Marie Helvin has opened up about her love life after breast cancer surgery. In an exclusive interview with HELLO!, the legendary model tells how she enjoyed a passionate encounter with an expedition leader after being introduced by a mutual friend – a year after undergoing a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery on her right breast.
"It wasn't an affair, because it was just once, but I hate to use the phrase one-night stand, because it wasn’t that either," explains Marie, 73, one of the original supermodels of the Seventies and Eighties. "He was somebody that I vetted and checked out; I met with him a couple times, then I knew that I did want to sleep with him.
"I felt comfortable enough to explain to him that I've had this surgery, and I can't really have this breast touched too much, because it took a long while for the sensitivity to come back.
"I still feel very much a sexual person – I think I will probably always feel that way, whether I'm having sex or not"
"I thought that if I don't do it, I'll be afraid. And it was great. I chose well for my first time. He lives in France, so we didn’t think about continuing things. I still feel very much a sexual person – I think I will probably always feel that way, whether I'm having sex or not."
Christmas with Queen Camilla
Joining us for an exclusive photoshoot Marie, who was married to photographer David Bailey for ten years and has had relationships with Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton, Peter Gabriel, Marco Pierre White and Queen Camilla’s late brother Mark Shand, also reveals she used to spend Christmas with the then Camilla Parker-Bowles.
"I adore Camilla. Of course, she’s the Queen now, but back then I was close to her and her family, and they couldn't have been more kind and welcoming to me and my family," she says. "I used to spend Christmas with them, and sometimes my mum would fly over, and it was really wonderful.
"One year we were at Camilla and her [then] husband Andrew’s house, then her parents, then her sister.
© Photo: Rex"Recently I saw a funny interview with Camilla’s son, Tom, who said that one of his most memorable Christmases when he was a boy was me coming down the stairs in a negligee; he said he’d never seen anything like it in his life.
"I remember that was my first Christmas with the family, and I just presumed that you dressed up for breakfast, so I went out and bought a Christian Dior white satin negligee. I had no idea that people in the country wear gum boots and jeans and sweaters."
Falling in love again
"Falling in love again would be fantastic. What woman doesn't want that feeling of being in love, of being loved?"
While she turned down marriage proposals from Mark, who died in 2014, she says she would like to fall in love again – and that she attracts younger men.
"Falling in love again would be fantastic. What woman doesn't want that feeling of being in love, of being loved? I love a sense of humour, but money has never been a big thing for me, and I've never had anybody look after me; I’ve always paid my own rent, except when I was married to Bailey.
"But sometimes I think I'm asking for too much. I'm not somebody who would ever, in a million years, consider going on a dating app; I have always been introduced to men by a friend, and that way I've always felt safe.
"For some reason, I'm more attractive to younger men," she adds. "I don't understand it, but I'm not going to complain. Sadly, though, I'm at that age where my friends don't do those kinds of introductions anymore."
Pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK now to read the full interview. You can subscribe to HELLO! to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple or Google apps.
