the times Saturday April 9 2022Body + Soul 9
L+R/ DMG MEDIA LICENSING; RICHARD YOUNG/SHUTTERSTOCKnet. I would prefer to meet somebody
through work or through a friend. If that
doesn’t happen, then that’s it.”
She acknowledges that moving in with
someone might be too much hard work for
both parties. “But who knows? Everything
can change. I can change. If I met the right
person and if that right person really
wanted me — well, they would have to
adapt partly to my style as well. If it doesn’t
happen, it doesn’t happen. Life has still got
so much more to offer to me.”
Bailey, she says, was the “most unique
person” she ever met. Their marriage
endured ten years despite his numerous
affairs and jealousy. She wrote, I remind
her, that he did not have a misogynist bone
in his body. She seems surprised. “I think
what I was trying to say was that he is
always his true, authentic self. There was
nothing fake or dishonest about him. Even
when he’s lying he can only be his authen-
tic self.”I feel about 30. I’m
excited about the
next stage of life
Andrew Billen talks
to the model Marie
Helvin, 69, about
dating, divorce and
a life in fashion
I
t is 10am and the sky hangs grey over
Marie Helvin’s flat on the south side
of the Thames. The supermodel
doesn’t care. She has been looking
forward to talking, has had two tacos
for breakfast and will soon be in the
gym. “So even though it’s a dreary
overcast day, I feel very hopeful about the
future,” she says. “I’m excited about it and
I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”
Single, turning 70 in August and with
her modelling career having dried up over
lockdown, Helvin had a hard, anxious pan-
demic but is focused on what is still to
come. She hopes her life’s next chapter will
include therapy — an “adventure” thus far
postponed because she was too busy or it
was too expensive — her relocation to
Hawaii, where the Japanese-American
was brought up, and perhaps a new man to
add to a line-up starring her ex-husband,
the photographer David Bailey; the chef
Marco Pierre White and Mark Shand, the
Duchess of Cornwall’s late brother. Old
age can be an opportunity, as she will
explain on a new episode of the business
leader Liz Tinkham’s podcast Third Act. “I
don’t feel mentally or emotionally like a
teenager but maybe like I am 30, just be-
coming a grown-up and still excited about
what’s beyond the next stage,” she says.
She became famous as a teenager mod-
elling in Japan. Settling in London, she
found international stardom as the Model
Who Didn’t Look Like Other Models.
There was not a great designer — from
Yves Saint Laurent to Versace — who did
not employ her. For some, such as Ossie
Clark, she was their muse. Later she
became an entrepreneur with her own
fashion line, successful until tastes
changed. After a period of introspection,
partly to process the death of her younger
sister Suzon in an accident aged 23, she
returned to modelling and was promptly
hailed as an inspiration to the over-50s.
Then came Covid-19 and lockdown.
“I was very happily working, I don’t
know, once a month, once every two
months. I was very happy. My life was tick-
ing along and I was making money, but
then all of a sudden you lose your liveli-
hood,” Helvin says. “Being isolated was not
so difficult because I’ve lived alone for
many, many years and I’m very happy that
way. It was the loss of freedom, this
constant threat and anxiety. I like my read-
ing — I’ve got a library — and I couldn’t
read for a little over a year due to that anxi-
ety and this constant threat of illness.
“What saved me was exercise. The
minute the gym closed I ran every single
morning, every single day.”
Add to all the exercise the fact that she
has not eaten meat for 50 years, gave up
smoking aged 40, drinking at 60 and long
ago turned from drugs (she infuriated Bai-
ley with her cannabis habit), and we need
not be too surprised that at 5ft 9in she is still
somewhere between a size 6 and a size 8.
She wrote in her autobiography that sex
was a way of being free. Had she missed it
in lockdown? “Definitely, but now that
we’re coming out of it, I hope to start
dating again. I hope I get asked.”
Aren’t men always asking? “Not really.
