Inside model Cara Delevingne’s rise to catwalk queen and shocking fall from grace

For years, Cara Delevingne was the darling of the fashion world, achieving the kind of supermodel stardom that most can only dream of. 

Her unique, striking looks left brands and magazines across the globe clamoring to cast her in their campaigns and runway shows, and saw the lithe young model strutting her stuff and posing up a storm for everyone from Chanel to Dior to Vogue. 

Cara’s glamorous image was well-known and very well-publicized – and the world’s fascination with the supermodel, hailed by many as the ‘new Kate Moss’, only increased as a result of her aristocratic heritage, socialite mother’s struggles with a secret heroin addiction, and her older sister Poppy’s own, albeit lesser-known, modeling credentials. 

But in the past few months, the model’s once-alluring image has transformed thanks to a series of increasingly-erratic outings, from wild dancing at a champagne-fueled party in New York City to a bizarre red carpet prank to a troubling visit to a California sex shop. 

Then, last week, Cara, 30, left her fans, friends, and family members worried when she appeared disheveled and jittery while boarding an airplane in Van Nuys, California, earlier this month – the latest in a line of increasingly-erratic public appearances that have sparked serious concerns about the supermodel’s wellbeing.

Her behavior has left many wondering: Where did it all go wrong for the once-picture-perfect star who seemed to have the world at her feet?  

The images taken at the private airport last week were certainly a world away from the sleek magazine shoots she became so well-known for, showing the superstar model with dark rings around her sunken eyes – seemingly unable to control her body movements as she dropped her phone multiple times.

Following her erratic behavior on the tarmac, Cara, who donned nothing on her feet except a pair of dirty socks, sat on the aircraft for 45 minutes before she ultimately disembarked and got back into her awaiting car.

Since then, reports have emerged that claimed her family was considering an intervention for the troubled star, while her close pal Margot Robbie was pictured looking distressed after leaving Cara’s home earlier this week.

It is certainly a sad chapter in the story of Cara’s life – which has already been filled with many twists, turns, and excitement.  

As well as her modeling career, Cara also dove into the acting industry and graced the big screen numerous times, racked up a slew of celebrity gal pals, designed her own collection of handbags with Mulberry, released a novel, and launched her own champagne brand with her sisters – which are just some of the many accomplishments she achieved.

But what should have been an illustrious career was plagued with controversy and scandal; rumors have swirled for years that Cara, who has previously been described by friends as ‘the life of the party,’ was using drugs – and she has admitted to struggling with depression and said she once considered suicide during the height of her fame.

Before breaking out into the scene, the actress’ childhood wasn’t much easier. Her socialite mother, who had connections to the royal family, played the part of high society debutante to the outside world, but behind the scenes, she struggled with a heroin addiction and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Cara, who identifies as pansexual, said she spent years coming to terms with her sexuality, which resulted in her suffering from mental health issues of her own starting at age 15, with her later revealing that she practiced in self harm as a teen.

As the former fashion queen comes crashing down, FEMAIL has taken a look back at her ascent to fame – including how she overcame her ‘sad’ childhood to become one of the biggest models in the world – and broke down what ultimately went wrong.

Cara’s ‘chaotic’ and ‘stressful’ childhood: How her socialite mother’s secret heroin addiction left the model feeling ‘lost’

Cara was born on August 12, 1992, and grew up in the Belgravia area of London, England. Her father, Charles, worked as a property developer, while her mother, Pandora, was a stylist and personal shopper.

She has two older sisters, Chloe and Poppy – who is also a famous model and singer – as well as a paternal half-brother named Alexander.

Her mom was the daughter of Janie Sheffield, who served as the lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II’s sister Princess Margaret, and because of her mother’s connections to the royal family, Cara admitted to Vogue that she grew up ‘in the upper class’ – but she said she never felt like she quite fit in.

‘My family was kind of about that whole parties–and–horse racing thing,’ she explained. ‘I can understand it’s fun for some. I never enjoyed it.’

