Emily Ratajkowski never wanted modelling to be her only career.
Emily Ratajkowski admits modelling was never her dream career
The 30-year-old star - who has recently turned her hand to writing by penning a collection of essays - admitted that she fell into modelling while trying to fund an art career.
She said: "It wasn't until the book was finished, and I was doing the audiobook, that I sort of realised that it was written into the text – this desire that I've always had to be the artist rather than the muse. Even when I left college and started modelling, it was with this idea of like, ‘well, I'm gonna make enough money so that I can be an artist and so I can make things’. That's why I even started to really model full time. So it feels extremely gratifying and fulfilling to
now be the person who's created something, rather than a piece of someone else's vision."
Emily - who started her career at the age of 13 - also revealed her decision to model was inspired by the way she idolised pop star Britney Spears as well as a financial need, brought on by the collapse of the economy in the US.
In an interview with Vice, she said: "There were definitely a bunch of factors that came into my decision to model, and some of them were just cultural, not even personal – like the stuff I write about the way I looked at Britney Spears, and the way I thought about powerful women as being “attractive” – that I think made modelling appealing.
"And then yeah, personally, it was also the timing. I graduated high school in 2009, right after the economy collapsed, and money was really on my mind in maybe a way it wouldn't have been had I not kind of lived through that. So I think it was a culmination of things. I did choose it though. My mom always tells this story of me being 13 and saying, like, ‘Okay, I'm ready, I want to try modelling’. And that was my choice. But also, as a 13-year-old, I probably didn't totally understand what I was saying I was ready to try."
Emily's book 'My Body' is available now.
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