SHE MAY BE an heiress, but that doesn't mean Lydia Hearst is content to sit back and watch life pass her by. 'I don't think there's any one way to define a person and similarly, no one should use definitions as limitations,' says the princess of the family dubbed American royalty, the great-granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. A supermodel, fashion designer, journalist and now aspiring actress, Hearst has achieved more in a seven-year professional career than most of her privileged peers can even dream about. And It all began with that Vogue cover.
At 17, having just signed with the Neal Hamil Modeling Agency, the inexperienced Hearst (she had never done a professional photo shoot) went to her first casting. 'All the time I was sitting there, I had absolutely no comprehension of what was going on.' Still she got the job, a spread in Italian Vogue. Working with renowned photographer Steven Meisel, the shoot was such a success that she landed modelling's holy grail, a Vogue cover. Not bad for a first job.
But Hearst is not one to take such luck lightly. 'The day I signed with Neal Hamil, my mum [Patty Hearst, a kidnap victim turned urban guerilla notorious for her role in a 1974 bank robbery] showed me a wall. It was plastered with hundreds of photos of beautiful girls. She said to me, 'These are all the girls who want to make it, want to become known and want to be successful. And that's only at this agency'. Then, she took me over to another wall. There were only three photos on it and she said: 'These are the only ones who did make it'.' Hearst got the point. She knuckled down to work and in 2008 she picked up the Michael Award for best model and the best international supermodel in Madrid.
'You need to take the job seriously because it could end before you know it,' she says. 'None of this is just for fun to me.' Hearst's sense of realism can be attributed to her childhood. At four years old, she was on the set of the John Waters film, Cry-Baby, in which her mother was starring in. 'I was hanging out with Johnny Depp and Ricky Lake and everyone was singing, there were lights and cameras; it was amazing. But my mother would remind me that it was all nothing more than a job. I knew these things weren't normal, but she told me all these people were no different from anyone else I met.'
Hearst's family tried to make sure her childhood was no different from any young girl's - public school education in the small town of Wilton, Connecticut, no allowance and an after-school job at a sporting goods store doing inventory.
'It was watching my mother in a Thierry Mugler show when I was 13 years old that made me realise I wanted to be a model,' she says. 'She came out in huge high heels and a beautiful dress, then started ripping away at her clothes. Finally, she stood there in skin-tight black leather pants and a corset with flames beaded down the side, holding this whip. The stage went from being mirrored to black with soaring flames. It was extraordinary.'
