http://kerrypotter.net/pdf/memoir

_ S P _]Z`MWP bT_S L X d Amy Winehouse, the girl with the big voice and even bigger reputation, tells Kerry Potter about drinking, escaping from rehab and weight loss – the one demon she has beaten…

A 9am Monday breakfast meeting is about as un-rock’n’roll as it gets, but Amy Winehouse teeters into the diner in scuffed white stilettos on time. ‘Don’t worry, darlin’,’ she rasps in her north London accent, ‘I tend to be up at this time. Usually from the night before.’ Amy spent yesterday, like many other Sundays, playing pool, holding court and drinking heavily in her local pub in Camden. She’s not a cleanse-tone-and-moisturise-before-bed kinda girl – yesterday’s mascara is smeared across her cheeks and her long black hair is matted. She’s petite – 5ft 4in and a size 4 to 6 – but not as scarily slight as in last year’s infamous tabloid pictures.

Amy is in a bit of state: she’s lost her make-up bag, her mobile’s died and her dog, which she bought with boyfriend Alex, ran away two days ago. She’s welling up, so I talk about her recent gig at a party in Camden. Her new songs sounded great, but I had to leave early. ‘I punched a girl in the face later,’ she says. A girl had praised Amy about the show, before turning to Alex and commenting on how drunk Amy was. That was when it happened. ¢ 2

ELLE

3

ELLE

;3:?:2=,;3 5@74, 1@770=?:9 ,? B09/D 5,.6>:9 8,9,20809? >?D7492 9,?,>3, B=,D 3,4= 5:9 .3,;8,9 ,? .,=:7 3,D0> 8,9,20809? @>492 ,A0/, ,>>4>?0/ -D ,-4 .3,8-0=> 8,60 @; ?,74, >3:-=::6 7:.,?4:9 ,77 >?,= 7,90> 09< " !"!& BBB ,77>?,=7,90> .: @6 >476 ,9/ ?@770 /=0>> -D 8:>.349: .30,; ,9/ .34. 90.67,.0 ,8Dv> :B9 >476 >.,=1 B:=9 ,> -07? ,9/ >,?49 >,9/,7> -:?3 -D 7:@4> A@4??:9 1:= >3:;;492 /0?,47> >00 ,//=0>> -::6

‘I get so violent when I’m drunk, it’s horrible,’ Amy says morosely.

It’s hard to believe this pocket-sized Keith Richards is the same girl who arrived with her 2004 album Frank. Its jazzy, mannered sound saw Amy lumped in with Radio 2-friendly Jamie Cullum and Katie Melua, but her lyrics told a different story. Dark, confessional and brutal, she sneered at girls who chase footballers, accused an ex of being gay and told the world how her father cheated on her mother. Despite attending Sylvia Young’s stage school and being initially managed by Spice Girls Svengali Simon Fuller, Amy was no docile starlet and had her own barbed opinions (Victoria Beckham was ‘an idiot’ and Madonna ‘an old lady’). Now 23, Amy looks embarrassed. ‘I wouldn’t do that again. I’ve grown up a bit,’ she says.

In the two years since, Amy has had her heart broken, smoked too much cannabis, drunk too much, become addicted to the gym, got dangerously thin, suffered from depression and been carted off to rehab.

She tells us all about it on Back to Black.

Her single, Rehab, deals with the day her manager and dad, Mitch, made her seek help.After a love affair with then-boyfriend Blake had ended messily (they’d both cheated and became abusive), she had hit the bottle and fallen hard. In her own words, ‘My manager called my dad and said, “Come round to Amy’s place, she’s in a state.” My dad turned up, saw me and burst into tears. It was awful. So they took me to a clinic in the sticks. They said, “Why are you here?” I said, “Because I’m IN NORTH LONDON depressed, I’m in love with someone and LAST AUGUST I’ve f**ked it up.” They said, “Do you think (ABOVE); WITH KELLY you’re an alcoholic?” I said, “I don’t know.

OSBOURNE (RIGHT) I’m not alcoholic but I love drinking.

– THE PAIR MET AT I drink every day.” I was drinking about THE BRITS IN 2002 20 units a day. Still do.’ She walked out of the clinic after a few hours and stayed with Mitch in Kent, where she caught up with friends and cooked epic dinners (she’s quite the Jewish housewife beneath that rock’n’roll exterior). ‘A lot of people are, like, “Oh, my God – rehab. That’s terrible.” But who cares?’ she shrugs. ‘If you say, “You really have a problem and you need rehabilitation,” then you’re lending their problem weight – rather than just being, like, you’re being an idiot, calm down.’

All very well, but no calming down appears to have taken place.

Twenty units of alcohol a day? That’s more than three bottles of wine. Such are the perils of being a pop star with no routine or boss to answer to: ‘I can’t fire myself, can I?’ she says wryly. She tells me she drinks far less in the studio, but now the album is done and she’s back home with only promo work to keep her occupied, hardcore boozing is back on the agenda.Whenever she has a violent turn, she can’t remember it the next day. Alex has his work cut out protecting her from trouble, defusing fights she starts in bars and filling her in on her bad behaviour the morning after. One night she drank a bottle and a half of sambuca, fell over outside her house and hit her head so hard that her friend had to call an ambulance. When it 8 2

arrived, she tried to punch the paramedic, who threatened to call the police. We chuckle about her drunken antics but the laughter sounds a bit hollow played back later on tape. I ask if her drinking is under control? ‘No,’ she says, eyes cast down. ‘It’s been that way for a year. It is what it is. I’ll stop at some point.’ When? ‘I don’t know.’

The drinking may be here to stay, but Amy has knocked a £200 per week cannabis habit on the head this year. Never one for Class A drugs (‘apart from the odd line or pill’), weed was her relaxant of choice for years. ‘It wasn’t a problem,’ she insists. ‘I was smoking loads when I met Blake, but I phased it out. It was nothing to do with him, it just got boring and made me rude and paranoid.’

Amy’s mother, Janis, a pharmacist, suggested she was suffering from depression. Amy refused to get a diagnosis or medication and threw herself into gruelling gym workouts instead.

