The Tragic True-Life Story Of Cara Delevingne

Cara Delevingne is an actress and model best known for roles in projects like "Carnival Row" and "Suicide Squad," as well as her striking eyebrows. Her career began as a runway model, walking for designers at fashion weeks around the globe before focusing more on landing roles on the big screen, leading to projects like DC movies and book adaptations.

Delevingne's professional life has hit incredible highs, like being named model of the year twice at the British Fashion Awards, winning three Teen Choice Awards, and even starring in a West End production of "Cabaret" as Sally Bowles, a character previously played by greats like Molly Ringwald, Judi Dench, and Brooke Shields. And her future looks brighter than ever as she adds more roles to her resume, like joining the cast of "American Horror Story: Delicate" as Ivy in 2023.

But her successful transition from modeling to acting, and everything in between, wasn't without hardship. Both before and during her time in the spotlight, Cara Delevingne encountered tragedy in several ways. She's had difficult working experiences, like filming in freezing temperatures for "Carnival Row," but her setbacks are rooted in tough personal events and family histories. Here's everything you need to know about the tragic true-life story of Cara Delevingne.

Cara Delevingne was introduced to different chemical and alcoholic substances from an early age. Her first memorable encounter with alcohol came at a family wedding, when she was just seven years old. "I woke up in my granny's house in my bedroom with a hangover, in a bridesmaid's dress," the actress told Vogue in 2023. "I'd gone around nailing glasses of champagne." When faced with a debilitating bout of insomnia a few years later, at the age of 10, the solution was to prescribe her sleeping pills. 

As she became a teen, she tried other substances as a way to escape from her thoughts. "That's also when I started drinking and partying," she said. "There was this need to escape and change my reality as I was hit with just huge questions: What am I doing here? Who am I trying to be?" She began to smoke marijuana, in addition to being placed on different prescribed medications for depression. She does credit them for the good they did in her life, especially when it came to her feelings of isolation. "I was on medication and it just ... it saved my life," Delevingne continued.

During Cara Delevingne's childhood, her mother Pandora fell back into heroin addiction. Watching her mother go through the relapse changed the actress's life. "It shapes the childhood of every kid whose parent has an addiction," the actress revealed to Vogue in 2015. "You grow up too quickly because you're parenting your parents."

While coming to terms with her mother's situation is still difficult for Delevingne, she's found ways to channel her feelings about it. She wrote the novel "Mirror, Mirror," a young adult book following teens trying to solve the mystery of a friend's disappearance. The mother of the main character is a person with alcoholism, a parallel to Delevingne's own life growing up with her mother's addiction.

When comparing her own substance use to her mother's, the actress notes that she was in a unique circumstance due to the combination of her lived experiences and her work as a model later on. "Honestly, I don't think I did anything different from other people my age," she told Vogue. "But I definitely have that addict gene. For me it comes out in an addiction to work. I'd probably have done more drugs back then if I hadn't been working like mad."

Cara Delevingne's teen years brought on a new set of challenges. Life took a turn when she was 15 as she began experiencing anxiety and depression, sometimes so hard to bear that she acted out of character. "All of a sudden I was hit with a massive wave of depression and anxiety and self-hatred, where the feelings were so painful that I would slam my head against a tree to try to knock myself out," the actress told Vogue in 2015. "I just wanted to dematerialize and have someone sweep me away."

While these feelings seemed new, Delevingne told Porter magazine (via The Guardian), that she'd always thought something was different growing up, even if she couldn't put a name to it. "I always felt pretty weird and different as a kid, and that feeling was something I didn't understand, or know how to express," she said. "It wasn't like I was an alien, but I definitely knew there was something weird going on." 

To help with these feelings, she began taking different medications and seeing therapists, though she didn't think they made a difference. "I was completely mental with or without drugs," she told Vogue. She also utilized a variety of different therapies, including those rooted in music and art, with varying success.

