Trudie Styler was bullied at school for having facial scars caused by a car accident.
Trudie Styler with husband Sting
The 69-year-old movie producer - whose filmography includes ‘Girl Most Likely’, ‘Filth’ and ‘Ten Thousand Saints’ - was hit by a bakery van as she crossed the road when she was just two years old, and the collision left her with severe facial injuries that required plastic surgery up until the age of 18.
Trudie - who is married to music legend Sting - was dubbed "scarface" by her fellow pupils, a taunt which hurt her, but luckily her "formidable" mother worked at the school and protected her from the bullies.
In an interview with chef Ruth Rogers on her podcast ‘Ruthie’s Table 4’, she said: "I think growing up kids can be a bit cruel to children who look a little bit different and I did look a bit different as a youngster.
“I had a lot of marks on my face, but mum got a job at my school as a dinner lady and she was a very formidable looking woman, about 15-and-a-half stone. Nobody was going to mess with Pauline Styler, so she protected me from a lot of unfair remarks that were being made.”
Trudie shared what happened on the day of the accident, and emphasised that she was lucky to be alive.
She remembered: “A little girl from over the street had called me to see if I could come over to her place, and if I wanted a sweetie, and I said, ‘Oh yes.’ She was only about five herself, and she took me over to their house. She got me a sweet and I think her mother thought that I was going to be escorted back to our house and I wasn’t.
“So, I was crossing the road and a 15-year-old kid had jumped into a baker’s van. The baker was delivering his bread, and the kid had jumped into this lovely big van and knocked it from neutral into first [gear] and took the handbrake off, and the truck started to roll down the hills at the same time that I was on the ground.
“Luckily the wheels missed me, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling this story right now, but the exhaust pipe caught me at the back of my head and dragged me along the street, so it really took quite a lot of the left-hand side of my face off."
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