GAVIN RAJAH - Tracey Hadfield

EXTRAVAGLAM
MAKE-UP BY
INGLOT
Extravagance Issue
07 / 2014
GAVIN RAJAH
KING OF HIS
DOMAIN
SURVIVING STARDOM
SAM PEGG
FEATURE
Surviving
STARDOM
Former supermodel, SAM PEGG, shares the story of her life
with TRACEY HADFIELD, revealing the emotional cost of
growing up in the pages of the world’s most prestigious
magazines. Photographs by MATT STOW.
HAIR & MAKE-UP NADIA SONN DESIGNER VICTOR K
JEWELLERY ANSIA JONCK FOR HENDRIK VERMEULEN BOUTIQUE
FEATURE
H
i, I’m Sam!”
Simple words, spoken with downto-earth friendliness, and the first ones
I hear as I stumble into studio, still
shaking off the remnants of trafficrelated road rage. Sam Pegg, seated
with our make-up artist, offers me a
wide smile and a warm handshake, and
I’m immediately struck by the sense
of easy comfort that seems to surround
her like a sunbeam.
At 42 years old, Sam is still an
undeniably beautiful woman, with
dark hair lying in loose curls over her
shoulders, and piercing blue eyes that
crinkle at the corners when she grins
(a frequent occurrence). Grabbing
a quick cup of coffee, I listen to the
laughter-filled chatter that surrounds
her and I begin to realise that there’s
more to this former supermodel than
just good looks and gossip. Contrary to
Sam exudes a
kind of confidence
that is comforting,
rather than
intimidating.
expectations, Sam Pegg exudes a kind
of confidence that is comforting, rather
than intimidating or self-absorbed, and
it’s hard not to be drawn in to her natural
energy and obvious passion for life.
That passion, as I soon discover, is
something Sam has fought hard to earn.
Born in Harare, Sam’s early
childhood was one of comfort, with a
beautiful home on sprawling grounds
and a pretty Dominican Covent School
to attend. “It was a very protected, a very
privileged lifestyle,” she admits with
a sage nod, laying the scene for what
would be the first of many upheavals
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in her life. She goes on to describe the
increasing political instability that was
spreading through Zimbabwe at the
time, and how her parents decided that
it wasn’t safe to keep their little girl
in such an uncertain environment. It
was this decision that saw Sam and her
mother heading south across the border
with nothing more than a car full of
clothes and $500.
“I arrived in the middle of Seapoint
in a one-bedroom apartment with
my mom, and a government school
system,” Sam recalls with a chuckle.
“I remember going to school and there
were only white children,” she adds,
face mimicking that of a confused
kid. It’s impossible not to laugh as she
recounts the tale of having apartheid
explained to her by her new teacher, and
going home to her mother complaining
that South Africans were crazy, with
their “partye” system and their weird
rules.
As hilarious as the situation may be
in retrospect, for a ten-year-old girl it
was understandably confusing, and just
one more way that Sam found herself
standing apart from her peers at a time
when fitting in was all she wanted. She
became an outsider, going through the
motions of school and life, but without
any real human connections – and none
of the comforts of her old home.
“Then one day, this girl was telling
me that she’d started teenage modelling,
and she made this big amount of
money,” Sam continues, hands waving
energetically in the air as she warms
to her story. “So I thought ‘Well, that’s
a very good idea’, cause I obviously
didn’t have all the things I used to have
when I was living in Zim. So I said,
‘Mom, I’m going to be a model.’ And
she was like, ‘Ohhkay darling...’”
That moment, as impulsive as it may
have been, set in motion the wheels that
would take Sam to some of the greatest
highs and lowest lows of her life.
At 12 years old, Sam began her
modelling career with Mulligans in
Cape Town, and as she describes doing
her homework in the make-up chair,
That moment,
as impulsive as it
may have been,
set in motion some
of the greatest highs
and lowest lows
of Sam’s life.
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time, since sanctions on apartheid South
Africa meant we didn’t get them in our
country. “So I was in Milan, I didn’t
speak the language, I didn’t have my
mom with me. The agency promised
they were going to look after me and
give me a driver… They didn’t!” she
exclaims with mock surprise. “They
put me on a metro with a map – I was
like, standard six, standard seven! It
was fight or flight kind of mode that I
went into, you know?”
The driving force that kept her
going was the escape she found in
front of the camera. “I didn’t want the
world,” she tells me, “I didn’t want
the process of getting there, but the
minute I got in front of a camera, that
was my playground and I could tell the
story. I felt in control because I was the
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF SAM PEGG
I have to ask if accepting models that
young was standard practice in those
days.
“No, I don’t think it was standard,
but it was during the time where Milla
[Jovovitch] and Monica [Belucci] and
all of them were coming out,” Sam
replies, thoughtfully. “It was a phase
everyone was going through of taking
very young girls and dressing them up
to look older. Milla was 11 when I met
her in Milan for the first time, and she
was shooting the cover of Lei Magazine,
which is like, mad, you know?”