They used to. Once I hit my sixties it did
not happen as often and I’m not somebody
who would be interested in using the inter-The marriage ended when he fell for his
model Catherine Dyer, who quickly be-
came pregnant. Helvin-Bailey rela-
tions actually improved after the
divorce, although I get the im-
pression she regrets being quite
so generous over her financial
settlement. In 2018 he was di-
agnosed with vascular de-
mentia, but then, she says, he
was always incredibly forget-
ful. How is he doing? “He
sounds like he’s doing fine.”
Her post-Bailey beaux were
Britons. “I feel a great connec-
tion with the Brits, and British
men I just find so attractive. The
idea of going out with an American is
like going out with a spaceman. It’s
alien to me,” she says, which may be
slightly unfair on Tom Selleck with whom
she strayed as her marriage crumbled.
These days she mainly awaits a call notfrom a suitor but her agent with an offer of
work. She fears clients prefer white-haired,
blue-eyed septuagenarian models such as
Maye Musk (mother of Elon). Most, of
course, want younger women.
“I mean, when I started I was at that time
considered ‘exotic’. Now I’m considered
too old. It’s been a lifetime of being either
too much or not enough. The frustration! I
didn’t mind it when I was younger but as
I get older I think, ‘Oh for God’s sake, can’t
I just be accepted? Can’t I just be who I am?’
“But I’m getting excited. I’m thinking
about changing my hair. I think things will
start happening again. Well, they have
to: I’ve taken a lease for another year on
my flat.”
After that she intends to pack up and
return “home” to Hawaii. She is planning
her third act there, and says she wants to
work in a Whole Foods supermarket in
Honolulu where after each shift she will
cross the road to the beach and a swim. “If
you don’t have a job you need a job. I’m not
going to be precious about it. I’ll go out and
get a job.” She has researched the gig and it
has the benefit of coming with US health
insurance, all the more important because
she has no children to nurse her through
infirmity. “It was just something I was
never interested in,” she says. How long
would you like to live for, I ask her. I’m
thinking of 85 now. “Me too. That’s a nice
age. My mind boggles when I read scien-
tists are finding the elixir. And I think who
in the world wants to live forever? Who
wants to live past your eighties?”
At least, as she anticipates her third act’s
curtain-down, her parents can help by ex-
ample. Her mother was healthy into her
eighties before dying within two months of
a brain tumour diagnosis aged 84. Her
father died at 90. After being widowed
he had settled in a hotel in Las Vegas.
She thinks the city’s prostitution
laws may have been an attrac-
tion, although when I check
they do not appear particularly
lax. Nevertheless, the last
time she saw him she spotted
“a giant bottle of Viagra” in
his medicine cabinet. “He
woke up one morning, lost his
footing, hit his head on the
bedside table and died. I think
that’s a good way to go. I’d like
to go that way. And he was happy.
He’d been 200 times to the latest
Cirque du Soleil. He was living his
life. I don’t particularly want to live that
long, but I hope I have as graceful a death.”
Marie Helvin’s episode of the Auriens
Chelsea Third Act podcast is available
to download on April 14Marie Helvin’s
perfect weekend
Michelin-star restaurant or local pub?
Neither. I’d rather have a cheese
sandwich at home
Cat or dog?
I’ve got a 15-year-old cat, Keiki. It means
“little one” in Hawaiian
Night in or night out?
In. Bed at 8.30pm
Social media junkie or Luddite?
Luddite. No Twitter, no Instagram
Boilersuit or skinny jeans?
Both sound so unattractive
Ikea or Ercol?
I’ve never been in Ikea in my life
What is your signature dish?
A delicious two-egg omelette. I make it in
a unique way with a frying pan that I’ve
had for 40 years and bought in France
I couldn’t get through the weekend
without...
Candy. Something chewy. Gooey. But it’s
got to be vegetarianMarie HelvinHelvin with her
then husband David
Bailey in 1981