You Only Get One Life

by Brigitte Nielsen

  Riding the ponies that summer made me feel so serene. When we got back from holiday I would cycle to stables outside Copenhagen every day and spend hours grooming horses. In return I got an hour of free riding every week. I gazed into those big, dark eyes that were large enough to absorb all my thoughts and I’d feel them take away the meanness of ordinary life. The relationship with them was easy and honest. Riding can be as technically demanding as you want to make it, but it all comes down to moving each part of your body to the rhythm and motion of the horse. It wasn’t so much a sport as a way of becoming one with this beautiful animal.

  I didn’t stop my regular rides until I became a model – and it came in useful later when I got the lead in Red Sonja opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger. We had to do so much on horseback that I’d never have been able to do it without all my experience. I took it up again when I got married to Sylvester Stallone and we took up indoor polo with other Hollywood horse fanatics. Later, when I was in a relationship with American footballer Mark Gastineau, I had my own horse again. Mark was born and grew up on a ranch and he was always around horses. I learned how to ride bareback, on Western saddle, and I got to try roping. I don’t have so much time to fit in riding these days but it’s still a form of therapy for me, like some people go for a walk or cook a meal. I like to be close to the horse; feeling its calming heartbeat always makes me happier – it’s got to be only a matter of time before I get my own horse once more. I’ll never give it up. I’d love to live the rural life with Mattia, owning chickens, pigs and a pony somewhere outside London – there’s nothing like the smell of the hay and the nuzzle of an affectionate horse.

  CHAPTER 4

  A GIRAFFE IN DESIGNER CLOTHES

  My first thought: this woman must mean Susanne. She’s pushed me, but there’s no way I could be a model. You know when you see two girls out together and one is always good-looking and the other one is ugly? Those were basically the roles Susanne and I played. I was the beautiful girl’s friend and it had always worked perfectly well. It wasn’t like I thought it was going to be any other way. Almost as a reflex I stepped out of the way so that Susanne could talk to the woman who had stopped us.

  She looked to be about 30 and she was still smiling. ‘No, no, it’s you I’m talking to,’ she said, looking directly at me. ‘My name is Marianne Diers and I’m a talent scout for Copenhagen Models and Elite. Would you like to be a model?’

  It was a simple enough question, but first let me tell you a little bit about me and my body. We’d never got on very well together. I hated the way I looked and I would do everything I could not to be seen. The opinion seemed to be shared by most of the kids I knew. I studied hard at school because I was sure I would only be able to rely on what was inside me to get me through life. The taunts of giraffen really stung, but I also believed them: it was as if it was my fault that I was such a tall thing. By the age of 11, I was taller than my own teacher and in an attempt to disguise it, I would deliberately stoop slightly so as not to be noticed.

  It was around this time that my parents noticed my spine had gone crooked with what was diagnosed as scoliosis. The doctors pointed out then that one leg was shorter than the other. This condition is painful and if it’s not treated properly in children then it can cause problems into adult life. I wore a medical corset for more than a year, but that was okay because I could wear it under my regular clothes.

  But the doctors also said I had to wear special orthopaedic shoes to compensate for the difference in the length of my legs and at that point I rebelled. I wore those hateful shoes for two days and never put them on again. Already I had the corset, braces and I was stooped over with my height – I felt like some kind of freak. I had to go to physiotherapy every Friday until at last the doctors decided they weren’t getting the results they needed: they wanted to remove a piece of my knee, warning that the procedure carried a 50 per cent chance of leaving me with a permanently stiff leg. Thank God my dad told them the operation was completely out of the question: we would carry on working on the condition but my parents wouldn’t run the risk of me being permanently damaged.

  There was also trouble in my mouth: I wore braces and the dentist had to take out six of my teeth. You could park bicycles in the gaps, it was a nightmare! Now I couldn’t even smile as I dragged my extra-long leg around and tried to avoid banging my head on the ceiling. It was not a good scene and all of this was going on at the same time, so I felt really unlucky.

  I compensated by working very hard and got myself a job in the local library in an effort to feel there was something I could do to make up for the way I looked. I had the best grades and I got two 13s – you could only get that if you were as good as your teacher. I was so happy with that. When my German teacher asked for a volunteer to learn all the irregular verbs, I put up my hand and said I’d do it over the weekend. There were more than 200 of them and the teacher thought it would be impossible. I said I’d do it if he bought ice cream for everyone on Monday. I did nothing else but study that weekend and when we got back, I had them all down perfectly. Everyone cheered me for the first time: ‘Gitte got us ice cream!’ And I felt so happy and proud – it was one of the best days I ever had at school.

  Mostly I would feel a terrible knot in my stomach that tightened whenever it was break time. I was always alone in the playground and the other kids were often having a laugh at my expense. As I write about my schooldays now I get that same sick feeling of dread just remembering how horrible it was: it was the worst kind of pain. Even my medical conditions weren’t as bad as knowing that I was an outcast. Girls passed around invitations to birthday parties and they always made a point of handing them to everyone around me, which made it perfectly obvious that I was excluded. It was even worse in the mornings after parties: they made sure I was in earshot when they talked about how much fun it had been, what games they played and how many presents they got. I regularly cried in the evenings before I went to bed and it was only my friendship with Liselotte and thoughts of my beloved horses that kept me sane.