“I was a kid,” Sam adds with a shrug,
“but in big-people clothing. I remember
in the beginning I was still playing
Barbies, you know? I was Barbie, and
then I went home and played Barbie.”
She shakes her head at the memory.
Having heard plenty of stories of
the challenges adult girls can face in
the modelling world, I ask Sam what it
was like for her, navigating the industry
at so young an age. She bursts into wry
laughter, shaking her head once again
as she dives into the story of her first,
big, modelling trip overseas.
“When I was 14, an agency took me
for my six week June-July holiday to
Milan,” she begins, “and there I started
to model in big, glossy magazines.”
Chuckling, she admits that she had no
idea what the magazines were at the
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF SAM PEGG
FEATURE
storyteller. The rest of it, I didn’t want
to see it or feel it – I just wanted to be
in front of the camera.”
Of course, as her career blossomed,
there were times the camera didn’t
hold the escape that Sam longed for.
One particular shoot burned itself into
Sam’s memory as a low point in both
her life and her career.
“I remember my 21st birthday – it
was the time in Paris when everyone
suddenly discovered heroin,” she
recalls. “It was, like, eight o’clock at
night and I’d been shooting since that
morning on this incredible editorial –
it was one of those very tough shoots:
I’d had ball gowns on, I had bruises,
you know… The next thing I knew, the
photographer was so off his face he was
lying on the floor… and he’d forgotten
to put film in half the cameras, and
he’d exposed most of the other half! I
just wanted to go home – I wanted to
spend my 21st birthday at home.” Sam
sighs as she remembers her anger and
frustration. “We needed to reshoot nine
shots, and the photographer was just
lying on the floor… At that moment in
my life, something inside me was just
like, ‘What am I doing?!’”
“I went to my agency after that,”
she continues, “and told them ‘I don’t’
want this for myself anymore. I counted
centimes to get here! I’m in the best
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FEATURE
magazines in the city, but I have no
money, and my 21st birthday was some
heroin addict trying to get a camera in
his hand…’ And they were like, ‘But
Cherie, you are famous…!’ and I was
like, ‘No! I’m sad!’ After that they put
me on retainer, and I started shooting
catalogues and stuff again, and things
got better. But I didn’t buy into the
fame, and they couldn’t understand
why I didn’t like it.”
When I ask how she coped with
it all, Sam reveals a natural instinct
to withdraw emotionally from her
environment. “When things get a bit
overwhelming, I just shut off,” she
explains, “so I would just go into action
– I would go through the motions, and
somehow, emotionally, just not absorb
the whole thing.”
Experiencing so much so young
meant Sam was forced to grow up
extremely fast in many ways, but
her detachment kept her emotional
development from keeping pace with
the rest. She became impulsive, with
a habit of leaping into things without
thinking them through.
It was this impulsiveness that saw
16-year-old Sam deciding to cut her
nearly waist-length hair off on a whim.
“I saw a Fellini movie that had a nice
guy in it that had a nice haircut,” she
recalls with a grin, admitting that she
hadn’t actually understood a word of
the film, but saw something she liked,
visually, and decided to go for it. “Two
salons in Milan refused to cut my hair
– Italian men going ‘Carina, no! Is
not possible! I cannot!’” she relays in
a perfect Italian accent that has us all
giggling. “The man that did eventually
cut it was half in tears the whole time!”
she adds with a laugh, joking that the
whole incident was very “Britany
Spears” of her. Her bookers, of course,
were absolutely horrified.
Her tendency to leap into things
also extended to Sam’s romantic
relationships. “I’m a serial engager,”
she reveals, peeking through her
eyelashes, and joking about her “bad
habit” of giving the rings back. “My first
engagement was when I was 19, but by
19 I had lived so much that all I wanted
was a normal life. I wanted to be Mrs
Brady – that was what I thought was
normal.” She pauses for effect, before
ending with ironic humour: “And, you
know… Mrs Brady drank…”
Drinking and drugs are something
Sam has had her fair share of hands-on
experience with. “I don’t remember my
twenties,” she jokes, “No, really… Can
you say blaaaack out?” When I ask how
she got into drugs, her grin becomes
wry, however. “I’ve got a PHD in selfabuse. And it was just there. It was
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF SAM PEGG
FEATURE
available, it was the nineties, it was
grunge. I’m glad I didn’t do the heroinchic,” she adds with big eyes, “because
that would have just been a disaster!”
Chemicals weren’t the only toxic
things in Sam’s life at the time,
however. “I went through a bad time
with relationships, because I didn’t feel
worth enough in myself,” she reveals.
“I was voted one of the top 50 most
beautiful women in the world by Time
Magazine or someone,” she recalls,
“and I looked at myself and I hated
myself! What made me so special? I
was just a young girl from Zimbabwe
who liked to tell stories… and it had all
just gotten too complicated.”
In an effort to simplify her life
and find the stability she craved, and
believing that she’d found true love at
last, Sam finally followed through on
an engagement at the age of 27. “I got
married, and it was awesome… but I
was married to him and he was married
to rock and roll. So we didn’t have the
same priorities,” she says honestly,
without a hint of bitterness in her voice.