At first this seemed to be the answer: the exercise elevated her mood and helped her give up cannabis completely. But the treadmill became an addiction in itself. ‘I’d go five times per week for two hours each time.’ Inevitably, the weight fell off.Was she going too much? ‘You can’t go too much,’ she insists. ‘I go three times per week now and I’m getting my belly back.’ She grabs her tiny tummy and wails, ‘I hate it!’ Amy will admit to ‘a real problem with food’. ‘It was the stress of making my album in New York, being away from home, missing my boyfriend, lack of confidence.’ Her father regularly berated her about being too thin: ‘He was quite right. It really upset him.’ But she won’t accept criticism about her weight from the papers, and insists she wasn’t under pressure to slim. ‘I don’t care about all that. But it’s unfair to print pictures of people who have trouble putting weight on, like it’s unfair to print pictures of people saying they’re fat.’ Amy appears to be the right side of skinny now (although it’s borderline), and she knows she often forgets to eat when working or out drinking, so she always has breakfast. For the record, she tucks into smoked salmon, boiled eggs and ham, and has a big lunch during the shoot. Is she in a good place now with eating? ‘Yes. I’m actually eating too much. I had crisps and chocolate for the first time in months yesterday. I eat healthily – lots of chicken and salads. I cook for Alex. I’m not someone who can’t have food around me.

I’m careful – I can put on weight like that, but I drop it quickly, too.’

We turn to her friendship with Kelly Osbourne, plastic surgery (‘I want massive boobs. I love that 1950s silhouette’) and Alex.

They’ve been a couple for six months and moved in together after a month. ‘He’s so f**king hot! I love him so much.’ She says they are going to have babies, but worries they might be ginger (he’s blond) and have big heads: ‘We have large craniums!’ Her 11th tattoo is for him: a heart and an ‘A’ on her wedding finger. I ask if she’s content: ‘Completely,’ she says. ‘I’ve written this album about the bad times, I’ve had closure. I now have a lovely boyfriend. Apart from my dog running away, I’m happy.’ I hope it stays that way for her. N AmyWinehouseís new album, Back to Black, is out now ELLE

;3:?:2=,;3> ;,.414. .:,>? 90B> B099

ellecelebrity

ellememoir

life without sight

PHOTOGRAPH SARAH DUNN. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BARBARA LAMELZA. AMANDA WEARS PATTY ANNE RED TAB JEANS (£85) BY LEVI’S. FOR SHOPPING DETAILS, SEE ADDRESS BOOK

Model Amanda Swafford will be blind by the age of 30. The inspirational 27year old tells Kerry Potter how she plans to enjoy her final years of sight The first thing you notice about Amanda Swafford is her exquisite eyes: huge and pale blue, with a darker blue rim around the edge of the iris. ‘Isn’t it ironic?’ she smiles wryly, crossing one drainpipe-clad leg over the other and running her hand through her cropped red hair.

‘My most beautiful feature is my downfall. People say, “You have lovely eyes” and I say, “Well, they come with a cost – do you wanna trade?”’

By the time she is 30, Amanda will be blind. An only child of divorced parents, Amanda was raised by her carpenter father in North Carolina. She realised that she couldn’t see properly during a nocturnal trick-ortreating stint when she was three: all her pals were skipping happily from house to house, while she kept tripping up on kerbs and falling over. ‘My dad wasn’t very perceptive. He’s not a doctor person,’ she says. ‘I’d say, “Dad. I can’t see.” He’d say, “Open your eyes…”’

As Amanda grew up, her night vision deteriorated (she’s now entirely nightblind), along with her peripheral vision (she can see straight ahead in daylight but not to the side, above or below). ‘I’d knock over three drinks in a row in a restaurant.

But my family just thought I was a typical gawky teenager.’ She was finally diagnosed at 14, when her mum took her to get contact lenses and the optician realised her vision problems were serious and sent her for

gynaecologist, she was wrongly informed that she could never have children due to abnormalities in her uterus. ‘I thought, I’m going blind, I can’t have kids and my dad has kicked me out – perfect!’ she jokes. For several months, Amanda drank heavily at school, cracking open a bottle of vodka in morning class and invariably passing out at lunchtime. Meanwhile, her ‘friends’ would play tricks on her: hiding her belongings, turning off lights when she walked in a room and, on another memorable Halloween night,abandoning her in the woods. It took hours of aimless wandering before she found her way back to civilisation. ‘Stuff like that would hurt me on HOPE AND FAITH the inside but I’d Although Amanda just laugh it off on the is going blind, tests. ‘When the doctor broke the news outside,’ she says. she hopes a that I had a degenerative visual condition That stiff upper lip technological cure called retinitis pigmentosa, my mum came in handy in 2004 may be found started crying before I did – it just didn’t when Amanda appeared seem real to me. Once it did sink in on talent-contest TV show Americaís Next though, I thought, I want to kill myself,’ Top Model (broadcast on Living TV in the she says. ‘It was tough to deal with at that UK). She told her fellow contestants age – after all, when you’re 14, you want about her condition, but not all were to kill yourself if, like, your shoe breaks.’ sympathetic. ‘Some of the girls thought I The next few years were tough. Her was faking it to get ahead. That sucked.’ relationship with her father became She was also upset when, in reference to increasingly troubled and eventually 15- her sight, one judge asked: ‘What agency year-old Amanda was sent to Texas to live is going to want to hire her?’ with her newly remarried mother. Around Despite all this, Amanda came third in this time, on a routine visit to a the competition. Her biggest campaign ¢ E L L E 83

ellememoir to date was this autumn’s Levi’s magazine ads, all featuring visually impaired models.

She’s pictured in jeans with the caption, ‘I’ve never needed a mirror to know they fit.’

She may work in an industry obsessed with image and appearance, but Amanda doesn’t feel particularly held back by her encroaching blindness. On go-sees (where a model visits a client for a try-out), she plans her route, working out if there are any steps and where the door is. She sometimes can’t see to apply her mascara but her boyfriend is adept at checking for and fixing any mistakes. If she’s booked for catwalk work, she’ll check the runway out in daylight and memorise how many steps long it is. She doesn’t think that she’s ever missed out on jobs because of her vision.