  I felt different and wrong for so long that my school years now seem like one great fog. The others whispered about me and even when I wasn’t there, I could tell by the way that people looked at me when I came into the room that they had been talking. It was endless. The laughter rubbed me raw, along with their delight when they could tell they’d got to me. I remember running away from their malicious giggling in the playground, falling over my own gangly legs and scraping myself badly when my jeans tore at the knee. The laughter became hysteria as I picked myself up and painfully made my escape again. It was particularly hard going home in the winter: the kids would kill me with icy snowballs on the way back. They waited for me and every day it was the same shit. We all moved on to the same schools in the neighbourhood so it never got better, even as I got older.

  The teachers knew what was going on. It’s not like today when something like that would be treated with great seriousness. Now parents would be called in, meetings would be had. Back then, you just had to get on with it: you fall down, you stand up, you move on. We know how mean children can be, but in those days adults simply weren’t interested in understanding how bad it was, they didn’t listen to us.

  Classes often shared the same room and I remember coming in and moving a boy’s bag to hang up my satchel on the hooks that lined the wall near my desk. He was with the class going out and saw me move his bag. ‘She’s going to fucking get it,’ he said to his friends. My heart immediately started racing and as soon as school finished, I raced out of there as if my life depended on it – which it did. Six boys tore after me and I ended up in some apartment block banging on a stranger’s door. Fortunately, I was let in by a kind lady who called my parents for me. It was a rare rescue from the regular daily beating, and it was only after that incident that I finally moved school, away from Liselotte and I had to start again.

  I suffered from psychosomatic stomach pains, but when I got home I’d still eat a
t the appointed hour of 6 o’clock and clean up the house. ‘How is everything?’ my parents would ask. I’d tell them school was fine. We didn’t talk much more in the home than I did with the teachers – I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my parents or my grandmother. My grades were always good so they never suspected anything. Jan and I would usually have to go to our rooms after supper. We didn’t have friends over and I remember having to ask my mum before she’d give me a goodnight kiss. That’s just how it was in my family.

  So if it was me who was being asked to be a model there had to be a catch. I thought I’d have to strip or be in some kind of pornographic magazine. ‘I’ll have to ask my dad first,’ I told her and that became my standard response to any offer of work until the day he died. It made me feel safe. Besides, I did want time to check it out. I didn’t want to give the other kids at school a fresh chance to laugh at me if it turned out to be bullshit. Having been called ugly and stupid for so long, I had a highly-developed sense of self-preservation when it came to opportunities for looking even more ridiculous than I did already.

  ‘I understand,’ said the woman, ‘and in the meantime here’s a brochure that will tell you all about what we do. Call me when you’ve spoken with your parents.’ She smiled reassuringly again and then disappeared into the Copenhagen crowds. I wasn’t used to feeling so excited and for a moment I felt suspended in unreality before the world started to turn again and I became aware of the background noise in the square. Surely the rest of my class from school were hiding around here somewhere and they were about to jump out and tell me that it was all another joke at the expense of the giraffe? But they failed to materialise. The rest of the town went about its business and the universe appeared to be functioning as normal.

  Susanne looked at me as if she too couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. She was the pretty one, but she wasn’t mean-spirited. ‘Gitte, you’ve got to do it!’ she said. ‘That’s amazing!’ She was really happy for me and grabbed my hand warmly. I loved Susanne – she was the only girl I knew who I could really trust.

  By now it was getting quite late and we had to run to catch the bus to make my father’s deadline. I spent the entire journey looking at every poster we passed. Beautiful women everywhere, each one advertising a different product. They were in the bus, on the streets, high up on the buildings…smiling, flawless creatures from another planet. With a lurch of disappointment I realised that the chance meeting had to be a big mistake; they couldn’t ask me to be a model. How could I be up there? At this I glanced through the brochure again and now I thought about it, the production was a little cheap. I was preparing myself for the worst and this was my way of making the evidence fit the low expectations I always had for myself.

  My parents were incredibly positive about the news. Even my dad, who had always had a conventional life and as an engineer was practical and orderly, was pleased. He knew that I’d finished the 10th grade at school with top grades and he gave his permission for me to follow up the invitation after a long conversation with Trice Thomsen, the director of Copenhagen Models. They agreed that I would go into the agency the following week to have a few test photos done.

  ‘If you feel like doing it,’ said Dad, ‘I think you should.’ It was a done deal.

  Jan thought the sound of a door opening into the modelling world was the most fantastic thing he had ever heard. I’m not entirely sure he was thinking only of me. Two years younger, he was then in the middle of puberty and I have a feeling he was interested in making the most of sharing the limelight with a big sister with lots of gorgeous modelling friends.