Cara Delevingne saw success with artistic pursuits, but academic ones were a bit harder. "She was always uniquely talented," her aunt Melinda Stevens said to Vogue in 2023. "Whatever she picked up — whether it was a guitar or a piano or whatever — she just could play it and nail it." The actress went to a liberal arts boarding school when she was 16 years old, allowing herself to dive deeper into music and acting.

However, Delevingne's dyspraxia diagnosis made school difficult growing up, especially when compared to her older sisters, who thrived in academic settings. The disorder impacts a person's physical coordination, making motor skills difficult to manage, especially when it comes to tasks like writing. With writing a large part of school, it caused the actress to have a tougher time on exams and other academic tasks. Her dyspraxia didn't do her well-being any favors at the time. "This was the beginning of mental health issues and inadvertent self-harm," Delevingne told Vogue in 2023.

As Cara Delevingne's mental health declined, the actress dropped out of high school, disrupting her education much earlier than the many actors who have dropped out of college. "I thought that if I wanted to act, I'd need to finish school, but I got so I couldn't wake up in the morning," she explained to Vogue in 2015. This didn't end up being the case.

She began modeling full time, landing her first paid assignment and first runway show after a year during which she encountered a variety of casting situations, from uncomfortable test shoots to being immediately dismissed during in-person auditions. "Never trust a straight photographer at a test shoot," Delevingne said. She has earned her acting roles differently, including the surprising way she landed "Life in a Year" from her YouTube videos.

Her luck in the fashion industry changed when she was hired for Burberry's 2011 spring campaign by designer Christopher Bailey. The show became her big break at 18 years old, quickly leading to more bookings. From that point forward, her career officially took off: she became known for her iconic eyebrows and as the face of large campaigns, fostering a relationship with Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel and walking in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. 

In 2017, Cara Delevingne spoke out about the sexual harassment she encountered at the hands of film producer and now-convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. In a since-deleted post on Instagram, the actress shared two different instances with the producer that were wildly inappropriate and unsettling.

"When I first started to work as an actress, [I] was working on a film and I received a call from‎ Harvey Weinstein asking if I had slept with any of the women I was seen out with in the media," Delevingne wrote in the post. As she tried to get off the phone, the producer told her she would never have the career she wanted if she "was gay or decided to be with a woman especially in public."

The actress also described another encounter with the producer that happened later. While meeting with him about a project, she was encouraged by both him and his assistant to go to his hotel room while she waited for her ride. "When I arrived I was relieved to find another woman in his room and thought immediately I was safe," she wrote. However, the producer asked for them to kiss. Delevingne instead began to sing to diffuse the situation and left the room despite Weinstein's attempts to stop her. "Since then I felt awful that I did the movie. I felt like I didn't deserve the part," she detailed in the caption. "I was so hesitant about speaking out."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cara Delevingne's mental health was impacted from the isolation, lack of work, and a difficult break-up. When the quarantine began in March, the actress was isolating with her then-girlfriend, actress Ashley Bensen. However, by the end of April, the two had broken up after nearly two years of dating. The transition from what the actress described to Vogue in 2023 as something they thought would "be a weeklong thing" became a bit more bleak as she then spent quarantine on her own and the pandemic changed the film industry forever.

"And then I was alone, really alone ... it was a low point," Delevingne revealed to Vogue in 2023. She explained that being unable to throw herself into her work and focus on that during quarantine caused her to fixate on the negative emotions she felt. "I just had a complete existential crisis. All my sense of belonging, all my validation — my identity, everything — was so wrapped up in work," the actress said. "And when that was gone, I felt like I had no purpose." 

Delevingne grappled with her self-worth because she couldn't work, which only added to the sense of isolation she felt at the time. ""Instead of taking the time to really learn something new or do something new, I got very wrapped up in misery, wallowing, and partying," she shared.

While the global pandemic continued to impact Cara Delevingne's mental health, life took another turn. The actress and model was in Tokyo, Japan filming the series "Planet Sex" in 2022 when she was informed that her grandmother died.

