Dorset Echo, Saturday May 24th, 2003

Twiggy Talks About The Fame Game by Ruth Meech
INTERNATIONAL supermodel, actress, singer, wife and mother - Lesley Hornby has crammed a lot into the first 54 years of her life.

Lesley Hornby? Who? You will probably know her by her other name - Twiggy.

Next week, Twiggy - who looks like a baby deer and is equally fawn-like in her avoidance of the celebrity scene - is appearing at the Lighthouse in Poole in Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession, a bawdy tale about an educated society girl who discovers that her place in society is financed by a European chain of brothels.

Twiggy says: "I'm really loving doing the play and Mrs Warren is a real case-and-a-half... she's very raucous and I do get to let my hair down on stage - well, as much as they did let their hair down in Victorian times.

"The other thing, of course, is working with Peter Hall, which is something any actor would jump at. I've known him for 18 years and he is the nicest man in the world.

"We have tried to work together before, but nothing has come of it - one time he asked me I had to turn him down because I was running away to get married in secret.

"He was very persistent about working, so in the end we had to let him in on the secret."

Twiggy married the British actor and director Leigh Lawson in 1988 and they have one daughter, Carly, and a stepson, Ace.

Despite being well-known, they shun the celebrity circuit and Twiggy, in particular, has nothing but disdain for people who go for fame for fame's sake.

"The thing I find really troubling is when people are heard saying they simply want to be famous.

"They never say they want to be a singer or an actress or a writer, they just want to be famous," says the woman who became known as `the face of 1966' at the age of 16.

"What motivation encourages this peculiar thing? I refuse to watch those reality shows like I'm a Celebrity - they are the lowest form of voyeurism, I think.

"Yes, I became famous but not for those reasons - it just happened."

Twiggy's appearance on the `celebrity map' is, however, well documented.

Born Lesley Hornby in north London, she was `discovered' by Daily Express reporter Deidre McSharry after a photo shoot and the entranced hack wrote a huge article under the banner headline `The Face of 66'.

"I thought they had gone mad, frankly," laughs Twiggy, whose nickname came from the brother of an early boyfriend who kindly referred to his sibling's conquest as `Sticks'.

"I thought they were crazy. I hated what I looked like, all tall and bony. I didn't look like anybody.

"But at the same time, it was amazing. One day I was in Kilburn, the next I was in New York and Paris being photographed by these amazing people like Avedon and Snowdon.

"You could never have planned anything like it - it just happened. It was one of those wonderful things of that time - and they paid me too, the fools!"

That's the other thing about Twiggy, she has a gloriously earthy laugh that makes Barbara Windsor's sound like it belongs to a polite society hostess.

"It was a much more innocent time than today," she adds.

"I'm sure there were shady characters around in the 60s, but everything I did was legit.

"I remember watching an exposé on modelling a few years ago and I was absolutely appalled.

"What you saw was little better than prostitution."

The plus side of what the former Lesley Hornby calls `Twiggy craziness' is that it helped make her name on both sides of the Atlantic and has enabled her to raise awareness for causes dear to her heart, such as breast cancer research, the fight against the fur trade and fundraising for an animal sanctuary in Cumbria.

If modelling got her name known on a global scale, however, the inspired piece of casting that landed her a plum role in Ken Russell's bubbly film The Boyfriend made sure no one forgot who she was.

Stage and screen roles followed and for the past few years, Twiggy has also been appearing on Broadway, while her next project is the release of a CD, Midnight Blue, next month.

"I love singing," she says, "but people don't think I'm a singer.

"Oh come on, I've spent three years on Broadway singing Gershwin every night - and if that doesn't make me a singer, nothing will!"

Mrs Warren's Profession is at the Lighthouse, Poole, from Tuesday until Saturday, May 27 to 31, with shows at 7.30pm and Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2.30. Tickets are £17.50 for the evening and £12 for matinees - call the box office on 01202 685222 to book