  I sat on the bus to Copenhagen Models with just my mum and the butterflies in my stomach for company. They took a series of black-and-white Polaroids and I had to fill out endless forms. Then there was nothing to do but wait. Trice Thomsen wrote to say that she couldn’t promise anything but she would do what she could. ‘You have the perfect body,’ she explained, ‘but just because you look great in person it doesn’t mean that you will work in photos. But I’m sure you have it in you.’

  She was right. Things started to move at an incredible rate. There were more professional tests soon after the first visit to the agency and within two weeks of that first meeting on Gråbrødre Torv, I was offered a job. I found it hard to keep up with what was happening: I’d seen those Polaroids and I thought I looked utterly ridiculous. I’ve no idea what I was expecting. Perhaps I thought that I’d be transformed into the potential model that Marianne Diers had seen, but even though the tests looked more professional I was wearing the same old clothes I always had and I had the same old face. Who’d want that?

  Everything for Women wanted it, as it turned out. This was a Danish lifestyle magazine with interviews and fashion features. With the help of a fantastic Swedish photographer called Steen Andersson, I was about to become one of their most important models. My mother came along to the first shoot and I desperately wanted to hold her hand, though I knew I couldn’t do that now I was a proper model. But the other girls were so beautiful: they looked so relaxed and professional; they knew exactly what they were doing. I could tell they knew how stunning they were. But I had no idea what I was supposed to do and I felt so ugly next to them – I was still waiting for someone to take me to one side to tell me that it had all been a misunderstanding.

  I had to do my own make-up like everyone else – only the very top models could command a stylist and make-up artist. But I’d never bothered with it before: I didn’t have friends to practise with and I never thought that part of a woman’s life would be for me. While other girls were trying on outfits with each other, I was out riding or daydreaming in the countryside, so I didn’t have a clue.

  The other models had huge bags filled with products. I’d only brought some eyeliner and lipstick. All I could do was watch carefully and copy as best I could. The results looked as if a toddler had been raiding her mother’s toiletries. As my mum always did, I put lipstick on my cheeks but I looked as if I was auditioning to be a zombie extra in a horror movie. It was catastrophic. Even though everyone had a laugh, the other models were really helpful: they corrected my technique, gave me advice and showed me how to do things.

  We did that first shoot by the lakes in Copenhagen and it was ice-cold. I was wearing a thin shirt by the designer Ivan Grundahl and I had wet hair. At first I felt like I was freezing to death, but I soon blanked that out because I was excited and everything was so confusingly new. I warmed up as we finished off the shoot in Steen’s atelier and I began to feel a bit more confident. The light was right, the clothes felt good and the photographer was amazing – I even began to think that my face looked okay.

  For the first time in my life I felt a spark inside me. You look all right. ‘Could it be?’ I asked myself. I looked at my pictures and then I looked again at the other models. And I thought – I belong. Finally I was no longer an outsider. I’d spent a day with girls as tall and thin as I was: we were a herd of giraffes together and there was nobody around to make fun of us. None of us needed to stoop in shame. We stood up straight and we looked directly into the camera. Could life really work like this? I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been a figure of fun. Now I was being paid to be myself.

  CHAPTER 5

  AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT

  Let’s go back a bit and take a look at me in my eighth grade. It was 1977 and I was at last about to change school. I’d spend the last couple of years before exams at 16 following a state-run experimental way of teaching. There was only one of these in the whole of Denmark and it was near where I lived. I was one of only a few students in the country to be asked to attend.

  Everything was done differently – the building was new, the teachers were not traditional and the students weren’t conventional either. The 48 students selected from some 50 schools had all had problems in their own way with their schooling. This new place was supposed to make learning a more positive experience and, more widely, to cha
nge the face of Danish teaching itself. It was hard to be a sensitive child in most Danish schools – you were supposed to fit in and conform. This was the Danish way: don’t think you’re better than anyone else. It was supposed to be all about equality, though in reality I think many Danes are just jealous if you do well.

  But the ‘70s was a decade that would be renowned for experimentation and it was the turn of education. I’d spent so much of my time trying to feel like I was the same as all the other kids but my view of the world has always been more aesthetic. I think it’s a very cool word: it comes from the Greek aesthesis. It’s all about awareness of movement, feeling and the soul. This was everything that regular school was not about. Most Danes just want to know how to add up and subtract – don’t breathe, don’t feel, don’t do anything! Don’t try to analyse, create or understand more than is strictly necessary for survival. Don’t take risks. It was the opposite of everything I felt. Everything was predictable and boring but this new school was much more in tune with the way I thought about things.

  The new set-up allowed pupils to find their own way and they believed that it was important to develop your own personality. I found it fresh and different, as well as a little bit scary: the hierarchy had gone and we were free to think whatever we wanted. The daily fear and terror I’d faced earlier was no longer such a defining part of my life. Along with my new school came four things I’d never had before – music, tits, a boyfriend and a girlfriend. I started to live at last.