Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has criticised agents for not doing enough to protect models from abuse in the industry.
The catwalk star, 31, who is engaged to actor Jason Statham, told Net-A-Porter’s weekly digital magazine PorterEdit that “professional lines were crossed”.
She said: “I don’t think young models are protected enough. There was always this encouragement that you should ‘be free’, ‘be wild’, ‘the more you relax the more work is going to come your way.’
“I look back and I am very lucky that I never had an experience that has left me deeply scarred.”
“There were certain things that were just not OK, comments that were made or expectations that were put on you, and professional lines were crossed…
“The sort of conversations that often took place were, ‘Well, he might want to take some photographs of you at his house and it might be a bit sexy so, you know, if you’re happy to go along…’
“Almost like the looser you were and the more rock’n’roll you were about things, then that was the way to be.”
She said: “There were a lot of instances where you were unprotected and that really starts with the agents, as people who take a huge commission from young women. I have to scratch my head at times and ask what they’re doing.”
The model is spending less time modelling and more time on her own business after having her first child, a son, last year.
But she said that becoming a mother had given her acne.
“I’ve never had perfect skin, but throughout the pregnancy it couldn’t have been better… Six months after (the birth) the acne started. It’s sort of a depressing thing, so mortifying,” she said.
Huntington-Whiteley, who has made her name with brands such as Burberry and Marks & Spencer, has previously told how she was deemed too “healthy and wholesome” for modelling.
Now she has told the magazine: “I would go to castings in my teens and the response that I got from my agent was: ‘They think you’re too much of a personality, you’re too happy and wholesome,’ and I’d just be like, ‘What?… I don’t want to work with them anyway.’”