‘Often I would drink after I put my children to bed’
Elle Macpherson is opening up about her struggles with alcohol, detailing the depths of her addiction in her new memoir, Elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning to Trust Yourself.
“My life looked amazing to everybody. On the outside I was doing a beautiful job but, deep down inside, I was really struggling,” she writes in the book, in an excerpt obtained by Page Six.
But the Australian supermodel and actress, 60, would regularly drink at home while her children, Flynn, born in 1998, and Cy, born in 2003, slept.
At one point, Macpherson recounts how during a vacation in Spain with her kids and ex-partner Arpad “Arki” Busson she struggled to open a bottle of vodka and ended up breaking the top so she could pour herself a drink.
“I hurriedly poured myself a shot that could have been littered with shards of glass. And I drank it,” she recalls. “I remember thinking, I love this feeling. I’d missed it, sooooo much.”
Macpherson said the moment led her to check into rehab when she returned to London, where she lived with her family.
“My youngest son was only six months old and my eldest was five-and-a-half,” she writes.
Macpherson also goes into detail about how her love of booze caused her to miss an appearance at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
“I had drunk enough champagne or vodka to calm my nerves that it had disoriented me,” she writes.
But she says that Busson dissuaded her from going to rehab after that incident.
“I think he was afraid. He didn’t want me to be away from him and I think he was also afraid of change” she recounts.
Macpherson says that her battle with alcohol stayed a secret because she was was able to convince the people around her that she had her life together.
“People would tell me I was so organized. I was really proud of that. I guess I had to be organized because I was drinking and I never wanted anyone to know. So I made sure the house was clean and tidy; I made sure I looked great and I made sure the children were perfect.”
Macpherson eventually got clean, but her relationship with Busson didn’t last, with the two calling it quits in 2005. She is now dating American musician Doyle Bramhall.
Elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning to Trust Yourself is in stores now.