Cara Delevingne

Photo: MINK MGMT. / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

QUICK FACTS

Born: August 12, 1992

Age: 27 years

Gender: Female

Born Place: Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom

Nationality: American

Occupation: Model, Actress, Singer

BIOGRAPHY

Cara Jocelyn Delevingne born 12 August 1992 is an English model, actress, and singer. She signed with Storm Management after leaving school in 2009. Delevingne won Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in 2012 and 2014.

Delevingne started her acting career with a minor role in the 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina. Her most notable roles include Margo Roth Spiegelman in the romantic mystery film Paper Towns (2015), the Enchantress in the comic book film Suicide Squad (2016), and Laureline in Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017).

EARLY LIFE

Cara Jocelyn Delevingne was born on 12 August 1992, in Hammersmith, London, the daughter of Pandora Anne Delevigne (née Stevens) and property developer Charles Hamar Delevingne. She grew up in Belgravia, London. She has two older sisters, Chloe and Poppy Delevingne, and a paternal half-brother, Alex Jaffe. Delevingne attended Francis Holland School for Girls in central London until she was 16 before moving to Bedales School in Steep, Hampshire. She has dyspraxia and found school challenging. In June 2015, in an interview with Vogue, Delevingne talked about her battle with depression when she was 15: “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.” At 16, after completing her GCSEs, she moved to Bedales School in Hampshire to focus on drama and music. After one year, she dropped out and followed her sister Poppy into modelling.

Delevingne’s godfather is Condé Nast executive Nicholas Coleridge, and her godmother is actress Joan Collins. Her maternal grandfather was publishing executive and English Heritage chairman Sir Jocelyn Stevens, the nephew of magazine publisher Sir Edward George Warris Hulton and the grandson of newspaper proprietor Sir Edward Hulton, 1st Baronet. Her paternal great-grandfather was the Canadian-born British politician Hamar Greenwood, 1st Viscount Greenwood, and her maternal grandmother Janie Sheffield was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Through one of her maternal great-great-grandfathers, Sir Lionel Lawson Faudel-Phillips, 3rd Baronet, Delevingne descends from the Anglo-Jewish Faudel-Phillips baronets; two of her ancestors on that line served as Lord Mayor of London.

PERSONAL LIFE

Delevingne is openly pansexual, but has previously identified as bisexual. In June 2015, she confirmed that she was in a relationship with American musician St. Vincent. They separated in September 2016. In May 2018, Delevingne came out as genderfluid. In June 2019, she confirmed that she was in a relationship with actress and model Ashley Benson. In April 2020, the couple split after two years of dating.

Delevingne is a self-described animal lover. Following the killing of Cecil the lion in 2015, she auctioned off her personal TAG Heuer watch in aid of wildlife conservation, raising £18,600 for WildCRU.

At the Women in the World summit in October 2015, Delevingne spoke about her battle with depression, which began at age 15, when she discovered her mother’s drug addiction. The following year, she left school for six months and agreed to go on medication, which she said may have saved her life. In 2017, on This Morning, she revealed that she also has ADHD.

In October 2017, Delevingne alleged that circa 2016, producer Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed her, attempted to kiss her without consent, and propositioned her for a threesome in a hotel room in exchange for a role. Despite declining, she was still cast in the film but says she regretted it as his actions terrified her. The Weinstein Company produced the 2017 film Tulip Fever, which starred Delevigne. She also alleges that circa 2014, he told her she would never work as an actress in Hollywood because of her sexuality.

Delevingne has multiple tattoos. Her first tattoo was a lion on her finger, representing her zodiac sign of Leo. She has a tattoo of her lucky number, the Roman numeral XII, on her side under her right arm, and “MADE IN ENGLAND” on the sole of her left foot. She has said that her most important tattoo is the elephant on her right arm, in memory of her late grandmother. Her initials “CJD” are on her hand. She also has a diamond on her ear and a Southern cross around her ear; a white dove on her finger; “silence” on her wrist; a sak yant on her back; a snake on her hand; a pair of eyes on her neck; a coat of arms on her ribcage; her mother’s name on her biceps muscle; “breathe deep” on her other biceps; “bacon…” under her foot; a DD monogram on her hip, symbolizing her friendship with fellow model Jourdan Dunn; a wasp on her finger; “don’t worry be happy” on her sternum; a heart on her finger; and a smiley face on her toe.

FILMOGRAPHY

Year	Title	Role
2012	Anna Karenina	Princess Sorokina
2014	Reincarnation by Chanel	Naughty Barmaid Empress Elisabeth of Austria
2014	The Face of an Angel	Melanie
2015	Paper Towns	Margo Roth Spiegelman
2015	Pan	Mermaid
2016	Kids in Love	Viola
2016	Suicide Squad	June Moone / Enchantress
2017	Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets	Laureline
2017	Tulip Fever	Annetje
2018	London Fields	Kath Talent
2018	Her Smell	Cassie
TBA	Life in a Year	Isabelle

Television

Year	Title	Role
2014	Playhouse Presents	Chloe
2019	Carnival Row	Vignette Stonemoss
2019	Running Wild with Bear Grylls	Herself
2019	RuPaul’s Drag Race	Herself (guest judge)