Joanna Lumley says her name “came like a lightning bolt”. Dustin Hoffman says she laughs like a trucker. Bowie sang: “She’d sigh like Twig, the wonder kid.”<\/p>\n
Fast facts about Twiggy<\/p>\n
What: An effervescent documentary about the many lives of model, actor, singer and designer Twiggy<\/p>\n
Directed by: Sadie Frost<\/p>\n
Starring: Twiggy, Joanna Lumley, Paul and Stella McCartney, Dustin Hoffman and more<\/p>\n
When: In cinemas December 4<\/p>\n
Likely to make you feel: Like swinging back into the sixties in your funkiest kit\u00a0<\/p>\n
It seems everyone adores Twiggy, the “face of ’66”, AKA Lesley Hornby.<\/p>\n
But the working-class girl from Neasden in north-west London, whose shapeshifting career encompasses everything from modelling to movies, singing to fashion design, has closely guarded her private life with loving partner, actor Leigh Lawson.<\/p>\n
Until, that is, Twiggy saw a reflection of herself in fellow multi-hyphenate, Sadie Frost, who convinced her to tell her story.<\/p>\n
“I’d been approached many times to do this and for whatever reason, backed away,” the ebulliently down-to-earth Twiggy says.<\/p>\n
“But when I met Sadie and she suggested it, I just thought, ‘Yeah’.”<\/p>\n
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English model Twiggy, originally Lesley Hornby, in a London street.\u00a0 (Getty: Meagher)<\/p>\n
The parallels with Bram Stoker’s Dracula star Frost \u2014 whose debut directorial feature was the documentary Quant, about British fashion designer Mary Quant, who played a prominent role in London’s Swinging Sixties culture \u2014 are uncanny, Twiggy suggests.<\/p>\n
“She’s got a similar career in that she started very young, was a model, went into acting and has been a designer,” Twiggy says.<\/p>\n
“She’s also been in the public eye for a long time, so she understands those pressures, and, like me, she’s got a very close family.”<\/p>\n
It started with a haircut<\/p>\n
The youngest of three daughters, Twiggy’s childhood was blissful, even though her mother struggled with her mental health (undiagnosed in those days). Her dad was a carpenter on movie sets, but that’s as close as Twiggy thought she’d get to stardom.<\/p>\n
Pursuing a modelling career was not on the cards. As the ever-luminous Lumley outlines in Twiggy, the profession was almost exclusively the domain of upper-class girls.<\/p>\n
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Twiggy and her signature pixie haircut and dramatic lashes for a 1967 Vogue shoot.\u00a0 (Getty: Bert Stern\/Cond\u00e9 Nast)<\/p>\n
“I love Joanna, she makes me laugh so much,” Twiggy says.<\/p>\n
“Those girls would work until they met their rich husband and married. Girls like me, from north-west London, didn’t.”<\/p>\n
And yet, Twiggy was spotted by a scout who thought she looked like Greta Garbo with her huge eyes. A test shoot was arranged, and they insisted she get a new ‘do at Leonard [Lewis] of Mayfair.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t want my hair cut in this posh salon, but was too shy and scared to say no,” Twiggy laughs uproariously (this happens a lot).<\/p>\n
“And thank god I kept my mouth shut.”<\/p>\n
The new elfin bob took seven hours. Photographer Barry Lategan snapped her in a natty chunky knit. Lewis hung the resulting portrait in his salon.<\/p>\n
Deirdre McSharry, a fashion journalist from the Daily Express, saw it while having her hair cut and booked Twiggy for the splash that launched her career.<\/p>\n
Vogue chased McSharry’s lead.<\/p>\n
“Diana Vreeland was so powerful then; like Anna Wintour now,” Twiggy recalls of the then editor-in-chief.<\/p>\n
“Once she took me under her wing and said, ‘This is the girl’, that was it. It’s a bit of a Cinderella story.”Goals and Globes<\/p>\n
Just like fairytales before Disney got their hands on them, fame was scary at first.<\/p>\n
Fans from London to New York and Tokyo screamed in adulation like she was in The Beatles (Paul McCartney and daughter Stella, both appearing in the documentary, are her besties).<\/p>\n
Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n
However, Twiggy insists her working-class roots kept her grounded.<\/p>\n
“I was still Lesley at home,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t let it go to my head.”<\/p>\n
The whirlwind that followed included shooting an album cover with David Bowie \u2014 1973’s Pin Ups \u2014 and a garden party at Sonny and Cher’s, where she met Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman.<\/p>\n