And while on the outside, Pandora came off as a put together British socialite, she secretly battled a heroin addiction and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which resulted in Cara having a difficult childhood.

‘It shapes the childhood of every kid whose parent has an addiction. You grow up too quickly because you’re parenting your parents,’ she said in 2015 of her mother’s drug problem, adding, ‘My mother’s an amazingly strong person with a huge heart, and I adore her.’

She also spoke out about her upbringing to Harper’s Bazaar UK, explaining that it was ‘very stressful’ because there was ‘quite a lot of chaos.’

‘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 OK or not,’ she told the outlet.

Cara recalled finding her school years difficult as she suffered from a developmental disorder called dyspraxia. She also developed severe anxiety and depression at age 15, which resulted in her participating in self harm.

‘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,’ she said to Vogue. 

‘I never cut [myself], but I’d scratch myself to the point of bleeding. I just wanted to dematerialize and have someone sweep me away.’

Cara, who later came out as pansexual in 2020, admitted that she struggled with her sexuality as a child, especially because she felt like she had no LGBTQ+ idols to look up to, which contributed to her mental health issues.

‘I do think I would have hated myself less, I would have not been so ashamed, if I’d had someone,’ she added to Harper’s Bazaar. 

‘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.’

She described her family as ‘old-fashioned and repressed’ to Variety, explaining that she feared she would ‘upset them’ if they found out that she wasn’t straight, which led to her not ‘accepting’ that part of herself.

‘I just didn’t want to admit who I was. I didn’t want to upset my family. I was deeply unhappy and depressed,’ she said. ‘When you don’t accept a part of yourself or love yourself, it’s like you’re not there, almost.

‘I think holding that thing in was fundamental to why I exploded in the way I did mentally. Once I could talk about my sexuality freely, I wasn’t hiding anything anymore, and the person I hid it from the most was myself.’

In her later teen years, Cara was put on what Vogue described as a ‘cocktail of psychotropics’ and she began smoking pot, but she stated that she was ‘completely mental with or without drugs.’

‘I couldn’t wake up in the morning,’ she admitted. ‘The worst thing was that I knew I was a lucky girl, and the fact that you would rather be dead… You just feel so guilty for those feelings It’s this vicious circle. Like, how dare I feel that way? So you just attack yourself some more.’

She added to Variety that she ‘felt so lost’ since she never had a ‘sense of pride.’

‘A sense of pride is like a sense of belonging, a family outside your family, a place where you don’t have to apologize or feel ashamed,’ she said.

‘I guess I never felt like I belonged anywhere as a kid. Or I always felt like I didn’t belong in my own body. I felt so lost.’

Cara’s rise to fame: How she overcame her mental health issues to become one of the world’s top models

Cara eventually dropped out of school, but was determined to prove that she ‘wasn’t a deadbeat’ despite fears that she would ‘never amount to anything.’

She originally wanted to be an actress, but after struggling to land roles, she turned to modeling. She was signed by Storm Management in 2009, when she was 17, but didn’t get her first paying job until nearly two years later.

She was eventually scouted by Burberry designer Christopher Bailey in 2011, while she was working part time in the office of a fashion website, who asked her to model for one of the brand’s campaigns.

The Burberry shoot launched Cara into stardom, and she soon landed jobs with huge brands like Chanel, Rag & Bone, Tory Burch, Oscar de la Renta, Tommy Hilfiger, Carolina Herrera, Fendi, Moschino, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, and Victoria’s Secret.

She stomped the runway at New York, Paris, and Milan’s Fashion Weeks for many years in a row, and along the way, she racked up a slew of celebrity friends including Karlie Kloss, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, the Kardashians, Selena Gomez, and Justin Bieber.

‘She can make anyone fall in love with her,’ Karlie gushed to Vogue. ‘She’s the life of the party, but she’s extremely serious about her work. And here’s the thing: She is truly herself while being in the public eye – not easy to do.’

