Supermodel and actress Laetitia Casta tells us 'perfection is boring'

PUBLISHED: 00:01, 4 August 2013 | UPDATED: 00:21, 4 August 2013

To us mere mortals, supermodel and actress Laetitia Casta is the epitome of beauty – but, as she tells Jane Gordon, it’s the ‘tiny imperfections’ that make a woman truly stand out

Supermodel and actress Laetitia Casta, the epitome of beauty

It would be difficult to imagine anyone who could live up to Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s vision of the ‘perfect embodiment’ of all the ‘incarnations’ of the ‘quintessential Dolce & Gabbana woman’.

But this is how the designers describe 35-year-old model and actress Laetitia Casta, who they have

‘I didn’t like the idea of changing myself for the industry. It is those tiny little imperfections, like my teeth, that make a model stand out’

chosen to embody their new fragrance Intense, which evokes a ‘potent force: a power and passion that is voluptuous in its intensity’ that lies ‘deep with the soul of the Dolce & Gabbana woman’.

Before I met Laetitia – in a burgundy velvet-lined room above the showroom of the Dolce & Gabbana store on the Avenue Montaigne in Paris – this description (translated from the designers’ Italian) struck my English ears as a trifle exaggerated.

But half an hour after coming face-to-décolletage with Laetitia (who is well over six foot in her perilously high scarlet shoes), I realise that the designers’ words were actually rather understated. Because they failed to mention so many other aspects of Laetitia’s character that emerge during what turns out to be an unexpectedly arresting, funny and sometimes intimidating interview.

Laetitia shooting the Dolce & Gabbana Intense campaign, which also stars male supermodel Noah Mills

Laetitia talks in a virtually fluent (but strongly accented) English that is occasionally punctuated by a French expression or a rare but charming grammatical mistake (at one point, for example, she says ‘the limit is the sky!’)

My first few warm-up questions produce polite, rather bored answers and it isn’t until I ask her about motherhood that she comes alive.

‘It is when I am working that the real me comes out – that is when I am the most real and honest’

When I ask her about the work-life balance of being a mother (she has an 11-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and a six-year-old boy and three-year-old girl with her fiancé, the Italian actor Stefano Accorsi), I encounter the ‘potent force’ that Laetitia not only embodies but also exudes (the air around us is thick with the undeniably sensuous aroma of Intense).

‘I love my children but I don’t want to talk about them because I am not just a mother. I don’t understand why women journalists always ask women about motherhood? It’s far more important and interesting for women to talk about their work, their thoughts, their creativity and their individual identity. Because it is when I am working that the real me comes out – that is when I am the most real and honest. When I am acting a role in a film or working with Dolce & Gabbana on this fragrance
I give my whole being – I would give my blood for Domenico and Stefano,’ she says in a rather unnerving way.

I try to defend my question by saying that many YOU readers are also working mothers and interested in the subject of how other women cope with the demands of their career and the responsibilities of motherhood. But she doesn’t let me off the hook.

Laetitia is the face of the new Dolce & Gabbana Intense fragrance

‘If I was a man, would you say to me, “You are a father, let’s talk about that. How do you cope having a successful career as well as being a father? How do you find time to spend with your children?” Of course you wouldn’t! Men never get asked those questions. What is interesting about me isn’t that I am a mother, it is who I am. I love my family but if I just talk to you about being a mother it’s boring. I am sorry but it’s reducing who I really am and it’s really boring,’ she says and I feel both chastened and boring (I sense Laetitia has a very low boredom threshold).

‘Women judge ourselves on how we look, not who we are or what we have achieved’

But she is, of course, right in stating that her career is more interesting than her domestic life. Born in her mother’s native Normandy, Laetitia is the middle child of three – she has an older brother Jean-Baptiste and a younger sister Marie-Ange, now also a successful model.

Childhood family holidays were spent in the town of Lumio on the island of Corsica, her father’s birthplace.

It was on a beach near Lumio that a model agent spotted Laetitia, then aged just 15.