Delevingne and her grandmother were close as she grew up, and Delevingne often stayed at her grandmother's house when her parents were unable to watch her. She struggled to process the news while getting back into work, as the industry started up again after the shutdowns from the pandemic eased up. "I was really trying to pour everything I had into work, and every night I would come back from filming and sit alone and just cry," Delevingne told Vogue in 2023. "By the time I got to the Met Ball two weeks later I was f***ing exhausted."

At the Met Gala, the actress wore a red Dior Haute Couture suit and was covered in gold body paint. Due to the stress of her grandmother's death, Delevingne's psoriasis flared up, causing visible skin patches in the gold paint. To help with her grief, she went to parties after the event, which made her travel plans the next day difficult. "I went and got blackout afterwards," she said. "The day after, I had to travel to my granny's funeral. It was horrible."

Her grandmother's death was the start of what would become a difficult summer for Cara Delevingne in 2022. As her 20s were coming to a close, the actress and model spent three weeks in Ibiza with her friends, hosting an "Alice and Wonderland"-themed party to celebrate her birthday. During her time there, Delevingne felt like she was saying goodbye to a different time in her life, and it caused her to self-isolate and spend more time alone. "The house I was staying in had a tower and I would just kind of lock myself in it instead," the actress told Vogue in 2023. "I barely left the room."

After Ibiza, Delevingne moved on to Burning Man in Nevada. Photos of her published at the time caused her fans to worry about her. The actress said she was still partaking in what she felt were self-destructive behaviors, including drug use. "I put myself in danger in those moments because I don't care about my life," she said. "I would climb anything and jump off stuff ... it felt feral." She admitted that she couldn't remember everything that happened at the time, including the substances she used.

Her friends and family finally came to her aid. Delevingne reached out to her friends, and they all gathered around her. "I needed to start reaching out. And my old friends I've known since I was 13, they all came over and we started crying," the actress told Vogue. "They looked at me and said, 'You deserve a chance to have joy.'"

In March 2024, Cara Delevingne was in London, performing in the West End production of "Cabaret," when she heard the news nobody wants to hear: her house in Los Angeles had burned down. One individual in the home had minor smoke inhalation and one firefighter was hospitalized due to injuries from trying to control the blaze. Delevingne's two cats were rescued and unharmed.

The actress expressed her thanks for the firefighters and emergency personnel that responded to the scene in her Instagram stories at the time, posting several photos of the street and first responders. It took over two hours for emergency responders to extinguish the fire. In London, Delevingne and her parents left the Playhouse Theatre, where she was performing "Cabaret," and spoke to the press in the hours after the news broke. According to TMZ, her father said the possible cause of the fire was "electrical ... A powerline. Very windy there."

Delevingne's house was previously featured in Architectural Digest in 2021. It featured a David Bowie memorial bathroom, game rooms, and a ball pit. "My work requires me to put on many different hats and costumes ... so I wanted my home to reflect lots of different themes and moods," the actress told the magazine.

Cara Delevingne has opened up about her journey with sobriety. For the actress, part of starting that path was recognizing that, after the difficult summer she had following her grandmother's death, she felt she didn't look healthy. "It's heartbreaking because I thought I was having fun, but at some point it was like, Okay, I don't look well," she told Vogue in 2023. "You know, sometimes you need a reality check." 

Shortly thereafter, the actress participated in a 12-step program. For Delevingne, part of her sobriety is committing to herself, rather than putting everything she has into trying to "rescue" everyone around her. While she loves helping others with their stress, particularly with activities like games, it kept her from facing her own feelings and thoughts. "But in giving that to people, I was kind of stuck in myself," the actress shared.

At the 2024 Met Gala, Delevingne shared her ongoing sobriety journey with Variety, trying to inspire others that may be working towards similar goals. "You're not alone," she said. "If I can do it, anyone can. But you need to communicate and be honest about it as much as you can — especially with yourself."

If you or anyone you know needs help with mental health, addiction issues, or may be the victim of sexual assault, contact the relevant resources below:

• The Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
• The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).