Carmen Dell'Orefice

I think America may be growing up and accepting the fact that the bulk of life exists beyond 50. Because demographically... the vast population is over 50.

There's no way I would have got to see so much of the world, with my humble background, without modelling. We were penniless and hungry for most of my youth. I washed the sheets in the bathtub in my bedroom and hung them out of the window on the clothes line, which in winter was difficult as the sheets would freeze and get stuck to the line.

I'm not giving in to anyone else's idea of how I ought to feel and look at 70. 'Retirement' is not a word I can even visualize. I retire when I go to bed!

I was the Kate Moss of my day, atypical of what the public wanted, which was Brigitte Bardot. I was always tall, skinny and angular. But now, society has bought 55 years of my marketing 'Carmen,' and I'm considered beautiful. I hope that empowers older women.

A lot of people around me were really staggeringly rich, which I never have been. I walked in between the raindrops of real money, but I've stayed happy.

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.

I understood that synergistic dance between photographer and object - 'muse,' if you will, 'model,' whatever you call us. It's that silent language of communication, like being psychic with each other.

My mother was harsh and constantly told me I had jug ears and heaven knows what else. But she was devoted and a hard worker.

As a model, I didn't have an identity; I was a chameleon, a silent actress. I was an amorphous thing. I wasn't full of personality, I was full of solitude and solemnity. I wasn't a cover-girl type.

Being on the cover of 'Vogue' at 15 meant nothing to me. I never really understood what it was they were looking at, what they saw in me.

My dream was to become a ballet dancer, but after a year in bed with rheumatic fever at 13, I had grown too tall, and had no muscle tone left. I tried a ballet class and couldn't even do a plie without falling over. It was my first death.

If your ceiling is falling down, don't you call someone in? I apply the same principle to myself.