Fierce (33 page)

Karl is the coolest and most influential person in fashion. For him to even know that I existed was just incredible. My friend Christopher had given Karl my email address when he’d asked him about me. It was the stuff of dreams. Really it was.

I went to meet Karl at Brown’s Hotel, which is really quite fancy, in Mayfair, London. I walked in and there were all these super-tall and super-skinny models getting fitted for a fashion show. They put me in a room with them and they all turned and looked at me as if to say,
‘What the fuck is she doing here?’

I couldn’t believe how thin they all were. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, please. Go and eat some cotton wool balls.’ (Apparently models eat cotton wool soaked in orange juice when they’re really hungry. It’s fucking ridiculous.)

But being with them all just made me even more self-conscious and then I started to think, ‘What the fuck am I doing here?

The hotel does these really spicy mojitos, so I had one for courage and I felt so much better.

The whole experience was like something from the movie
The Devil Wears Prada
. I stood in the suite surrounded by the most amazing clothes and Karl came over and kissed me on each cheek – it was incredible. It was so unbelievably cool. He started showing me all these picture clippings of ideas for the shoot. He had come up with the idea of a mademoiselle in the progression of a nervous breakdown. I started off looking quite demure, but by the end my lipstick was smeared all over my face and my hair was tangled and I was scrunched up in an armchair. The whole experience was liberating. I just went with what he told me to do and it created a set of pictures I’ll never do again. It was a truly great experience.

I’m in a very fortune position in that I can afford to buy designer clothes, but I never take that fact for granted. I once spent eight thousand dollars on an Oscar de la Renta dress. I’ve worn it a few times. I wore it for one of Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara parties. I really thought long and hard about buying it, but I knew that I would have it for the rest of my life. I think when it became fashionable
to wear vintage clothing again, it made me realise that if I kept the expensive items I’d bought and sold them in ten years’ time – or even longer – I’d be able to make money from them. My clothes have become an investment.

I’m addicted to buying shoes. I’ve got about a thousand pairs. The collection is probably worth a ridiculous amount – I couldn’t even begin to start totting it up. I think it might frighten me. My favourite shoes in the whole world are my ‘Gina Sparkles’. I first started wearing them in 2005 when they had quite a thick heel, before they became thinner. They’re a stiletto shoe with a sparkly effect in different colours. When I went into the musical
Chicago
they made a pair for me with the thick heel so I could wear them on stage as I did a lot of standing during the performance. They’ve been making them for me ever since. I can’t believe they make them for me. I still get excited when they do and I never take it for granted. Designers have lent me clothes before they’ve gone on the runway and that’s just amazing.

A
COUPLE
of weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday, I was running around my house in London trying to get all my shit together for my move back to America. We were due to start filming our family variety show
The Osbournes: Reloaded
at the end of October 2008 and it meant I would be moving back to LA for the first time since I’d relocated to London three years earlier.

At first I was sceptical about doing another show with my family. Apart from presenting the Brit Awards in London earlier in the year, in February, it had been six years since we’d worked together on
The Osbournes
. A lot had happened since then.

Going back and being the predictable ‘big-mouth daughter’ again didn’t really appeal to me. I’d grown up and that person really wasn’t me any more. Of course it wasn’t. I was just a teenager when I’d been on that show.

I wanted to show people that person wasn’t me any more and I knew it would be great fun to work with Mum, Dad and Jack, so I said yes. I think Jack felt the same reluctance. We both knew there would be the usual family dramas; he said/she said bollocks. But that was never going to change.

Mum was organising it all and it was going to be shown on the American TV network, Fox. It meant that I would have to move back to my house in West Hollywood for at least three months while we filmed at a studio nearby, as well as doing some filming across America.

That afternoon, when I was trying to do all my last-minute packing, I turned to my housemate, who’d walked into my bedroom, and said, ‘If I go back to LA I know what is going to happen to me.’ I just knew and I felt like I had to tell someone what I was thinking. I just blurted it out. It had been on my mind.

There was no IF. I was booked on that plane and I was going. I was worried. Those feelings of anxiety that I’d had when I’d been growing up in LA were starting to come back. I never feel good about myself when I’m in LA. I don’t feel good enough or socially accepted.

I’d been living in London for three years by then and I’d built up my own little life and I was worried about what would happen and how I’d feel when I moved back to America.

I’m not going to lie, since my last visit to rehab just before my twenty-first birthday, I’d not been completely clean. I’d relapsed. I’d often turned to painkillers to block out a stressful situation. They’d not been massive falls and I’d been able to get myself back on track
with the help of my family and friends. I felt happy in London, so that was always a help.

The thing is, when you’re an addict, you’re an addict. I can’t even have the cold and flu medication Night Nurse because I would become addicted to it. I have been on and off painkillers since I was sixteen. In January 2008, I relapsed and started taking painkillers, but they actually made me sick. I was sick for five hours solid. I thought maybe I’d cracked it, but I hadn’t.

Addiction is addiction. If you are addicted to shopping, you could be addicted to drugs. If you are addicted to counting the number of stairs you climb, you could be addicted to drugs. Lots of people swap one drug for another. I think maybe I thought I could manage taking drugs and then not taking drugs. But it doesn’t really work like that. Addiction takes over everything in your life. You don’t think, ‘Oh I’ll just get this job done and then I’ll take drugs.’ You take whatever, whenever!

What really upsets me is the prejudices people have towards drug addicts. I’ve seen this happen a few times in LA and it drives me crazy. Some well-dressed person will be walking down the street and they’ll literally recoil at the sight of a drug-addicted homeless person on the street. Or they’ll mutter ‘drug addict’ under their breath. But you know what? That judgemental person probably doesn’t think twice about the number of painkillers they’ve got at home or the fact they take them – and a few more than they should – just to get them through a difficult patch. Well, that makes them a drug addict too. Just because they’re living in a mansion in Beverly Hills and that person is sleeping on the streets makes no difference whatsoever.

So, knowing how hard it was to fight my addictions every day meant that I had the ‘fear’ I would relapse again if I went to America.

During the time I have relapsed, it’s often been because someone has thought I’ve been taking drugs, but I haven’t. So instead of thinking, ‘Well, I know best.’ I think to myself, ‘Well, if they suspect I’m taking drugs, I might as well.’

I landed back in LA in the October. Don’t for one minute think that I’m not grateful or thankful for my life there. I know I’m very lucky. All my family are there and I have a lovely house. The front looks out across the Hollywood hills and it has a really nice garden at the back, which is private and a suntrap. Although I don’t go in the sun. That’s probably another reason why I don’t like LA.

In the morning the sun shines through into the kitchen, which is white with wooden beams. In the lounge it’s full of family photographs and my favourite framed black-and-white picture of a wedding. I don’t know who the couple are, I just liked the picture and bought it.

At first it was great to be back. The production meetings were fun and I got to see Mum, Dad and Jack all the time. But I soon began to feel anxious, bored, lonely and fucking uncomfortable.

I’m not into what people are into in LA. I’m not hungry for what they’re hungry for – like fame.

Actually, it’s more than that. I don’t care if I have a tan or not. I couldn’t give a shit if I go to the right dentist. I don’t care. As long as my teeth are not hurting, I’m not going to sign up to a six-month waiting list to see some doctor who does a show on
E!
that everyone
is talking about and MUST go to. I won’t do that shit. People go about things in a different way in LA.