As a young girl, Amanda thought her life would pan this way: ‘I’d be CEO of my own company, get married about 40, have a child, be a “successful woman”.’ After her diagnosis and being palmed off by her father, all that changed. ‘I felt I needed to be taken care of, so I found a man who’d do the job.’ At 18, the day after graduating from high school, she secretly married her boyfriend Doug. Her mother was furious and refused to pay for Amanda’s university degree – she’d been due to study psychology.

Within two years the marriage faltered (‘I treated him horribly.What with going blind, not going to college, thinking I couldn’t have children – I took my unhappiness out on him’). She eventually left her husband for their neighbour Tobias, whom, she says, she fell for the moment they met.That was six years ago, and they’re still going strong.

‘Tobias knew about my vision problem from the start – I tell people early on in case I do something that would be perceived as stupid or clumsy. It’s for their safety and my safety… and my ego,’ she says. A carpenter like Amanda’s father, Tobias is supportive without being indulgent. ‘Sometimes I feel I’m not getting enough sympathy from him, but when he’s not being, like, “Oh poor baby”, it’s because he’s being strong for me. It’s better for me not to be pitied,’ she says. ‘And I know he’ll be there for me when my vision’s completely gone.’

And the diagnosis that she couldn’t have children was proved wrong. A delighted Amanda and Tobias have a son Elijah, now three. Having Elijah proved an important step for Amanda in accepting her

condition. ‘I really only fully embraced it when he was born. Before that, I thought, “What am I going to do?”

But then the focus changed from me to him,’ she says. ‘I get depressed when I think about how I won’t be able to drive him to soccer practice, but ultimately he’s my motivation to stay positive in life.’

There’s no history of her disease in Amanda’s family (although neither of her grandfathers knew their parents), but retinitis pigmentosa is an hereditary condition. Does she worry about passing it on to Elijah? ‘He leads me around in the dark so I’m pretty sure he hasn’t got it,’ she says. ‘And even if he has, I have faith in technology – I know that in my lifetime I will be fixed, so he would be, too.What with stem cell research, microchip retinas, there are all these different possibilities that will happen.That hope for the future keeps me going – I know that it won’t be permanent.The way I see it, if I’m blind for five years before the technology arrives, then I’ll learn a lot in those five years.’ She’s unwaveringly trenchant in her belief that she won’t be blind forever.

In the meantime, Amanda busies herself with modelling, acting (she’s starting from scratch with a forthcoming role in a short film), writing poetry, sculpting and working on a multi-sensory children’s book. For both children with and without visual difficulties, it will incorporate different textures, such as fur and felt, scratch ’n’ sniff elements and Braille. Interestingly, she refuses to learn Braille herself: ‘That’s, like, full admittance! I don’t want to think that I’ll ever have to use it much,’ she says.

When her sight worsens, she plans to train as a massage therapist. At times the deterioration of her sight plateaus and at other times it speeds up. Right now it’s in a phase of acceleration. ‘I just have to accept it. I notice I can’t see as much as I did two months ago and that sucks,’ she says. ‘I have little milestones – sitting in my home, checking how much of the room I can see. How much of my son’s face I see when we’re hugging. How much I can see out the windscreen of the car. When I

realise that I can’t see as much of my backyard as I could last month, I stare at what I do see and really absorb it.’

Amanda uses various techniques to imprint images into her mind while some of her sight remains. ‘If I see a butterfly I like, I write down a little description, write a little story around it. When I read it later, it takes me right back. Or I take a mental picture. I stare and I make a little mental click to take a photo.’ Capitalising on her other senses is also effective: ‘With my son, I think about how fresh he smelt when he was first born and how his

ʻJust because I have a vision problem,itdoesnʼtmeanmylife is over. My condition has given me an insight into myselfʼ skin felt like velvet and how I felt that little spit bubble that touched my cheek.

Little moments like that.’

A fold-up white cane pokes out of Amanda’s handbag. She happily shows it to me but doesn’t use it during our time together (‘I find it embarrassing sometimes’). When she comes back to the terrace where our interview has been taking place after a washroom visit, she confides that en route she tripped over a chair in the dimly lit restaurant. I’m mortified and kick myself for not offering to accompany her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she grins.

‘I’m used to it, I have shins of steel now.’

I ask about her e-mail moniker ‘missfreakyeyes’ – does it help to be lighthearted about the situation? ‘Yes, because if I accidentally knock my son over or fall over the couch at a friend’s house and don’t laugh about it, what’s the alternative?

To cry? I don’t want to go there,’ she says.

‘Just because I have a vision problem, it doesn’t mean my life is over. I have a wonderful son and boyfriend, I’m attractive, which – let’s face it – opens a lot of doors, I’m intelligent and I have a career. And my condition has given me an insight into myself that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.’ She fixes me with those beautiful, determined blue eyes.

‘I don’t want people to feel sorry for me because I am truly blessed in my life.’ N E L L E 85

ellecelebrity

;3:?:2=,;3 =,9649

MLNV Q]ZX _SP M]TYV Cerys Matthews, Catatoniaʼs former frontwoman, is back with a new album. She tells Kerry Potter about new love, her new life and narrowly surviving heroin

T

s this demure, petite woman really Cerys Matthews, the former Catatonia singer? The Cerys of 1990s’ tabloid lore was an allboozing, all-smoking, all-mouth party monster who out-ladded the Britpop lads. Catatonia may have been one of the most successful Welsh bands ever, releasing four albums and a string of hits – including Mulder and Scully and Road Rage – but it was their singer’s rock ’n’ roll lifestyle that made the headlines.

‘I was never comfortable with the attention,’ says Cerys, now 37. She’s in London (home is Nashville, Tennessee now) to talk about a new solo album, 155

ELLE

Never Said Goodbye, but the subject of her decade-old infamy is never far away.

