'I still look good, despite the sun, cigarettes and alcohol'

Veteran model Jerry Hall says she has never used Botox, her beauty is natural.

If the experts are to be believed, few things are more ageing than smoking, drinking and sunbathing.

Not so for Jerry Hall. The veteran model has declared that she looks "pretty good" on a diet of cigarettes, alcohol and holiday sun.

"I am 58. That is pretty old, for God's sake. I look pretty good for my age, and I am enjoying that. But I smoke, I drink, I like wine, I love sun - tanning, I drink coffee. I am doing all sorts of things I shouldn't do," Miss Hall told Good Housekeeping magazine.

Somewhat ironically, the interview was conducted to publicise a fundraising campaign for Cancer Research UK. The charity warns on its website that all three activities increase the risk of getting cancer. Miss Hall is the face of the charity's Give Up Clothes For Good campaign, which urges shoppers to donate unwanted clothing.

She insisted that her good looks are natural and that her face remains untouched by Botox, saying: "I am very against it. I think it looks silly - people with mean - looking eyebrows." Getting older is an opportunity to relax, she added. "I think you feel less stressed at my age. You are not so bothered - everything is water off a duck's back."

The statuesque Texan has also claimed that she does not exercise and that her preferred physical activities are sex, gardening and housework. "You can burn a lot of calories mopping the house," she said last year. Miss Hall's house has 26 rooms.

Her beauty regime is a mixture of homemade treatments - she uses olive oil as a body moisturiser and gets through a bottle each week - and "very, very expensive" face creams.

She is currently dating an academic eight years her junior. Armand Leroi is professor of evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College London and has presented television documentaries about Charles Darwin.

She said in the interview: "He is lovely and very clever and very handsome. I am really, really happy."

She also discussed her former husband, Sir Mick Jagger, and the death of his partner, L'Wren Scott.

Miss Scott committed suicide in March. Three months later, the Rolling Stones singer, 70, was reported to be dating a 27-year-old ballerina.

Miss Hall defended her former husband and father of her four children against accusations that he had moved on too quickly. "He is single now and he can do what he likes," she said.

"It was a very traumatic time for the whole family. It is a horrible thing, suicide - you can never figure that out. We all got on really well. Peace was reigning. It was a shock for the whole family and Mick was just devastated."

(China Daily 08/23/2014 page24)