Singer Taylor told Variety: ‘Cara is extreme, eccentric, hilarious, loving and deeply loyal. She’s an explorer by nature and is always on the hunt for the next adventure, which makes it a wild ride being her friend. 

‘You legitimately never know where the night will take you when she’s around. But while she’s spirited and outgoing, she’s also the person you’ll find in the corner of a party talking to someone she’s just met for hours, just because they’re going through a rough time. 

‘She’s deeply curious about others and profoundly sensitive. It’s that mixture of curiosity and sensitivity that I think makes her such a natural at becoming someone else on camera.’

During the height of her fame, Cara admitted that she still struggled with mental illness, telling Vogue that her depression would come and go.

‘It’s like, if anything is good for too long, I prefer to ruin it,’ she said. ‘I had to be doing things with people at all times. The life of the party is an easy part for me to play. It rots your insides, though.’

While rumors circulated on more than one occasion that she was doing drugs – photographers caught her holding a small zip lock bag of a mysterious white substance in 2013 – she insisted that it never got out of control for her.

‘Honestly, I don’t think I did anything different from other people my age,’ she said. ‘But I definitely have that addict gene. 

‘For me, it comes out in an addiction to work. I’d probably have done more drugs back then if I hadn’t been working like mad.’

She also told Variety that she once considered suicide before she was set to jet off for a work trip, but didn’t specify when the incident took place.

‘I was packing my bags, and suddenly I just wanted to end it. I had a way, and it was right there in front of me,’ she revealed. ‘And I was like, I need to decide whether I love myself as much as I love the idea of death.’

However, Outkast’s song SpottieOttieDopaliscious, which had been played at the funeral of a friend who had recently died of a heroin overdose, came on her laptop and it felt like a message to her.

‘It felt like a warning from him. And it made me so furious with myself,’ she added.

Cara’s career change: How she went from being a catwalk queen to a massive movie star

Cara began to branch out into acting in 2012, when she landed a role in the movie Anna Karenina. She then starred in the flick Face of an Angel, before landing the role of Margo in the John Green-inspired movie Paper Towns.

Paper Towns, which also starred Nat Wolff, quickly put her on the map in the world of acting, and launched a major movie career for her.

‘Somehow I was the only person on the face of the Earth who had never heard of Cara,’ Nat recalled to Vogue of meeting her for the first time. 

‘She walked in and I said, “Hey, you’re on a billboard right outside my apartment.” Cara has this rock-star quality, but there’s also a fragility to her. That’s what makes the best actors – they’re complicated.’

While Cara said she was offered numerous scripts afterwards, she was picky about the roles that she would pick.

She told Variety: ‘My agent would give me scripts, and I was like, “I’m not playing the dumb girl that gets killed,” or, “No woman would say that. I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous.””

Her other acting credits include Pan, Kids in Love, Suicide Squad, Tulip Fever, Her Smell, London Fields, Life in a Year, Carnival Row, and Only Murders in the Building. 

In 2015, she told Vogue that she much rather preferred acting over modeling, explaining, ‘The thrill of acting is making a character real. Modeling is the opposite of real. It’s being fake in front of the camera.’ 

‘I’m not sure I understand what fashion is anymore,’ she admitted at the time. ‘I was terrified to leave [the bubble of modeling]. 

‘I mean, the bubble gives you a kind of dysfunctional family. When you’re in it, you get it. And the second you’re out of it, you’re like, What the hell just happened? But now, I feel this desire to throw away the story I’ve been telling for years.’

Aside from acting, Cara has also branched out into music. She sings, plays the drums, and plays guitar, and has released a few albums over the years; she also teamed up with Pharrell Williams on his song CC the World.

On top of all that, she has also designed her own CKNY capsule collection and collaborated with Mulberry four different times, releasing items like purses, handbags, iPhone cases, and passport holders.

She dropped a young adult novel, called Mirror, Mirror, in 2017, and teamed up with her sister to create a champagne brand called Della Vite in 2020.

