posted by Pax on April 26:
Gisele on her friendship with Leo
Gisele gave an interview which was published in an Italian magazine
Here's the part where she talks about Leo:
ADG: Gisele, down the mask. Do we speak of Leonardo?
Gisele: You are always the same. What do you want, that I tell you my private life, to let you make a journalistic scoop? Let’s see a bit, you are an old friend of me and as I know you, I know that if I tell you something, you will write the truth of what I have said. Listen well to me then. Your colleagues have written anything, all lies, that Leo has asked me to get married, that he has given me an expensive ring, that I would have gone straight to New York into an Italian boutique to look for a white suit to get married. Completely nonsense! But I say that it is always possible that a girl of my age can feel more or less any feelings for a boy of a similar age, and that we have both the right to have a good time and to live with joy. But does it seem believable for you that I, with the job that I do, enter a boutique in New York... to choose a wedding dress! How can journalists tell similar lies and stupid things to people and make them believe that nonsense. No, it is not correct to make publicity by using my name, with the only aim to fool the people who don't know the truth. You see, I, for everybody I am Gisele, the top model, but many have forgotten that also I, at 20, have a head, a brain, a heart, a soul as the girls of my age. With Leo, everything is different. He is first of all a young person like me, later the character comes out, the good and famous actor that he is, but believe me, you should know him, Leo is a person who in his private life is of an unbelievable sweetness, tied up to his family, as I am. The media, his colleagues - rivals, the women who would like to have him and who don't succeed, they describe him and make him pass for someone "terrible, conceited, arrogant." Instead, that is not true! Leo and I get along very well, because at the base of our relationships, there is first of all the mutual respect and a complicity as among two true friends. I don't go out with him for his money, or to become famous by showing me together with. As for money, I also earn something, and such a lot of it (thank goodness!). I believe in the ambience of my job, without false modesties to be esteemed and appreciated as a person and as a model. And then? Which advantages would I have being with him, and which advantages would he have being with me? I tell it to you: none of this kind! If we are together, it is because we are happy to pass some time together. Then „who will live, will see" (?) (and looking me hypocritically, she confesses to me having learned this sentence in Italy)
ADG: Gisele, you know that the press knows very well that in Hollywood, a lot of pseudo * sentimental relationships are only built by the agents for the media and the great public ?
Gisele: Yes, certainly I also know that, but in our case it’s different. Do you really believe that Mike Ovitz, the agent of Leo, knows also mine? No, my agency is the IMG Models that doesn't represent actors, and as for me, I would never let me being treated as an object from by anybody outside my model job, to give something to write to the „pink newspapers". I am a person and not an object. It’s for this reason that in an accord with my agency and my booker Anne Nelson, we have decided to limit the parades and my over-exposedness. It doesn't make sense, as it would not make sense the hypothesis at the base of your question. I don't accept the concept of certain people, especially of certain journalists, or of certain stylists, for who only because you are famous, they have the right to judge you. And who has given them the right? They have made me read an article a long time ago which had appeared in the American press in which was said that an Italian stylist, Cavalli, who wanted me for a parade of his last year, has started a deal with my agency, offering me very less than my anticipated payment, and offending me by defining me as a kind of "blackmail - extortion." (?) But how does this gentleman allow himself to say this? By chance, someone enters his shops, and he decides how much the one has to pay for one suit of his. And then, luckily I make shows only for the customers who are all right and who are tied to my image. And Cavalli it is not among these.
..........
ADG: We return back for an instant, but what does connect you the most with Leonardo DiCaprio?
Gisele: We are very similar and close in so many things. I like his simplicity, his joy, his sweetness, his healthy crazyness. You know that Leo is making a movie in Rome, with Cameron Diaz, a woman that I find very beautiful, solar and very likeable, and they cannot move either, because they are persecuted by the paparazzi! In fact, when I go to meet him in Rome, we never go to all the cocktails, the parties, the invitations that he recieves in the hotel. He thinks that they have also offered him straightly some money to be their guest. But if someone is paid, what kind of guest is he then? We prefer going to play with our friends in those game rooms in the outskirts, where they leave us in peace to amuse us as two young people of our age.
Thanks to Pax for the article and to Mona Lisa for the new translation !!
***