'My Big Hooter Is My Saving Grace' ; Once Hailed a 'Freak', but Now On Every Billboard in the Land, Model Erin O'connor Talks About Why She Finally Feels Accepted for Being Different

Summary

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For all her elegantly imposing beauty and a decade at the top of the modelling industry, Erin O'Connor is the most down-to-earth of girls. It's slightly disconcerting at first, that unexpected gap between how she is, and how she looks; but it doesn't take long to realise that the graceful yet formidable hauteur apparent on the catwalk is nowhere in evidence when she's off-duty, as we sit drinking cups of tea on a rosy-pink sofa in the living room of her West London flat.

As she talks, her porcelain-pale face those composed, Modigliani- like features so familiar from photographs, framed beneath her immaculately sculptured dark hair breaks up into big smiles, and her eyes widen as she laughs. And Erin laughs a lot, waving her long arms about to illustrate a point, sometimes jumping up, barefoot, unfolding her lean legs from beneath her, as she tells another story; and there are so many stories to tell. 'Did I tell you about the first time I saw myself on a poster for the National Portrait Gallery?' she says. 'It was this summer, they'd used Johnny Yeo's painting of me for the poster, and I happened to be on the tube when I noticed that someone had added a beard to my face with felt-tip pen, as well as a moustache and glasses, and other more obscene additions. I'd been thinking, "Hurrah, the National Portrait Gallery, I've arrived at last!"

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'My Big Hooter Is My Saving Grace' ; Once Hailed a 'Freak', but Now On Every Billboard in the Land, Model Erin O'connor Talks About Why She Finally Feels Accepted for Being Different

But then there was that helpful moment when I was sent crashing back to reality, which is a good place to be.' Right now, though her feet are clearly on the ground, Erin O'Connor's face is on millions of television screens and sky-high billboards across the country, as a key element of the most successful Marks Spencer campaign for years; and she'...

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