Cara’s love life: How she came to terms with her sexuality and a look into all of her relationships

Cara came out to her parents at age 18, after suffering from her first heartbreak. She recalled coming home and crying, and when her dad asked her what was wrong, she told him, ‘She broke my heart.’ 

‘I thought at the moment, he might kick me out. I was that scared,’ she remembered to Variety. ‘I was honestly terrified. 

‘And he was like, “She isn’t worth the energy. You deserve to be loved.” He was so sweet, I could cry about it right now.’

The model then told the world that she was ‘sexually fluid’ in 2018, and confirmed that she was pansexual two years later.

‘I never thought I needed to come out. It was just kind of like, “This is who I am. Just so you know,”‘ she explained. ‘I always will remain, I think, pansexual. 

‘However one defines themselves, whether it’s “they” or “he” or “she,” I fall in love with the person – and that’s that. I’m attracted to the person.’

Cara said she was once told by Harvey Weinstein that she ‘couldn’t be with a woman and also be an actress’ and that she ‘needed to get a beard’ in an attempt to hide her sexuality, which inspired her to finally speak out about it to the public. 

‘To me, the idea of having a beard was – I’d heard it happen before – I just felt so disheartened by it,’ she recalled.

‘Do you have a conversation with a dude, and they’re like, “I’m going to pretend to be with you but not really love you?” I kind of think when I was pushed more that way, I realized how much more I needed to go the other way.’

She later accused Harvey of sexually harassing her, claiming that he tried to kiss her without her consent and propositioned her to have a threesome with him and another woman in exchange for a role. 

In 2015, Cara confirmed that she was dating musician Anne Erin Clark, known as St. Vincent, whom she was with for just over one year.

She was later linked to actress Ashley Benson. They started dating in June 2019 and were together for two years before splitting in April 2020.

Most recently, Cara was spotted kissing singer Leah Mason, also known as Minke, in June – but it’s unclear whether or not the two are dating.

Around the same time, she told Harper’s Bazaar that she definitely wants to become a mother one day.

‘I want to have babies. But not yet. I buy children’s clothes for my future child who doesn’t exist,’ she dished. ‘Baby shoes really get me – they break my heart. 

‘I went shopping the other day and I bought these tiny Air Jordans, which are purple and they have a lion on them. I’m manifesting.’

Cara’s descent: How her career came crashing down 

In the beginning of the pandemic, Cara told Variety that she was trying to ‘keep busy’ amid the lockdown, and it seemed as though she was doing well.

‘I have been keeping busy,’ she said. ‘I have a whole drum kit-piano-guitar setup, which is really great. My dogs have been really important to have around. Just keeping a daily pattern

‘I really want to come out of it knowing that I’ve grown. I’m still trying to create and do things.’

But last week, the model left people raising their eyebrows when she was seen smoking a pipe of some kind while sitting alone in a car.

Then, the airport ordeal went down, which reportedly left her friends and family searching for ways to help her.

‘We are all incredibly concerned. The situation has been building for a few weeks now, and Cara’s family is involved,’ a close friend told The Sun afterwards. 

‘There is talk of staging some kind of intervention and making sure Cara gets the help she may well need. She has been burning the candle at both ends of late, and it’s clearly taking its toll.’   

Cara arrived at the airport alongside her assistant, and was seen dangling her shoeless feet out of the vehicle window.

She wore a Britney Spears T-shirt, black leggings with green, yellow and red strips, and yellow socks for the outing.

A source told DailyMail.com that she recently attended the Burning Man Festival – an event showcasing art and self-expression in Nevada – where she didn’t eat or shower the entire time.

‘She had just spent days in the desert, not eating all that much and she looked disheveled because she hadn’t had time to scrub up yet,’ the insider dished. 

‘Her friends are worried about her generally after some erratic behavior, but she has a good group around her. Her sister was at the festival with her. She wasn’t alone and she has her back.’