British supermodel Cara Delevingne has sparked fears over her health after the model shocked and troubled her loved ones and fans as she engaged in a series of worrying behaviour.
After the star was snapped smoking a pipe alone in a car, appearing shoeless and disorientated before boarding Jay Z's jet, later disembarking before the plane took off and then being snapped looking dishevelled and distressed outside an airport last week - the latest episode in her string of erratic behaviours - Cara’s close friends and family have rushed to be at her side.
Margot Robbie struggled to contain her emotions as looked tearful and distressed when she left the 30-year-old model’s $7m West Hollywood house on Monday and her older sister Poppy is said to have rushed to her side and has been seen coming and going from the property too.
Reports say the award-winning model's family had been considering an intervention in a bid to get the actress to accept help as they are “incredibly concerned” about her.
Cara’s childhood began in, what she describe as, an upper class family as the youngest daughter of property developer Charles Delevingne and socialite Pandora Delevingne.
She went to a £13,000 a term boarding school in Hampshire but family life was far from perfect, and was in fact “pretty sad” according to the model.
Mum’s heroin addiction
Her mum battled a heroin addiction and mental ill-health while raising Cara and her two older sisters Poppy, 36, and Chloe, 37.
Cara opened up about her mother's heroin addiction and traumatic relapse previously.
During an interview with Vogue, the star spoke about her childhood, and the impact her mother Pandora's addiction had on her.
“I grew up in the upper class, for sure,” Cara told the fashion bible.
“My family was kind of about that whole parties–and–horse racing thing. I can understand it’s fun for some. I never enjoyed it.”
Asked about her mother's relapsing heroin addiction, Cara admitted it had changed her as a person.
She said: "It shapes the childhood of every kid whose parent has an addiction.
"You grow up too quickly because you’re parenting your parents.
"My mother’s an amazingly strong person with a huge heart, and I adore her.
"But it’s not something you get better from, I don’t think.
"I know there are people who have stopped and are fine now, but not in my circumstance. She’s still struggling.”
Separately, she has told how her mother’s addiction made her childhood “very stressful,” previously telly Harper's Bazaar : "Everyone has something they go through with their family.
"My life I feel was very stressful, because there was quite a lot of chaos, not being sure if people were okay or not."
Her mum was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder – a condition which went undetected for years and left her close to death at times.
Chloe Delevingne once told The Sunday Times : “I must have been about 13 when Mum sat me down to tell me she was bipolar. But I was always aware of it.
“And her addiction when she was younger took a toll on her body, so she had a number of physical illnesses to deal with.
"There hasn’t been a single second in our mother’s life when she hasn’t been completely in love with us.
“But there were some quite critical times when we almost had to say goodbye to her and that made me feel very protective over my sisters.”
Pandora herself admitted in 2015: “Sometimes they have had to live with me being too ill to mother them, which has been agony for me."
As a result of her mother’s addiction and absence, Cara grew incredibly close with her older sisters Poppy and Chloe.
The trio have remained close from a young age after they sought comfort in each other to help them cope with Pandora's addiction, but Poppy has insisted she is not "angry" with their mum as she sees the addiction as a "sickness" rather than a life choice.
She revealed: "We have all learned that addiction and mental illnesses are illnesses and I think a lot of people overlook that it is a chemical imbalance; it’s like cancer, a sickness and people need to see it as that. So when people ask me, 'Are you angry with your mum?' I’m like, 'No there is nothing to be angry about.'
"There were tricky times. I was 12 when it all started happening, which is the time you really need a mum - getting your period, wanting to know what sex is about.”
She told how little Cara slept with her for years as the three girls took care of each other.
“Cara was six years younger. She slept in my bed for years. She would literally twine her body around mine when I tried to sleep. To have each other was just so, so vital,” she said.
Boarding school
Cara’s childhood began in the Delevingne family home in Belgravia, where she attended a day school in London’s Sloane Square, followed by Francis Holland School for Girls.
She was later sent to attend the fee-paying Bedales School in Hampshire, while chaos ensued with her mother’s health at home.
Her mum’s absence affected her through childhood and once aged just eight, she refused to eat for a spell in protest at her mum’s lack of presence.
What she didn’t know was Pandora was in hospital receiving treatment for her mental health issues.
She told Esquire : “I’m very good at repressing emotion and seeming fine. As a kid, I felt like I had to be good and I had to be strong because my mum wasn’t.
“So, when it got to being a teenager and all the hormones and the pressure and wanting to do well at school — for my parents, not for me — I had a mental breakdown.”
Cara has previously spoken about how she became depressed aged 15 when she discovered her mother's heroin addiction.
She told Vogue in 2015 that she would self-harm to cope with her feelings as a teen.
Cara said: “All of a sudden, I was hit with a massive wave of depression and anxiety and self-hatred, where the feelings were so painful that I would slam my head against a tree to try to knock myself out.
