As her two-year sober anniversary approaches, Cara Delevingne is getting candid about her past experiences with addiction.
In a wide-ranging interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times, the British actor and model recalled consuming alcohol at a startlingly early age, when she was a bridesmaid in her aunt’s wedding.
“You know I got drunk that day,” she explained. “I was 8, what a crazy age to get drunk.”
Delevingne went public about her recovery last year, acknowledging that she’d checked into rehab in late 2022 and had been attending Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step program since.
“The community made a huge difference,” she told Vogue in April 2023. “The opposite of addiction is connection, and I really found that in 12-step.”
In her Sunday Times interview, Delevingne said it was the paparazzi photos that showed her at a California airport in her socks while en route to London from the Burning Man Festival that served as her wake-up call.
“It was a stupid decision to go straight from a festival to work,” she explained. “I should have waited a day. But it was going to happen to me anyway, there were plenty of photos out there of me looking wasted. Listen, I signed up for this, this is my job, it’s what I do. But without that would I be sober now?”
These days, Delevingne is on a professional high, having just wrapped a well-received run in the London production of the musical “Cabaret,” in which she starred as Sally Bowles. (Longtime pal Taylor Swift notably dropped by for a performance).
And she found herself especially grateful to be sober earlier this year, when her Los Angeles home was destroyed in an electrical fire.
“If I’d not been sober I would still be reeling over that,” she told the Sunday Times. “It would still affect me really deeply.”
She went on to note: “I used to think drugs and alcohol helped me cope … but they didn’t, they kept me sad and super depressed. I feel like I’ve got my power back and I’m not being controlled by other things.”