time, shedding your inhibitions, being out there and doing what you want.
When films looked a little difficult I did two TV shows and learnt a lot. I even did modelling in between.
Modelling was never a career option for me; it was always a hobby. I was modelling while I was pursuing my B.Tech, so the obvious choice after finishing my studies was to do a job. But while I was modelling and doing TV commercials, I really loved being in front of the camera. I enjoyed the shooting process.
I never knew modelling was what I wanted to do. I was just meandering through life having fun, having a laugh with my friends.
When I came to Mumbai in 2005 for a holiday, I received work offers. So I decided to stay back and pursue a modelling and acting career.
I started event managing as my first career which I started in 1989, and that was the first year when I started modelling as well, so every time I start something new it is because of an interest that I have and then that interest becomes sustainable and doable.
My mom was a photographer and whenever they needed a baby for a modelling job, she’d stick me in front of the camera. That’s how it started.
I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don’t know how to do it, and wouldn’t be any good at it if I did, so I’m going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course.
When you’re a young boy, you’re looking at older men for role modelling. Before I loved De Niro, I loved Clint Eastwood; I loved John Wayne. And James Bond.
I did modelling for five years, then I felt I wanted to do something different and challenging.
It would come as quite a shock to my younger self that my first job was modelling. I was scouted, aged 18, when I went to Paris to visit my older sister, Yvonne, who was at uni there.
I’ve been really lucky. When I decided to go to LA I said I was going to quit modelling and just go and see how I do. In the first two weeks I got three movies. I was so excited I had all my furniture shipped out from New York.
With modelling, there’s nothing to work on other than losing weight. I definitely had an eating disorder.
Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; it’s a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.
I started getting modelling assignments and that’s how I became interested in acting. But my father, who last watched Dilip Kumar’s ‘ Devdas,’ wanted me to do MBA. I didn’t listen to him and gave my audition for Yash Raj films’ ‘Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge’ and got selected for it.
All the modelling we do shows that the climate is poised on the jump up to a new hot state. It is accelerating so fast that you could say that we are already in it.
I now don’t mind if people know about my modelling because I don’t feel like it really matters. I feel like I have proved myself as an actress, to some degree.
I have been modelling since I was four years old so facing the camera is second nature to me.
I always wanted to be a designer. It was when I started modelling for my college shows that I came under the spotlight.
From as far back as I can remember, I was always insecure about my looks, whether it was my flat chest, my skinny legs, or how to cope with my body as it changed. With hindsight, I can see I was different. I was given a body that worked for photographic modelling and a photogenic face.
I know people will think it’s funny because I’ve done glamour modelling in the past, but I felt embarrassed about my body and just wanted to cover it up.
I really want to keep modelling, but it’s not my number one goal in life. But it’s so fun. I love doing it; it’s just that – it’s not like I just want to be a model when I’m older.
I did a lot of ramp modelling in South Africa and Hong Kong, when models were free to dance and walk on the ramp.
I did help to set up an undergraduate course in medicinal chemistry and made progress in modelling and analysing pharmacological activity at the tissue level, my new passion.
I was on the national Pentathlon team for a few years, but there was no funding for athletes in Canada. I was in a massive amount of personal debt at the age of 21, so I joined a little modelling and talent agency to get a some work, to do anything so that I didn’t have to drop out of school.
I never wanted to be a model. My modelling career was nothing but a stepping stone to my acting career and that’s all I ever saw it as. A pointless rock in the river that has to be stepped on in order to get to the meaningful oasis of acting.
I shopped a lot on 1stdibs.com when I first started modelling. Just whenever, I’ve always been on and bought all my furniture on 1stdibs.com.
Modelling is very two-dimensional. You really don’t have to bare anything.
I was mired in modelling and acting. But as I am an outdoors person, I was still trekking and doing some other activities.
Modelling is completely different from acting. They are two skills that you can’t compare.
From childhood my mother had me examining Robert Mapplethorpe’s style and Egon Schiele’s framing – that’s what modelling is about.
