Clipping: Having a ball

"Having a ball: is there anything Natalia Vodianova can't do?

Laura Craik

24 Jun 2011 

Natalia Vodianova lives in a converted mill house in West Sussex with a stream running through its grounds, less big or grand than you might expect, more homely. The only jarring note in this bucolic idyll is the six cars parked in the drive, a reminder that this is no ordinary country-dweller, but an empress with an empire. 

Early, I wait on a bench, listening to the brook babbling, and willing myself to take root so that I might never have to leave. After roughly the time it takes to read 15 tweets, her PA fetches me and we walk over to a lawn spread with a picnic blanket. The blanket is minuscule, which would be awkward enough were you sharing it with a friend, let alone a Russian philanthropist supermodel widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world. 

Unfurled from beneath their tiny lace Topshop shorts, Natalia's legs take up most of the blanket; I perch timidly on the edge, as though her beauty might be contagious. Which it is, when you consider the good it has effected. It has spread from person to person like laughter, getting things done in ways that we unbeautiful people could never manage, with our workaday faces and our hopeless inability to sell Calvin Klein knickers, Louis Vuitton handbags or Guerlain scents to the world. 

If beauty were a less powerful tool, Gisele Bündchen would not have amassed a personal fortune of $45 million. Unlike many of the other models on Forbes Magazine's Supermodel Rich List, however, Natalia (ninth richest this year) hasn't merely scooped up the lucre from her modelling contracts and reclined into a mink chair. Instead, she has used her beauty for a greater good. Since its inception in 2005, her charity, the Naked Heart Foundation, has raised over €8 million enabling 60 play facilities to be built in 44 towns and cities throughout Russia. 

It is the profits from Natalia's legendary Love Balls that provide the bulk of the fundraising for Naked Heart. Previously held in Moscow and London, the next one will be in Paris during haute couture week in July, and will take place at Valentino's summer residence, Chateau de Wideville, which he is lending Natalia for the occasion (as you do). Last year's ball, at The Roundhouse in Camden, had an art theme and was curated by Dinos Chapman. Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons, Marc Quinn, Peter Blake and others donated works to be auctioned, raising a total of £1.2 million; Ruby Wax compered, and Yusuf Islam, Paloma Faith and Leona Lewis provided the musical entertainment. This year, 47 designers have made couture dresses to be auctioned on the night, which will include the usual rich-boy entertainment of dinner, dancing and the opportunity to throw your money around publicly while gazing at pretty girls. The guests have a wonderful evening, guilt-free because their largesse will change lives. 'It is a big challenge to live up to their expectations, but I'm so grateful for all the trust, love and support,' says Natalia.

Ask what she is most proud of and she says the trust she has built up over the past six years. 'In Russia this is not a common strength. Trust is something that is really hard to obtain and very easy to lose.' Natalia speaks with the natural cadence of a seasoned speech maker, light years away from the 'erming' inarticulacy of your average model. Fiercely intelligent, her responses are considered and genuine: transcribing our interview I cringe at my blundering questions and woeful knowledge of Russian history and politics. She's telling me about her traumatic childhood (her sister, Oksana, now 22, has cerebral palsy, and as a child Natalia helped bring her up) and I'm thinking, 'Oh-my-God-she is-so-beautiful-look-at-her-legs-in-those-tiny-shorts.' 

It doesn't take a genius to link Natalia's playground initiative with a desire to create for other Russian children the childhood of which she herself was robbed. Her early life is well documented, though not always correctly: she grew up in the industrial town of Nizhni Novgorod, but she was not discovered on a fruit stall; modelling lessons came courtesy of a boyfriend, which then led to her being talent-spotted and summoned to Paris. Despite the father who left home before she was two, the three wicked stepfathers who followed ('They have all done horrible things'), and the trials of being main carer for a sister with special needs, Natalia is no martyr to her past. 'I call my struggles in childhood a gift, almost, because they made me a really sensitive person towards other people's struggles. When you are at the bottom, you find beauty in such little things, and goodness in such little gestures. When I compare any struggle today to ones that I may have had in my childhood, there is nothing that can bring me down.'

More playgrounds will be built but Natalia's charity is now expanding its remit to include a new and more complex initiative, which is to provide increased support for families of children with special needs. Would that David Cameron had her on his side. 'In many ways, it is harder for the carers than the child. It can be very isolating and lonely,' she says. 'My mum is a very brave, strong woman, but it has affected her life a lot.' As well as her own family's struggles with Oksana, Natalia was also inspired by Alan Philps and John Lahutsky's book The Boy from Baby House 10, for which she has written a foreword. 'It's heartbreaking but talks of the reality of life for children who are abandoned in institutions.'

You sense that Natalia, who turns 30 next year ('I'm so excited, I can't wait!') isn't a great one for delegation; to say she is hands-on in her charity work is an understatement. Going around orphanages, witnessing children who have been strapped to their beds, jetting back to Sussex to hang out with her three far more fortunate children and then hopping on another plane to Shanghai to fulfil her contractual obligations to Guerlain (she also has contracts with Etam and Calvin Klein), gives new meaning to the term 'multi-tasking'. It must be hard to cope with the contrasts, the pace and the pressures. 'In a way one has to switch the emotions off - not that I do completely, but what is important is that you see a situation and think "What am I going to do about it?" If I started thinking, "Oh, I can't be a model any more," what good would that do? My appearance gave me access to a particular kind of world and I'm really grateful for it. It would be hard if I had any guilt trips, but I don't; I'm doing my utmost best to change the situation. We all have our own purpose in life and I feel very strongly that I have a bigger purpose than giving to just my immediate family and friends.'

Between her charity and modelling commitments, there is less time to hang out at the mill house than she might wish. She has also just completed her first lead film role alongside Jonathan Rhys Meyers, in Belle du Seigneur, due out next year. 'I really enjoyed the process. It's beautiful, very liberating,' she says, adding that she will definitely do more acting if time allows. 'I just pile on and pile on.' She describes Lucas, nine, Neva, five, and Viktor, three, as 'happy children, thank God' and we have a moan about the exhaustion of mothering small children (actually, I moan; she just smiles beatifically). 'They come into my bed and sleep with me quite often, but I love it,' she says simply. 

She is now separated from their father, Justin Portman. While the rumour mill has long whirled with possible reasons (jealousy, infidelity - the usual suspects), Natalia won't be drawn. 'It's really sad. It has been a while. We didn't want to talk about it. We still don't. Our children are very much aware of it. It's OK. We're still in a very sensitive position right now, and trying to do things as amicably as possible, so I wouldn't want to talk about it at all. I don't think I ever will want to, because it's strictly between my husband and me.'

It has been lovely sitting with this flawless, faultless woman, who I imagine charms everyone she encounters. But I have to ask about her personal life, at which point it feels as though a cloud has travelled across the sun. 'This is not really something to discuss at the moment. It's sensitive,' she says, with a faraway look. 

'You're in love!' I crow excitedly, as though she is my best friend, even though I never have, and never will, meet her again in my life. 

'Mmm-hmm,' she says, looking to the side. 'Yes, definitely.'

'How did you meet?'

'You're such a journalist.'

I may be a journalist, but I am not a very good one, since I would feel guilty if I named the recipient of this love (and no, it is not Scott Douglas, with whom she has been linked). If you are that interested, Google it, and wish her well. ES

To make a donation to the Naked Heart Foundation and for more information on this year's Love Ball, visit nakedheart.org"

Source: EveningStandard