The wages of beauty are loneliness

I am always struck, interviewing the planet’s most beautiful women, by the disconnection between their difficult love lives and dazzling looks. Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Elle Macpherson, Helena Christensen, Emmanuelle Béart, Inés Sastre, Diane Kruger, Sienna Miller — in my decade as an interviewer I have met dozens of these stars and supermodels, and almost invariably they are single or struggling with divorce or some dubious relationship. These women can often seem to have everything — stunning looks, amazing figures, to-die-for wardrobes, killer charm, fame, money — except happiness with men. It is a small, unacknowledged tragedy that I discussed with the supermodel Helena Christensen, who knew all about it. We were in the little private room off the library at the Covent Garden Hotel, and Christensen was single at the time, aged 38. She gave an ironic shrug of her swan shoulders, gift-wrapped in a froufrou black shirt that buttoned at the back of her neck. ‘If you look at the history of human beings,’ she pointed out, in her soft American accent, ‘there are some very beautiful people out there who had tragic love histories.’

Jennifer Lopez, when I interviewed her in New York, was married to a sweet backing dancer and falling for Ben Affleck; Mariah Carey was tumultuously divorced and on the brink of her breakdown; Elle Macpherson was shortly to part with her partner of nine years, the financier Arki Busson; Emmanuelle Béart was single, Diane Kruger divorced, Inés Sastre about to divorce and Sienna Miller was on the verge of meeting Jude Law, with the car crash that followed.