Smouldering on the cover of today’s Sunday Style, Lara Bingle channels an equally stunning Ursula Andress circa Dr No, with a belted white bikini and a dagger hanging casually in a holster.
Perhaps one of the most polarising Australian celebrities we have, Lara Bingle draws both critics and fans alike in impressive droves. Say what you will about the woman Toursim Australia considered to embody the sun-kissed, Aussie beach gurl so effervescently; but from landing her own TV show, covering Oyster, designing her own underwear range and swimwear collection, meeting Harry Styles and providing dozens of vacuous gossip magazine employees with jobs—who follow her every move and weight fluctuation with precision—Lara Bingle has certainly carved out a fairly niche career for a 25 year old who last year confessed in her Good Weekend profile that, “People say to me all the time, like, ‘What do you do? What do you actually do?’… Yeah, it’s weird, I lose my words sometimes because I don’t know myself.”
In today’s Sunday Style profile, Alice Wasley titles her piece, “And God Created Lara” (Hm.) and begins it by bluntly saying, “her name mentioned in conversation is likely to elicit at least one eye-roll, a bit of grumbling along the lines of, “But what does she actually do?’ and a debate about if she is, in fact, that hot.” Nice.
Anyway, the interview that follows is surprisingly candid and revealing of the celebrity that becomes ever increasingly difficult to pin down and label, as we are wont to do with any vaguely famous person that comes from our sunburnt land. Here’s 6 highlights from her profile:
On dieting: “I was running, running, running like a crazy woman, and I was just hungry all the time. But I haven’t battled with my weight; as I’ve grown up my body’s changed. You’re never happy, but you have to reward yourself at some stage . I refuse to diet. It has to be a lifestyle.”
On her career bucket list: “Underwear [range], product range, Cotton On Charity, the bowel cancer TV commercial, Sports Illustrated, the UK market, the TV show….my dad passed away from bowel cancer, so I want to create a TV commercial…get some Australian celebrities, international ones…”
On being a Dream Girlfriend: “When I was with Michael [Clarke], I used to make a cheesecake every weekend for him. He loved it. I used to travel and cook the cheesecake in the hotels—go and buy new blenders and everything and just leave them there. That was my, like, vice.”
On her relationship with cricketer Michael Clarke: “I felt like I was just living his dream. And there are girls that are happy to do that, and hats off to them, but I require more for myself. I need to be stimulated more than that, you know? And the best thing I ever did was leave….So I got to experience all these opportunities. Otherwise, I kid you not, I would have three children by now! Michael says to me to this day, “You turned the ship around so much.”…even when we broke up, at times it was like, ‘How am I ever going to recover from this?”
On moving on from her early engagement: “I was 19 when I got engaged. I’m just glad I’ve been honest with myself throughout this whole experience. Otherwise…I wouldn’t be…happy?”
Via Sunday Style. Title image via Sunday Style.