The teenager, with her father’s consent, embarked on a career that would make her one of the world’s leading models. Within months of being scouted she was chosen to be the new Guess girl
(a role that launched the career of a clutch of models, most famously Claudia Schiffer), working first in Paris then moving on to conquer New York.

Laetitia's campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana

Laetitia’s success was attributed not just to her natural beauty but also to her confidence and her refusal – unlike other models at the time – to be ‘moulded’ and given what she calls ‘American teeth’.

‘I didn’t like the idea of changing myself for the industry. I felt to have my teeth straightened and bleached and to starve myself to change my body was not respecting who I was.

Anyway, it is those tiny little imperfections, like my teeth, that make a model stand out. Perfection is boring,’ she says smiling to reveal the crowded top row of her slightly crooked trademark teeth.

By 19 she was the supermodel of her day, becoming an elite Victoria’s Secret Angel and prompting Vivienne Westwood to comment, ‘I don’t believe in God. But when I see Laetitia, I might change my mind’.

During her modelling years she appeared on over 100 magazine covers, the most famous and controversial being her naked pose for Rolling Stone in 1998 when she was named the ‘hottest woman in the world’.

Laetitia’s career changed course when she had her first child at 23 (she has said that having a baby was ‘her dream’) and she moved seamlessly from model to actress with roles in French films and TV series.

Laetitia in Rihanna's music video 'Te-Amo', 2010

In 2000 she was chosen to follow in the footsteps of Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve as the new model for Marianne, the national emblem of France, for the statues that are placed in front of town halls and law courts throughout the country (she was later criticised as ‘unpatriotic’ when she was accused of living in London to avoid the high French taxes).

Now firmly based in Paris, Laetitia is an established actress in France and last year appeared in her first American movie – playing Richard Gere’s mistress in Arbitrage.

Her most critically acclaimed role to date was her portrayal of the young Brigitte Bardot in the 2010 French film Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.

‘Brigitte and I talked and she gave me advice – she told me how she would walk into a restaurant with her head held up high putting all her energy into herself thinking, “F*** everyone else in this room, I am Brigitte Bardot.” I did exactly that in one scene in the film.’

More recently, she was the female lead in Tied (Une histoire d’amour) inspired by the true story of the 2005 murder of French multimillionaire Edouard Stern (played by Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde) by his mistress Cécile Brossard (Laetitia).

With fiancé Stefano in 2011

Staring in Arbitrage with Richard Gere

One British critic described the film as a French Fifty Shades of Grey. ‘Oui, it is a movie masochiste,’ she says (in French the ‘h’ is not silent as it is in English), shrugging her shoulders before adding, ‘I know of Fifty Shades of Grey but I am trying to understand why you compare it to Tied?’

Too nervous by now to attempt to explain any similarities in the relationships between the lovers in the book and the film (for example, in one scene in Tied, set in a restaurant, a waitress asks Laetitia’s character how she would like her steak and her rich, dominant lover answers, ‘She will have it raw. Isn’t that how b*****s like it?’)

I let Laetitia continue.

‘The film is about how far you will go for love. For an actress it is really interesting to portray a woman who is drawn to this kind of love which is abusive and destructive but also passionate,’ she says a little defensively (the film was not well received by French critics).

But she brightens up when I mention her portrayal of Rihanna’s lesbian love interest in the video of the song ‘Te Amo’ (I Love You).

Staring in Gainsbourg, 2010

‘Rihanna cast me for the video as a man would – she is really strong and kind of wild and I had fun working with her. She is very cute but she is very powerful and creative in her world. The director took me aside and said that I had to be very strong. But I have never seen other women as competition so we were very supportive of each other, we were like equals and we laughed a lot,’ she says of the video in which both women seem to compete for the attention of the camera in increasingly provocative poses and costumes.

Laetitia is equally enthusiastic talking about how thrilled she was when Domenico and Stefano asked her to be the ‘embodiment’ of Intense (she was their choice for their previous fragrance Pour Femme, too).

The campaign for the fragrance was shot by Mario Testino, who had also worked with Laetitia on Pour Femme. ‘Mario, he loves women, he wants to bring out your sensuality and passion and when he shoots you just feel amazing, so feminine, so sexual,’ she says, somehow managing to cross her legs in those skyscraper scarlet shoes (she tells me she chose them to contrast with her blue lace dress because they made her feel ‘so sexy, so much the diva.’)