‘Suddenly we had a number one album and it was like this abyss opened.

I may have looked as if I was having a grand time but I found it hard to handle,’ she says in that familiar, so-Welsh-it-hurts burr.

All Cerys ever wanted to do was be a musician. She grew up in Pembrokeshire, then moved to Cardiff where, in 1992, aged 23, she formed Catatonia with guitarist Mark Roberts. He wrote the songs, she sang and they became lovers.

Four years later, the band (now fivestrong) hit the big time, just as Cerys and Mark’s relationship was dying. ¢

For Cerys, the fallout was catastrophic.

America. She liked Tennessee so much – ‘Mark and I were forced to spend 24 she was getting into bluegrass and country hours a day together over the next five music at the time – that she decided to move years, so I had to make a choice. I decided there ‘on a romantic whim’ to make a to carry on in the band but I had to quash record. The added bonus was that no one my emotions.’ As we know, she partied out there would recognise her. With the hard, drank heavily and smoked like a help of her one contact in the area, a record chimney.What we didn’t know was that she producer called Bucky Baxter, Cerys made took ‘every drug going’, from cannabis and her first solo album, Cockahoop, in a remote, cocaine to crack and heroin.

‘I found it easy to self-medicate; it meant I could avoid thinking and just get on with being in the band.’

The cracks started to show, though – Cerys began suffering terrible stage fright, missing gigs, going on benders and waking up days later in a different country.

There was fierce intra-band fighting and Catatonia’s sales began to dip. By 2001, Britpop was dead and Cerys wasn’t far off; addicted to crack and heroin, house-bound and gravely ill.

‘You think it’s OK to do it once in a while but it won’t let you go,’ she says in a small voice. ‘I had to stop because I was allergic to heroin. It precipitated severe asthma and was literally suffocating me. It got to the point where I couldn’t walk and was having morbid thoughts. I had no hope left. I had to decide to live or… not live.’ She eventually agreed to go into a rehab clinic, much to the relief of FROM ROCK CHICK her friends and family.

TO NATURE GIRL, CERYS BROUGHT ‘I had my first days HERSELF BACK in 15 odd years when rundown shack, with no running FROM THE EDGE OF I wasn’t chemically water or furniture. She lived SELF-DESTRUCTION imbalanced. I got my there, too, sleeping on a mattress brain straight. I started on the floor, slowly getting seeing in colour again – before, it was all healthy, revelling in the country air as she blacks and greys. It’s not like one day you go jogged around the lake or rode around the in and then you’re better, it’s an ongoing woods on an old bicycle (she had no car). process. But if you come out with the tools ‘It was liberating,’ she says. ‘I was in a band, to deal with it and know your weaknesses, with an itinerary, for 10 years. Suddenly, I then you can become strong.’ was alone in the middle of nowhere.’

Cerys becoming strong again depended That was a brave move, I suggest. on her not slinking back into her London ‘It wasn’t brave because I had no choice. I ways, though. On leaving rehab, she took was going to die if I stayed in this country,’ off to a remote island in the South Pacific she says firmly. for a few weeks, with just her dad and a few Around this time, Cerys met Seth Riddle, local fishermen for company. She then a producer and A&R man, now her husband embarked on a series of road trips around and father of her children, Glenys Pearl, the UK and then the southern states of three, and Johnny Jones, one.

1 56

ELLE

‘I met him at the point where I had forgiven myself and was at a new beginning.

It was an amazing, astounding time. And I just knew. It was like being hit in the head with a fish – it was that obvious,’ she grins.

They married in the Welsh countryside in 2003, Cerys arriving at the wedding in a tractor. Now, 30-year-old Seth, Cerys and the children reside by a park in Nashville, alongside turtles and fireflies.

‘My life is pretty laid-back,’ says Cerys. ‘I look after my kids and make music. At night, a group of us stays up too late on the porch playing guitars.’ She keeps healthy through yoga and Japanese food and, while cigarettes and drugs are firmly off the menu, she still enjoys a glass of wine: ‘I’m careful now.’

While Cockahoop was raw, lowkey and folky (her ‘baby-steps’ towards recovery, as she puts it), her new album shows how far Cerys has come in the past three years – it’s upbeat and confident, with big melodies and pop hooks.

‘It’s the best album of my career,’ she smiles. ‘I’ve allowed myself to believe in me again. My confidence has gone from an alltime low to an all-time high.’

Now she’s back in the UK for a tour, and to spend some time with her family (she’s even toying with the idea of moving back, a decision she has to make when Glenys Pearl – who apparently has a cute Tennessee accent but is also proficient inWelsh – starts school).

She’ll look up her old band mates, too.

Now that the disastrous implosion of Catatonia is ancient history, she’s finally rebuilt bridges there.

On the track Morning Sunshine on Never Said Goodbye, the lyrics go, ‘The darkest hour comes before the sunrise’. Excuse the cheesy question, I say to Cerys, but is this your sunrise?

‘It sounds new agey, but yes. I have renewed enthusiasm for life and music – and music is the only consistent thing I’ve ever had.’ She drains her Chardonnay.

Something tells me she doesn’t want another one. ‘I feel strong and energised.

I’ve got focus and I don’t have any fears.’ N Cerys Matthewsí new album, Never Said Goodbye, is out now and sheís currently on tour

;3:?:2=,;3 =,9649

ellecelebrity

ellememoir

MURDER,DRUGS

INFIDELITY: THE TRUTH ABOUT

FAITH PHOTOGRAPH GEMMA BOOTH. TOP AND SKIRT BY ALEXANDER MCQUEEN AT SELFRIDGES. SHOES BY CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

A mother at 18, Puff Daddy protégé at 21 and a widow at 23… US R&B star Faith Evans tells Kerry Potter what sheʼs learned from her tough and turbulent past

Faith Evans isn’t kidding when she says, with a wry smile, ‘I’ve seen a lot, I’ve done a lot and I’ve learned a lot.’