“I never cut, but I’d scratch myself to the point of bleeding. I just wanted to dematerialise and have someone sweep me away.”
Along with the depression, Cara was bullied at school for her tomboy style and dyspraxia.
She said: “If I wore the clothes that I liked, with my short hair, everyone would think that I was a boy. I hated it.
“Even though I looked like a boy and acted like a boy, I wasn’t a boy.”
Her lowest point came when she was 16 and she realised her mum was a heroin addict.
The realisation tipped her over the edge and she dropped out of school for six months and was prescribed medication to numb her feelings.
She told Esquire: “I was like a sociopath. When something was funny I would go, 'Ha ha!' just because other people laughed, but then I'd stop immediately because I wasn't really very good at faking it.
Cara's phenomenal success first as a young model and later landing a high profile acting role in hit movie Suicide Squad came after she battled her own deeply troubled view of herself as a 'deadbeat' for dropping out of school.
She explained: "I dropped out, and I really just wanted to be able to prove that I wasn’t the deadbeat I thought I was. When you have mental-health struggles, you can’t see anything, it blinds you.''
She told Esquire that she was a “pretty horny teenager” until she started taking medication.
“I stopped having any sexual feelings for anyone. I missed out a lot from 16 to 18.”
Sexuality struggles
Cara stopped her medication and lost her virginity the same week.
The experience made her vow to never be medicated for depression again.
She said: “I get depressed still, but I would rather learn to figure it out myself rather be dependent on meds, ever."
Alongside her loss of libido, Cara struggled with her sexuality while growing up.
The Paper Towns actress admitted she felt particularly thrilled to be in a committed same-sex relationship back when she was 22 because she struggled so much as a teen.
Speaking about her sexuality, she explained: "It took me a long time to accept the idea, until I first fell in love with a girl at 20 and recognised that I had to accept it.
"Women are what completely inspire me, and they have also been my downfall."
She previously admitted she believes she could never have a real heterosexual relationship because men would choose to dump her as she's "a whole bunch of crazy".
She told Vogue in 2015: "The thing is, if I ever found a guy I could fall in love with, I'd want to marry him and have his children. And that scares me to death because I think I'm a whole bunch of crazy, and I always worry that a guy will walk away once he really, truly knows me."
Cara - who identifies as pansexual - opened up about experience growing up queer earlier this year and told how having more LGBTQ+ role models could have helped her as a child.
"I do think I would have hated myself less, I would have not been so ashamed, if I’d had someone," the star mused.
The British star, who came out as bisexual and later pansexual, says she felt a lack of relatable role LGBTQ+ role models at that time made it harder for her to identify herself.
"The one thing I’m happy about growing up queer and fighting it and hiding it is, it gives me so much fire and drive to try to make people’s lives easier in some way by talking about it."
Cara has dated a number of famous men and women over the years - including singer St Vincent, Jake Bugg and Michelle Rodriguez.
Discussing her sexuality in the past, the stunning model explained how the way she labels herself "changes all the time".
"The way I define myself still changes all the time, whether it’s pansexual, bisexual - I don’t really know," she declared during a Pride edition episode of podcast Make It Reign with Josh Smith.
"It’s like a pendulum swinging, but almost now I feel far more comfortable being bisexual than I used to."
Cara added: "I’ve kind of felt because I was lacking in my desire for women or love for women that I kind of just went one way and now it changes a lot more.
"I feel a lot more free and being more comfortable in it because before I was like, ‘oh, I’m gay’. That comes with self-shaming."
Since splitting from Pretty Little Liars actress Ashley Benson in 2020, Cara has been linked to a number of fellow celebrities - including Paris Jackson and singer Halsey.
More recently, the former Model of the Year sparked rumours of a romance with American singer Selena Gomez, thanks to the two pals getting matching tattoos and looking cosy at a basketball match in November.
Finding fame
Cara’s career took off after she left school.
She was “discovered” by family friend Sarah Doukas who signed her to Storm Model Management.
The model rose to sit among A-List royalty but with fame came crippling self doubt.
She previously told Esquire: “Especially when I started becoming successful, obviously my ego started to grow, but then my idea of myself went down.
“So I liked the person that other people thought that I was, but the real me I hated so much."
After turning 30 earlier this year, Cara had spoken about how she was surprised she is still alive, as she expressed how grateful she was to enter her thirties and bid farewell to her twenties.
The one-time British Model of the Year told Stylist Magazine: "Honestly, I didn't think I'd be alive at this age.
"I literally couldn't wait to turn 30, because the 20s are f***ing hard.
"You're basically still a teenager — but you're meant to be an adult and everyone's telling you this is the best time of your life."
*If you're struggling and need to talk, the Samaritans operate a free helpline open 24/7 on 116 123. Alternatively, you can email jo@samaritans.org or visit their site to find your local branch
