Supermodel scales down glamour life

Having scaled down her assignments, supermodel and occasional actress Tatijana Patitz says she prefers to spend time at home looking after her five horses and six dogs.

'I was raised with dogs and I have been riding horses since I was seven,' says Tatijana, who was born in Germany but grew up in Sweden. 'In the past three years, I have stopped doing fashion shows except for Helmut Lang . . . I prefer to take time studying acting.' Tatijana was in Rising Sun starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes and has just finished shooting an Eric Roberts film called Restraining Order.

'It's a low-budget movie and doesn't have a large distribution, but it was fun. I am basically a damsel in distress who gets framed for murder,' she says.

In town recently as an ambassador for Longines, which recently launched its latest watch collection called Dolce Vita, Tatijana is one supermodel who seems to be laid-back about her career.

'When I went to Los Angeles to live, I just wanted to take a back seat, stop working and decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.' she says.

It all started for Tatijana when she was spotted by a talent scout in Sweden when she was 15. The spotter persuaded her to enter Elite Models' Look of the Year contest.