Today, the 32-year-old American singer, in London to promote her comeback album The First Lady, which is currently No 2 in the US charts, is relaxed, affable and all smiles, casually dressed in denim miniskirt, yellow vintage ZZ Top T-shirt and pink cowboy boots. But she has a history that would have a Footballersí Wives scriptwriter salivating: a hard-knock childhood, three children with different fathers, drugs, guns and… murder.

A huge star in the US, she’s best known here for the syrupy cover of The

FIRST LADY OF PAIN

Police’s Iíll Be Missing You (the duet with Puff Daddy that was an inescapable No 1 smash in the summer of 1997).

The song paid tribute to Faith’s husband, New York rap superstar, Notorious B.I.G, aka Biggie Smalls, who was shot dead in March that year. His violent end landed the then 23-year-old Faith with the dubious honour of being

hip hop’s most famous widow.

Born in Florida in 1973 to a teenage mum and an Italian dad, whom she has never met, Faith was sent by her struggling mother to Newark, New Jersey, to be raised by her mother’s cousin and her husband. ‘I grew up with a lot of love, but with a lot of dysfunction,’ she says, as we sit on the rooftop terrace of her hotel, E L L E 83

ellememoir

PHOTOGRAPH GEMMA BOOTH. TOP BY KOH SAMUI VINTAGE. ⌦TOP WORN UNDERNEATH BY MARGOT. SHORTS BY ALBERTA FERRETTI.

her dad at the Bad Boy studio. She was waiting in the lounge when word went around that Puffy urgently needed a woman to sing a line on an Usher record.

‘I was in the right place at the right time, and went in and did it. Puffy asked me to sign to Bad Boy that very day,’ she says.

Her debut album, Faith, shortly followed and went platinum in the States.

‘I was 21 and had money in the bank, I got my own apartment, I bought a car and paid cash. Things were pretty cool,’ says Faith. But real trouble was soon to follow. She met label-mate Christopher ‘Notorious B.I.G.’ Wallace at a photo shoot.Two months later, they were married; hip hop’s very own Posh and Becks. ‘We were young, in love and rebellious.We just did it; no questions asked.’

Biggie was to become a huge star, one of the finest rappers of his generation, known for his hardcore gangsta rhymes.

From the start their relationship was subject to many vicious rumours; the most persistent being that Faith was a gold-digger looking to kick-start a career.

At this, she smiles the weary, patient smile of a woman accustomed to defending her reputation. ‘That was certainly not true. I actually was better off financially than Big was when we first met – he was living with his mum, I had my own place. Anyone who was around us knew the truth.’

The marriage was, however, shortlived. While Faith was picking out furniture and setting up a family home,

nibbling on a decidedly non-bling English high tea of crust-free cucumber sandwiches and strawberry scones. Faith’s ‘grandparents’ (as she calls them) were foster carers who took in troubled children. There were at least 12 people crammed into their modest house at any one time.

At 18, Faith won an academic scholarship to study marketing at Fordham University in New York City, but, after just a year, she became pregnant by her teenage sweetheart, dropped out of college and moved West to Los Angeles with her man, who was pursuing a career as a music producer.

‘I’ve always been pretty spontaneous,’ Faith laughs heartily, as she does each time she recalls a tough moment in her past. Shortly before she gave birth to

ʻI wouldnʼt talk to Lilʼ Kim after her affair with my husband. But Iʼd give her a hug now. We fell in love with the same man. You live and learnʼ

daughter Chyna, she found out that her boyfriend wasn’t the man he seemed: he’d told Faith he was 23 but was actually 16. ‘He wasn’t old enough to settle down; he was a roamer.’

The relationship over, she moved back home to Newark. Then, in 1994, came a chance meeting that would change her life for ever. Her daughter’s father had moved back East, too, in an attempt to get signed up as a producer by Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs (now known, of course, as P. Diddy), who, as head of Bad Boy Records, was then the biggest player in hip hop. One day, Faith took Chyna to see

Biggie was on the road, picking up groupies in a string of well-publicised infidelities. How did his cuckolded wife deal with this humiliation? ‘With anger!’ she guffaws. ‘One time I showed up at a hotel in Virginia and had a little run-in with a young lady who was in his room – I hit her a few times.’

The most high profile of Biggie’s extramarital dalliances was with fellow rapper Lil’ Kim. Faith is remarkably dignified about the affair: ‘I didn’t talk to her when I ¢ E L L E 85

found out. But if I saw her now I’d give her a hug. We fell in love with the same man – it happens.You live and you learn.’

In the mid-90s, hostilities between the rival East and West Coast rap scenes were growing, most publicly the feud between New Yorker Biggie and LA-based rival Tupac Shakur (the cause of which remains unclear). Faith found herself in the centre of the storm when, separated from her cheating husband and at odds with her label over money (she would eventually return to the fold and release a second album on Bad Boy in late 1997), she escaped to LA to stay with friends.

By chance, she met Tupac in a bar, where he asked if she’d sing on his next record.

She agreed, laid down some vocals in his studio and headed back to New York. ‘I was naïve. I wasn’t really thinking about the bigger picture,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realise in a million years how much things would escalate.’

Tupac proceeded to put out a single on which he claimed to have slept with Faith and word spread that her son CJ, born in 1996, was actually Tupac’s. That hearty laugh again. ‘Unless it was an immaculate conception – no way! Obviously someone was up to some tricks,’ she says.

‘Biggie always made me feel like he believed me.’

Then things spun tragically out of control. Though what exactly happened remains one of music’s most enduring mysteries, the end result was hip hop’s darkest moment. Tupac Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996, and six months later, Biggie Smalls met a similar end in LA. In both cases, no one has ever been charged.

Faith saw her estranged husband at a party on the night he died, making eye contact with him but not speaking. ‘We had this weird thing going on by this point, where we’d spite each other. We were playing games.’

Both then left to go onto other parties 86 E L L E

and it was en route that Faith heard about the shooting. She raced to the hospital where Biggie lay fatally injured, but never actually got to see him before he died.

‘I was totally lost, confused. It was like an out-of-body experience. I was fuzzy and hazy for days,’ she says. ‘I withdrew from work and cried a lot. Eventually, I decided to embrace life and focus on my children.’

