Former glamour model Keeley Hazell has said she was “so embarrassed and ashamed” of modelling topless and was “too young” for the industry when she began her career aged 17.
Ted Lasso actor Hazell, now 38, was a regular on the cover of magazines such as Loaded and Maxim in the early 2000s and told people she found the topless shoots “empowering” when, in fact, she was “mortified”.
“Every time I posed topless, I felt so deeply embarrassed. I was filled with shame,” she told The Times. “I was too young and self-conscious. I hated how I looked. I hated the attention.”
Hazell said she lied about how she felt about her career at the height of her fame in order to maintain her male fan base.
“I was honest, if I said – particularly to a man – ‘Actually, I’m so embarrassed and ashamed,’ then it shames them too, because men are the audience,” she said.
“Men are the ones who like it. So then you have to deal with them feeling their own shame for enjoying you being sexualised.”
Hazell entered and won The Sun’s competition search for a new Page 3 model in 2004, which secured her a one-year glamour modelling contract and launched her career.
Although Hazell said she was paid as little as £250 for shoots at some publications, she said the money had been “life-changing” for her and was the “one thing” that made her forget her shame and continue.
She made her last appearance in The Sun in 2009, two years after her former boyfriend, Theo, sold a sex tape they’d made, which “tipped the scales” on her public mortification.
“I just felt: I don’t want to be seen in this light. I don’t want to do this. And modelling was then such a struggle because of the tape,” she said.
The Sun stopped publishing Page 3 photos in 2015 following mounting political pressure. The Daily Star announced it would no longer feature pictures of topless women in 2019.
Hazel, who moved to Los Angeles in 2009, said Americans have “no idea” what a Page 3 model is and often question whether she was a porn star or in Playboy – because that’s their nearest equivalent.
“When you explain that you had the front page, and the news and then a topless woman, it is absolutely mental,” she said. “Somehow you just thought it was normal because you grew up with it.”
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