Anne is reading … 

Abbey Lee: ‘There is no security in getting paid for your looks The Guardian

Australian actor and model Abbey Lee (Kershaw) is blunt about the fashion industry in her sit-down with writer Alexandra Spring. Largely gone from the fashion spotlight these days, Abbey Lee is focused on her acting career, appearing in George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ an upcoming action flick ‘Gods of Egypt’ and now ‘Ruben Guthrie’.

Filmwriter-director Brendan Cowell’s “celebrated stage play”, will be a film about an alcoholic ad exec who receives an ultimatum to stop drinking by his supermodel girlfriend Zoya.  

Lee says she could see Cowell’s point in an email delineating the parallels between Zoya and Abbey Lee for real. “[Zoya’s] decision to leave something that was bad for her – that might have been a really hard decision for her to make – and venture into something unknown was something I was going through at that very time.”

Coincidentally, Abbey Lee is writing her own semi-autobiographical film about addiction, although she refused to discuss it in this interview. 

Abbey Lee on ‘insecurity’:

“Unfortunately I’m just as insecure as most women you speak to,” she says flatly. “I don’t think I feel any different to a woman who is not in my field. There is no security in the fact I get paid for my looks. It doesn’t resonate on a deep level with me. It doesn’t change the way I feel about myself – which is a shame.” She is hopeful this will change with age. “My dad always tells me that I’m way too hard on myself.” But for now restless, relentless self-doubt is what drives her: “I will feel successful when I feel content and I haven’t felt any level of contentment just yet. When I can say that in my life I am content, I think that’s when I’ll feel successful.”

Set to play a ‘washed-up older model … riddled with insecurities’ in Nicholas Winding Refn’s ‘The Neon Demon’, Abbey Lee explains that the film is a commentary on modern society’s pursuit of perfection. “It’s insane. You can no longer be thin anymore; you have to be thin and ripped. You’ve got to be muscly now; chicks are getting butt implants because that’s the hot thing.” (Related on AOC: Poppy Cross Goes To Hell & Back For A Victoria’s Secret Angel Body.)

You are so disposable as a model, there is no security in it and you don’t really believe people actually care about you.

Lanvin Rehearsal Spring/Summer 2011 Collections