A few months on, Faith forced herself back to recording – the track was Iíll Be Missing You, with Puffy Daddy. ‘We were all crying in the studio at first when we

for possession of cocaine and marijuana. ‘It was a crummy experience,’ she says, insisting she was wrongfully accused. The pair agreed to go on a ‘diversion’ programme. If they steer clear of similar charges, the case will not go to trial.

So did she have a drug problem? ‘No, absolutely not. I’ve tried drugs, but this was blown out of proportion, as things often are with celebrities and minorities. I was all over the news – depicted as a drug addict or, worse, a dealer! Whitney Houston, who was my neighbour at the time, called up and said she was worried and to let her know if the kids needed a ride to school.’

Now Faith has bounced back again, with her fourth album, The First Lady. The lead single, Again, is complete with straight-talking lyrics about the drugs bust (‘I’ve learned so much from my mistakes’). With this comes a new look. She’s shifted fourand-a-half stone, which she gained while having children.

At 5ft 7in tall, she’s now 9st 3lb and does 45 minutes’ cardio exercise and an hour’s weight-training, five times a week, with a personal trainer.

‘I have an apple, carrot, celery, beetroot and ginger juice each morning before I work out. But there’s nothing I exclude. I drink wine – but I’m not a heavy drinker. I have a burger sometimes and I’ll

ʻI have learned so much from my mistakes… I donʼt dress to camouflage now. I can perform better and I have so much more confidenceʼ

were trying to sing it.’ Later that year, she released her second album, Keep the Faith, again a platinum seller, followed by 2001’s Faithfully.

Faith has since found love. Seven years ago she married old friend, Todd Russaw, also her manager and father of her youngest son Joshua, six. Their life, too, has not been without drama. Last year, police stopped their car and Faith and Todd were arrested

nibble on my husband’s fries. I take two bites. I just like to remember how they taste.’

She’s delighted with the results. ‘I don’t dress to camouflage now. I can perform better. I have so much more confidence.’

When she’s not on the treadmill, Faith spends her time cooking and taking her boys to football practice. ‘These days I’m a soccer mom… with an edge,’ she grins. N

PHOTOGRAPH GEMMA BOOTH. STYLING DONNA WALLACE. HAIR ENOCH WILLIAMS. MAKE-UP AJ CRIMSON.⌦DRESS BY YVES SAINT LAURENT. NECKLACE BY BROWNS VINTAGE. FOR SHOPPING DETAILS, SEE ADDRESS BOOK

ellememoir

>?D7492 949, 109?:9 3,4= >,=,3 ;:?08;, 8,60 @; 74E 84.3,07 4A,96, B0,=> /=0>> -D ;=:09E, >.3:@70= >3:0> -D 2@4>0;;0 E,9:??4 =492> -D /D9,84. /4,8:9/> >3:? :9 7:.,?4:9 ,? ?30 .7@- 90B D:=6 .4?D& 09< # " 1:= >3:;;492 /0?,47> >00 ,//=0>> -::6

elleprofile

_ Z [ _ ] ` X [

SheĘźs the New York heiress to a $6 billion fortune, but she works 13-hour days, travels economy class and has a mortgage.

Kerry Potter meets the anti-Paris Hilton photograph by circe

T

t all sounds very familiar: a photogenic, willowy blonde who stands to inherit her hotelier father Donald Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s $6 billion fortune; a girl who spent her school holidays in the front row at fashion shows in Europe, sunbathing on luxury yachts in the Caribbean, skiing in Aspen, and hanging out at the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 58-bedroom summer mansion in Florida; a girl whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s queen of Manhattanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s uptown social scene, and lives in buildings named after her. So far, so Paris Hilton.

But woe betide anyone who assumes that IvankaTrump, 25, daughter of property tycoon Donald and beehived Czech model Ivana, is a high-rolling, low-achieving, heiress-cum-layabout. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I work 13-hour days for my money.

If I were to go off the rails and become this party kid, I would not be able to afford my lifestyle,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says the Trump Organisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vice president of real-estate development 193

ELLE

and acquisitions, in her surprisingly husky voice. Ivanka, who graduated from business school with a first, is at her desk in a cramped office on Trump Towerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 21st floor, overlooking New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Central Park â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a view she grew up with, as she lived in an apartment a few floors below.

Standing tall, at a leggy 5ft 11in, Ivanka is elegant and professional in a cropped jacket by upscale NewYork label Ports 1961, a high-waisted black Diane von Furstenberg skirt and black Sigerson Morrison flats. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;This concept of just blowing through money?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s my money, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not been given to me. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never had a sense of entitlement.

I saw how hard my father worked for his money, and it was always made very clear to me that things wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just be given to me.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The Paris Hilton thing irritates her, naturally, but sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s far too well-mannered and smart to rise to it. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;People compare me to her a lot, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like to do ¢

elleprofile

194

ELLE

;3:?:2=,;3> .,;4?,7 ;4.?@=0> 2:11 491 B099

TaLYVLv^

that because I think we are totally different on a bikini. I don’t earn crazy bZ]WO individuals,’ she says, carefully. ‘I’ve known money,’ she says. ‘I typically don’t RIGHT: IVANKA her for a very long time – her family is very spend more than $800 on a piece.’

