Cara Delevingne Biography
Published: Nov 11, 2022
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Cara Delevingne

Cara Jocelyn Delevingne is an English model, actress and singer. She signed with Storm Management after leaving school in 2009. Delevingne won Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in 2012 and 2014.

Delevingne started her acting career with a minor role in the 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina by Joe Wright. Her most notable roles include Margo Roth Spiegelman in the romantic mystery film Paper Towns (2015), the Enchantress in the comic book film Suicide Squad (2016), as well as Laureline in Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017).

Cara Jocelyn Delevingne was born on 12 August 1992, in Hammersmith, London. Her father is property developer Charles Hamar Delevingne. She grew up in Belgravia, London. She has two older sisters, including Poppy Delevingne, and a paternal half-brother. Delevingne's maternal grandfather was publishing executive and English Heritage chairman Sir Jocelyn Stevens, the nephew of magazine publisher Sir Edward George Warris Hulton and the grandson of newspaper proprietor Sir Edward Hulton, 1st Baronet.

Her maternal grandmother Janie Sheffield, a granddaughter of the 6th Baronet Sheffield, was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Through one of her maternal great-great-grandfathers, Sir Lionel Lawson Faudel-Phillips, 3rd Baronet, Delevingne descends from the Anglo-Jewish Faudel-Phillips baronets; two of her ancestors on that line served as Lord Mayor of London. Her godparents are Dame Joan Collins and Sir Nicholas Coleridge.

Delevingne attended Francis Holland School for Girls in central London until she was 16 before moving to Bedales School in Steep, Hampshire. She has dyspraxia and found school challenging. In June 2015, in an interview with Vogue, Delevingne talked about her battle with depression when she was 15: "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." At 16, after completing her GCSEs, she moved to Bedales School in Hampshire to focus on drama and music. After one year, she dropped out and followed her sister Poppy into modelling.

2002–2014: Career beginnings

Delevingne had her first modelling job at age ten in an editorial shot by Bruce Weber for Vogue Italia alongside model Lady Eloise Anson. She signed with Storm Management in 2009. She worked in the industry for a year before booking a paying job and went through two seasons of castings before landing her first runway show.

Delevingne was scouted by Burberry's Christopher Bailey in 2012 while working part-time in the office of a fashion website. Bailey cast her in the company's spring/summer 2011 campaign.

Delevingne's first catwalk appearance was at the February 2011 London Fashion Week, walking for the Burberry Prorsum A/W collection. Later that year, she opened and closed the Burberry Prorsum S/S 2012 collection.

2012–2014: Breakthrough

She commenced the early 2012 season by walking in the Chanel Haute-Couture spring show at the Grand Palais.

Paris Fashion Week was the final week of Fashion Month, in which she walked in seven shows for Nina Ricci, Sonia Rykiel, Cacharel, Stella McCartney, Paul & Joe, Kenzo and Chanel. This was the beginning of what would turn out to be a longlasting professional relationship with Chanel's head designer and creative director, Karl Lagerfeld. In an interview with Elle after the show, Lagerfeld said, "Cara is different. She's full of life, full of pep. I like girls to be wild but at the same time beautifully brought up and very funny."

2015–present: Hiatus

It was noted by many that Delevingne had started to become more selective with the shows she appeared in. This was the beginning of the decrease in volume of catwalk roles, the cause of which at the time was put down to her expanding acting career. However, in a Time essay published in 2016, Delevingne explained the real cause for the decrease of show appearances:

It's taken time, but now I realize that work isn't everything and success comes in many forms. I've opened my mind, and now I embrace new things with a childlike curiosity. I'm spending more time doing the stuff I love. And I've been able to do better work because of it.

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