the modelizer

Kate Moss says the iconic Calvin Klein ad she did early in her career caused her to have a mental collapse.

"I had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18, when I had to go and work with Marky Mark and Herb Ritts," Moss says in the December issue of Vanity Fair. "It didn't feel like me at all. I felt really bad straddling this buff guy. I didn't like it. I couldn't get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die. I went to the doctor and he said, 'I'll give you some Valium,' and Francesca Sorrenti [Moss's friend and mother of Mario Sorrenti], thank God, said, 'You're not taking that.'"

Elsewhere in the interview, Moss discusses her discomfort with posing nude for Corinne Day — the photographer who discovered her – the "years and years of crying" she suffered after breaking up with Johnny Depp, and the mental anguish she dealt with in her first years as a model.

"It was just anxiety. Nobody takes care of you mentally. There's a massive pressure to do what you have to do. I was really little, and I was going to work with Steven Meisel. It was just really weird — a stretch limo coming to pick you up from work. I didn't like it. But it was work, and I had to do it."

The ad that caused Moss's breakdown, below.

Agyness Deyn told us that just because she's landed several leading roles in more than one feature film doesn't mean she'll never model again.

Deyn, who stars in the film Pusher, says reports of her leaving the industry are the result of a big misunderstanding.

"It's really funny — it's like I stood on a podium and was like 'I'm retiring from modeling!' And it's so not the case," she said. "Someone asked me if I had stopped modeling and I was like, 'Uh, I suppose so, cause I've not modeled for a while.' But it's not like I'm never going to model ever again. There's a lot of actresses and actors who model and do work. So I'm not like totally ruling it out. I think like, just the basic fact that I've not done a modeling job in a while was what I was trying to communicate."

Her work on stage and screen is what's kept her away from fashion photographers and in front of film directors. In Pusher, Deyn plays Flo, the heroine-addicted stripper girlfriend of the film's protagonist, a drug dealer named Frank. Deyn shadowed a stripper to prepare for the role, and "had a lot of input" in creating Flo's wardrobe for the film.

"You have a certain idea of who she is and what she's about, and you put on a certain thing and its like 'Oh my God, this is her,'" Deyn said. "When she's at home, it's kind of super laid back and neutral and not in your face, her casual wear. And then when she's at work it's like 'Woah, holy sh*t!'"

And Deyn says Flo's duality — in both her personality and her wardrobe — is what makes her such an engaging character.

"She's like this childlike, angelic, delicate flower at home, and then when she's at work, she's this red-haired vixen in total control," she says. "That was the fun thing about playing her: It was kind of like playing two different characters."

Pusher premieres in theaters on Friday, Oct. 26, and is already available on video on demand.

Agyness Deyn and Richard Coyle in Pusher. Photo courtesy of Radius TWC.

Grace Coddington will release her autobiography, Grace: A Memoir, in November, and in it she recounts her introduction to modeling: posing in the buff for photographer Norman Parkinson.

In an excerpt of the book on Vogue.com, Coddington writes that a boyfriend introduced her to Parkinson, known by his friends as Parks. The first time they met, Parkinson said, "I have this little job at the weekend on my farm in Pishill. It's a nude photograph, if you don't mind."

"Well, I only registered the word photograph," Coddington writes. "I don't recollect why, but I guess it didn't occur to me that he meant I should take off all my clothes. Later on I did wonder whether it was the proper way to behave . . . To Parks, however, all I said at the time was 'OK,' and off we went to take pictures of me running through the woods naked. He demonstrated what I should do. 'This is what I want!' he shouted, mustache twitching as he leaped through the air from behind a tree, a tall, gentlemanly figure wearing one of his lucky little woven Ethiopian skullcaps. And that was that. I had a lovely time. It was my first modeling job. And afterward we all went home for tea."

Grace: A Memoir will make its debut on Nov. 20.

Photo: Grace Coddington photographed by Norman Parkinson, courtesy of Norman Parkinson Archive.

Agyness Deyn's appearance on the Summer cover of i-D magazine may have been the last job of her modeling career. Deyn, who's now pursuing a career in acting, said in a recent interview that she's "stopped modelling officially."

Deyn told The Independent, "I've not done any for a good long while now. I think it was about four years ago when my feelings were changing towards the industry. I didn't hate it, but I was yearning to do something different. I was on a gradient. It was a gradual thing."

Deyn has a supporting role in the upcoming film Pusher, which premieres next month, but she first started appearing in films in 2010. That year, she starred in the short Mean to Me and played the role of Aphrodite in Clash of the Titans.

Still, Deyn's drift from modeling into acting doesn't mean she didn't like walking down runways and appearing in ad campaigns.

"Oh god, I loved it," she said. "Being 18 years old, from Manchester, and suddenly having this new world to explore — being able to travel, meet all these different people, and immerse myself in all these different cultures — was just so much fun."

A look at all the fun Deyn has been having in her new career as an actor, here.

Photo courtesy of i-D magazine.