WITH DONALD, good friends with my family – but we have As a teenager, she had a brief HER FATHER very different lifestyles.’ spell as a model, landing a Tommy – AND BOSS That’s putting it mildly. Ivanka’s typical Hilfiger campaign and catwalk day goes much like this: wake up around work for Thierry Mugler, among 5.30am, go to the gym, walk 10 minutes from others. ‘I had a lot of fun, but it her apartment at the Park Avenue Trump wasn’t something I was devoted to. residence toTrumpTower, arrive at the office I kind of wish I hadn’t done it, as at 7.30am, work through until 8pm, a quiet people still ask about it. I’m trying to dinner or drinks with friends, or home for a carve a different path for myself.’ spot of TV or reading (biographies and While most girls would kill for a Russian literature), bed at 10.30pm. Once a life that took in modelling shoots week, she gets a 6am flight to Chicago, where and hanging out with A-list fashion she’s overseeing a new 92-storey hotel designers, Ivanka’s formative years weren’t plain development; once every 10 days she flies sailing.When Donald and Ivana split in 1990, it across country to Las Vegas to check in on was all over the newspapers, which made it harder the building of another Trump hotel; and ABOVE: A for nine-year-old Ivanka, and brothers Donald Jr every few weeks she’ll make short trips to TEENAGE and Eric. ‘It was painful, but no more painful Dubai or Colombia, or wherever else in the IVANKA WITH than for anyone else who goes through a divorce,’ world the Trump brand tentacles extend. HER MOTHER, she says. ‘It taught me not to take things for IVANA, AND Sometimes she’ll stop by in LA to make a granted. When you’re young, you assume your YOUNGER guest appearance as a judge on Donald’s hit parents will be there for ever. It was a tough time BROTHER ERIC reality-TV show, The Apprentice. But Ivanka and it made me a little cynical, but I think that’s would much rather be out of the limelight, wearing a hard hat ABOVE: IVANKA WITH important to survive.You need some hardships FAMILY FRIEND AND and perched on scaffolding, high above the streets, surveying in life to be fully formed.’ Ivanka and her mother FELLOW HEIRESS PARIS the fruits of her labour – just like her father and grandfather remain close but, given that her father’s her HILTON IN SAINT before her. ‘I first visited construction sites when I could barely boss, she spends more time with him these days.

TROPEZ LAST SUMMER walk,’ she remembers, smiling. ‘It’s in the blood. I’ve known When it comes to her own relationships, I wanted to work in real estate my whole life.’

Ivanka isn’t one for grand drama. She split from socialite/film After graduating, Ivanka spent a year working for a different producer Bingo Gubelman, her boyfriend of four years, last developer, to cut her teeth, before joining her father’s firm alongside November and has been dating like a demon ever since. ‘I work hard, her brother, Donald Jr, 29. Of course, the accusations of nepotism but always make time for dates,’ she giggles. ‘I’ve reverted to being came thick and fast. ‘I was given a lot of responsibility very quickly,’ about 15. Every day I have a different crush. I’ve always been in long she acknowledges. ‘But it was made clear to me that if I fail, I’ll face relationships, so it’s fun to have all these frivolous ones.’ As she stands the same consequences as anyone else, and I’ll be fired. I’m very to inherit her father’s billions, does she question men’s intentions sensitive to the fact that most of the people in this firm have worked towards her? ‘I’ve known everyone I’ve ever dated since we were here for 25 years and have known me since I was a baby. It would be about six, and they’ve always been guys from privileged backgrounds. terrible if they thought I was just some little kid, cruising along and Any guy who wanted a free ride would be sorely mistaken. I’m not not bringing any value to the company.’ Surely there must be some going to be someone’s sugar mom.’ perks when your dad is the boss? ‘He gives me access to his house By now, Ivanka’s BlackBerry is going ballistic and it’s clear that the and private plane. But, for business travel, I fly economy – unless it’s small window in today’s schedule is about to close. Just time for her long haul, and then he lets me go business class. And I bought my final words on the lot of a modern heiress. ‘There’s been a great deal of apartment from my father – I have a mortgage, you know!’ focus on the wild, freewheeling ones, but I’d find it a very unsatisfying, Ivanka’s office is an endearing mix of grown-up corporate executive unfulfilling life. Each to their own, though. Some people just want to and normal 25-year-old girl. Every surface is covered with complex party and may never look back when they’re older and say, “I architects’ plans for her current projects. One minute, she’s machine- squandered my youth”.’ She smoothes down her skirt and picks up gunning facts and figures at me about ‘pouring concrete’, ‘1,300- her briefcase. ‘I’m not the type to be seen plastered in a nightclub, room hotel-condos’ and ‘tailoring the product to the market’; the next, dancing on tables.That’s just not me. But will I be there? Absolutely!’ she’s chomping on a candy bar, showing me her office shoe collection: She smiles, before executing a scary, alpha-male handshake, learned heels, flats, dusty construction boots for site visits and golf shoes, in from her father (pull the other person’s arm towards you, so they fall case she can sneak in a round. Ivanka grew up surrounded by fashion, slightly off-balance, making them aware who’s the boss), and strides as mother Ivana was a keen couture buyer, so has she inherited her off to a board meeting. Billionaire Heiress in Nice, Normal Person mum’s couture habit? ‘Right now, I can’t rationalise spending $80,000 Shock. IvankaTrump: she’s just like you and me.Well, kind of. N

5@8;>@4? -D A4A40990 B0>?B::/ ?:; 84,v> :B9 90.67,.0 -D , 9 / -07? -D /:7.0 2,--,9, =492 8,D,v> :B9 >3:0> -D .3=4>?4,9 /4:=

S

ellememoir

ow do you respond when someone tells you that, at the age of nine, they saw people get shot and die in front of them? For most of us, trauma at that age meant losing our My Little Pony. ‘That sounds scary,’ I say pathetically to 30-year-old rapper MIA (Missing In Action), aka Maya Arulpragasam, who spent her early years caught up in Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war, before fleeing to London as a refugee. Maya shrugs, her brown eyes impenetrable. ‘It was just what I knew, I didn’t think about it much,’ she says. ‘I’ve always felt that when s**t happened to me, I’ve been observant, I’ve been learning. I have moments when I’m down, but I think everyone has those.’

Although Maya’s a mistress MIAʼs riotous of understatement and music is a nonchalance, her life story is product of her one of suffering, abandonment extraordinary and poverty. Yet fast-forward experiences a few years and she’s on the verge of becoming a global pop proposition. You may remember the face from 2005, when she released debut album Arular, a riotous mix of hip-hop, ragga, pop, baile funk and garage. Its lyrics were peppered with images of conflict, and caused a minor commotion (many thought namechecking the PLO was naive and glib). Controversy aside, cool kids loved Arular (it was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize), America heralded her as the new Missy Elliott and she was signed by record label Interscope’s Jimmy Iovine, the man who made Eminem a star. Now older, wiser and slightly less outspoken, MIA is about to release album number two Kala, with a little help from hotshot US producer Timbaland. Somehow, things have gone very, very right for Maya.

