Celebrity Gossip
Jerry Hall’s loving the 50s
“Alot happens at 50, the best thing being that you just don’t care anymore. At 40, you still care. At 30, you care way too much and your 20s are quite frankly a nightmare. Bring on 60, I say: just imagine the joy of having grandchildren!”
This is an irrepressible quote from an interview conducted by Celia Walden with the famous Texan Jerry Hall, once wed to Mick Jagger. I have always loved Jerry. Why, she grew up in Gonzales, Texas, a little town of 5,000 people, just 60 miles from San Antonio. It was Gonzales that sent most of its men to die in the Alamo. My parents are both buried there. So, Jerry and I have always been pals and have quite a connection. This gal has come a long way from Gonzales!
Jerry’s four children, ages 12 through 25, are all by Mick Jagger, so she remains entangled in the rock star’s peripatetic life. But now she has put the brakes on her rumored “explosive” memoir. Is this because she doesn’t want to dish her famed ex, or is it because she just doesn’t have time to finish it?
Jerry has completed an Open University course in Humanities and the Enlightenment and she has been playing in the West End’s version of “Calendar Girls.”
Here are some Jerry Hall-isms, from a girl who was first discovered, at age 16, wearing a bikini on the beach at St. Tropez.
“I still like myself. That’s why it’s important to have interests— then you don’t get sucked into this culture of obsessing about yourself.”
“I don’t actually think . . . people are mean. [About photos showing physical inadequacies,] I think it’s a bit of entertainment, and if it makes people feel better that I’ve got cellulite and so do they, why should I take it personally?”
“I’m not going to be pushed into messing about with myself [surgically]. But the sad thing is that Hollywood and TV are very ageist. Once you get older, they can’t wait to get rid of you, so a lot of women feel they have to have things done to keep working, and I think that’s a big mistake. It looks awful. . . . There’s a lot of pressure in the fashion industry, too.”
“My love of literature goes back to my childhood . . . I was obsessed with the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay. I was quite nerdy at school.”
“It could have been a disaster [speaking of when she ran away to France as a teenager]. But I was incredibly lucky. Before long, I’d met Helmut Newton, done the cover of French Vogue, and my career was made.”
These days, Jerry has become an ambassador for the Sony digital reader. “It doesn’t always pay for women to show up that side. People don’t like it. But I find strength through poetry. . . . There’s also nothing like taking Proust to the beach and daydreaming along to it.”
Does fame corrupt men more than women? This is the question Celia Walden asked Jerry Hall.
The reporter was referring to Mick Jagger’s bandmate, Ronnie Wood, who left his wife for a 21- year-old girl. Here’s Jerry: “There is no way a woman would ever leave her family for a teenager like that. It’s about a fear of dying for men: they want to stay immortal . . . it’s just that women are deeply rooted in reality.”
Jerry says she and Mick speak several times a week “. . . and he is a very hands-on dad.” Asked if she still loves him, she says, “Yes.” Asked if he will turn out to be the love of her life, Jerry says, “God, I hope not!”
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