Laetitia is a strange mix of outrageous femme fatale (dressing, you can’t help but observe, in a way that is intended to mesmerise men) and an openly committed feminist.

‘I am very much on the side of women. Since I was a child I was aware that it is very difficult to be a woman. We are judged – and we judge ourselves – on how we look, not who we are or what we have achieved. I notice it with my children: even as very little girls they look at themselves and worry about being pretty enough – it’s very bad.

‘I think you have to be tougher bringing up girls because you have to make them understand that they have to be strong and push themselves if they want to be successful in a world that men still dominate.

Scent back in time: Laetitia’s fragrant memories...

Very early in life little girls are aware of the power of perfume. My mother had a particular fragrance that she put on every day. I remember smelling the bottle when she was out because it was her. And I remember coming home from school smelling her perfume as I came in the door and I loved it.
When I was a little older, I saw perfume as a symbol of womanhood and I dreamed of being able to wear perfume. Of course, like all girls I wanted to wear make-up and high heels, but perfume is a much deeper and more sensual way of expressing the femininity of a woman.
As I grew into a woman I discovered other smells that evoked deep emotions in me. The smell of babies is beautiful. But also maybe even more arousing is the smell of a man. So I became even more aware of the importance of scent and sensuality.
Putting on perfume every morning is a big part of how I prepare for the day. It is important to pick the right scent to match my mood. I pick a perfume as I would pick my underwear or my dress or the shoes I will wear that day. Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme remains one of my favourites. Putting on perfume at night when I am going out is even more vital to how captivating I feel as a woman than the clothes I wear.
When I finally got to see and inhale Intense I instantly loved it. They explained to me how they blended all these different beautiful ingredients to create the different notes of the fragrance. There is orange blossom and tuberose with hints of green mandarin, neroli and sandalwood. The result is feminine, sensual and unforgettable — really the embodiment of me!
Mario Testino took on the story we started with Pour Femme. Day has turned to night and the lovers — the fabulous model Noah Mills is my male co-star — are seen in an intimate embrace that reveals the amazing passion they feel which reflects the effect of Intense.

How can women do that if the only thing that concerns them is how they look? A group of 50 women in a room can be very acid because they are judging each other only on who is the thinnest, who is the prettiest. For boys, life is easier because they see their fathers who value what they have achieved in business, sport, intellect and so on – way above their faces and their figures! So if you have 50 men in a room they will be making jokes, offering opinions and talking about their achievements. Of course they compete but in a less overt and narrow way. They have a healthier attitude to their fellow men; they have a brotherhood and they support each other. Women must learn to be like that too,’ says Laetitia.

There is no doubt that she is sincere in this view, but then she has the advantage of possessing
such great natural beauty that – unlike most other women – she has never had to worry about how she looks.

Dressed as she is today you might imagine she was sexually competitive but as she points out
this is work and privately she hardly ever wears make-up and is more comfortable in jeans and
flat pumps.

Sharp, darkly funny and honest, her reaction when I ask if she worries about ageing is an instant and refreshing squeal of ‘Oui!’ Emboldened by this and several other revealing comments, I risk bringing up her family life again by asking if there will be more babies.

‘I think I did my job with three children. And, you know, when I meet women who don’t have children I just want to be them because they have such open minds, such freedom – and I would love that,’ she responds.

There have been rumours recently that she and her fiancé have married and I cautiously ask her to confirm whether this is true. ‘Non,’ she replies adding with a laugh, ‘I am not married because I just want to get married one time.’ When I comment that this sounds as if she has yet to find the right man, she grins.

‘Well, you never know in life. I like the idea of being open and now I get older, I get wilder.
I am a rebel. I am contrary,’ she says. ‘So who knows what I will do next?’

Laetitia is the face of the new Dolce & Gabbana Intense fragrance, now available exclusively in Harrods and nationwide from 21 August

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Sunday, August 4, 2013