She was born in London in 1977, but her parents returned to their homeland, Sri Lanka, when she was six months old. Her father was a founder of Eros, a political group who campaigned for an independent Tamil state in the face of the Sinhalese majority. Eros was non-violent, but later was said to have forged links with the notorious TamilTigers, a banned terrorist organisation in the UK. In Maya’s early childhood, her dad left his family to pursue his cause.

‘My dad’s ideas were big and grand – about saving the world and revolution,’ says Maya. ‘He said to my mum, “I can look ¢

5(%(/ 5(%(/

From Sri Lankan war refugee to hip-hopʼs freshest new star, MIA tells Kerry Potter how she turned survival into an art form photographs by jason bell

1 0770@6 .:8

after a wife and three children, or I can look after the entire Tamil population. What shall I do?” My mum said, “If you’re even asking me to choose, you should go.”’

Maya saw her father around once a year – he’d turn up in the middle of the night, say hello, then disappear. The family became used to visits from government soldiers, hunting for him. ‘I didn’t get scared, it was just, like, they’re coming, you have to sit there with them and their guns,’ she says. His absence meant no money coming in (Sri Lankan women traditionally don’t work), and hard times for those he’d left behind. ‘We’d stay at my grandparents’ on my dad’s side – we lived in mud huts on their farm. Then there was my mum’s side – she was one of 13 and the whole family lived on one street.

That was more fun. But my mum was the only one who didn’t have a husband bringing money in. So we’d get plain bread for our packed lunch. Once a month, she’d buy butter – and that was a big treat.’

Surprisingly, Maya expresses no bitterness towards her father – at least not publicly. She named Arular after him, because she was going through a ‘big ideas and politics’ period. His reaction? ‘He

something like that.You have a relationship with people who want to have a relationship.

I’m living my life, I’m busy now,’ she says.

With the civil war worsening – Tamil rebels fighting government troops and in-fighting among rival Tamil factions – Maya’s school days were spent cowering under tables when soldiers fired into the

£2 a day. Moments like that were a driving force for me.’

But first came the difficult teenage years. ‘I would do crazy s**t. I’d go raving, joyride, shoplift. I’d hang out with a gang who’d steal cars and set fire to them.’ The day after her final GCSE exam, she flew to LA to stay with a cousin in the notorious Compton neighbourhood. ‘I was, like, take me to Snoop Dogg’s house. I wanna be a gangsta bitch!

I was a real rebel then, and I got into the VIP party scene.’ Having survived a civil war, 17-year-old Maya wasn’t going to let predatory rappers scare her. ‘They’d say, “Come and be in my video and shake your booty, girl.” I’d go along to watch the director and see how it all worked. I’d say, “I have a brain, you know, I want to be a director.”’

After a few months away, Maya won a place studying film and art at London’s Central Saint Martins, where she became known for graffiti-style stencilling of war iconography. She was nominated for the Alternative Turner Prize in 2002 and Jude Law bought one of her creations. Her friend electroclash perfomer Peaches then persuaded Maya to give music a whirl. She nervously performed a few songs

u>00492 ;0:;70 20? >3:? 49 >=4 7,96, ?3,? B,>9v? 8D 1,@7? 4?

3@=?> 1,= 8:=0 B309 D:@v=0 ?=D492 ?: >@=A4A0 :9 , /,Dv rang up from Sri Lanka – I hadn’t heard from him in five years – and asked me not to call it that. He didn’t give a reason – he speaks in single sentences. But later he apparently decided he liked it. I chose to name my new album Kala after my mum, to balance things up. My mum represents hands-on survival stuff. The everyday grind of getting food on the table, cleaning, washing, what life is like for women.’

Someone wasn’t happy, though. ‘Dad rang again and said Mum didn’t deserve for the record to be named after her. They are very competitive and don’t get on at all.’

Does Maya think she’ll reconcile with the man who abandoned her? ‘I don’t know.

I respect what he did [his political activism], but you can’t have a wife and kids and do

classroom. Eventually, when Maya was 10, her mother decided enough was enough.

The family fled to London and were granted refugee status and housed in a south London council estate. Unable to speak English, so malnourished her teeth hadn’t developed properly and with crackheads for neighbours, she got through this period by throwing herself into art and music – ‘My passport out of it all was my drawing and listening to rap on the radio.’ Her mother scraped by, working at a supermarket.

‘When I look back on my life, our financial situation was the most painful thing,’ says Maya. ‘Stuff like seeing people get shot in Sri Lanka – that wasn’t my fault and it was what was happening around me. It hurts far more when you’re trying to survive on 102 0770@6 .:8

into a Dictaphone, dropped off the results at record label XL and was promptly signed. ‘I’m a hard-grafter,’ she says.

‘I know what I like and what I want to do.’

This razor-sharp focus brought Maya to where she is today. So what next? ‘I have to put my back into my work for now, and bigger things – things that help more people – come later.’ Daddy’s girl in some respects, then. I ask what scares her, as she comes across as fearless. Her answer is personal rather than political, Kala rather than Arular. ‘I want to have kids at some point.

The thought of getting too old for that scares me,’ Maya says. Has she picked out a mate? ‘No, I work too hard,’ she says. ‘And I haven’t found a man good enough, yet.’ N MIAís album, Kala, is out on 20 August

;3:?:2=,;3 5,>:9 -077 ,? >:3: 8,9,20809? >?D7492 9,?,740 2::/8,9 3,4= ,/40 3,99,3 ,? >:3: 8,9,20809?

8,60 @; ,94?, 6007492 ,? -7@9? 5,.60? -D /:7.0 2,--,9, =492 ,> -01:=0 1:= >3:;;492 /0?,47> >00 ,//=0>> -::6

ellememoir