Her marriage may not have been
perfect, but it did give Sam one, invaluable
gift: motherhood. She returned to Cape
Town in 2000, pregnant with her son,
Jagger.
“It’s intense – it’s really, really
intense just to be a mommy,” Sam
says with passion, “and I’m so grateful
because that saved me from myself.”
Now a mother of two, it’s crystal
clear that Sam is an utterly devoted
mother, and she frequently interjects
our conversation with loving stories
about Jagger (now 13) and Noa (8).
“My children are my biggest teachers,”
she smiles, tenderly. “They’ve taught
me things about myself that I would
never have had the opportunity to learn.
They are my weakness, completely, in
every way. They’re my joy, my tears,
my inbetweeners. And I’m so grateful
– because of them I got to understand
love.”
As any mom could tell you,
motherhood is far from easy, however,
and after the birth of her second child,
Noa, Sam found herself bordering on
complete exhaustion. “I lost 22kg in
three months, I was working day and
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SAM HAS “JAGGER” TATTOOED ON
HER LEFT SHOULDER, AND “NOA”
TATTOOED ON HER RIGHT HAND.
HER RING FINGER HAS A TATTOO
OF THE HOLY CROSS.
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night, I had a colicky baby…” she
recalls with a grimace, “and I had a panic
attack.” As she describes the event that
would become a turning point in her
life, her voice fills with contempt, not
for her own experience, but for what
followed.
“I wanted to stop my car in the
middle of the highway in case I crashed
my car into another car while changing
lanes,” she explains in a flurry of words.
“I was tired, I needed sleep… but they
just drugged me.” Her tone oozes
disgust. She was officially diagnosed
with bipolar disorder – something she
now believes was a travesty. “I was just
tired! There’s nothing wrong with that!
I had a panic attack! And they drugged
me, and the one drug didn’t work, so
they gave me another drug, and another
drug, and there was self-medicating in
between…”
With her life spiralling out of control,
Sam also faced the realisation that
her relationship with Noa’s father had
run its course. “I think I was probably
hell on wheels for him,” she admits,
acknowledging that the amount of
medication she was on would have put
a strain on any loving relationship. It
was at this point that she realised she
needed to sort her life out and find out
who she really was, if she was going to
be the kind of mother to her children
that she wanted to be.
“I hadn’t grown up since I was 13,”
she says sadly, “My coping mechanism
was to shut off from the world.” A
lopsided smile lifts her mouth as
she recalls seeing “The Runaway
FEATURE
“TODAY, AS A MOM, I SOMETIMES JUST WATCH THE
SUNLIGHT IN MY CHILDREN’S HAIR AS THEY WALK
TOWARDS ME. AND I DRINK IN THOSE MOMENTS,
BECAUSE THEY GROW UP, AND I KNOW WHAT IT’S
LIKE TO LOSE A CHILDHOOD TOO QUICKLY.
IT IS, MAYBE, VICARIOUSLY THROUGH THEM THAT
I SEE MY CHILDHOOD IN ANOTHER LIGHT.”
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FEATURE
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF SAM PEGG
Bride” starring Julia Roberts. “It’s a
bit embarrassing to tell this story,” she
chuckles, “but in the movie she was like
‘How do I like my eggs in the morning?’
And you know what? I did the same
thing! I realised that I don’t even know
how I like my breakfast. So I went and
prepared all the different kinds of eggs
that I’d been forced to eat, and I found
out that I like soft poached eggs. At 35!
I was a bit of a late developer…” she
ends with another throaty chuckle.
Determined to reclaim control of
her life, Sam sent both her kids to stay
with Noa’s father for a few months
before stopping all her medication. “I
didn’t want to grab for drugs anymore,
I wanted to grab for myself,” she says
vehemently. It was a difficult process,
SAM IS IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING
A SERIES OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS.
THE MAIN CHARACTER IS BASED ON
HER DAUGHTER, NOA.
and one she strongly believes she
would never have succeeded in without
rediscovering her relationship with
God.
“I was brought up Catholic, because
my dad was Catholic,” she tells me,
explaining that she had always had
a spiritual centre, but had become
disconnected from it just like she had
become disconnected from the world.
“It’s like I was separated from it, in this
pit of a hole that just had acid poured
into it,” she describes, vividly, going
on to explain the strength and comfort
that she found on giving herself back to
her beliefs.
As part of her reconnection with her
spirituality, Sam began participating
in outreach programs. “I started going
out of my own little bubble of Sam
Pegg, and into the world, and realising
that there were people out there who
needed my big mouth,” she recalls.
Focussing so intensely on helping
others, however, meant Sam paid little
attention to herself, and she got a very
rude awakening when one of the nursing
sisters she worked with told her she had
middle-age obesity.
“I never looked at myself naked,”
Sam exclaims, “because I was so busy
saving the world, in my head, in my
little super-girl outfit!” She pantomimes
taking off in flight, with one hand
FEATURE
I was on my own little
crusade, and the next thing
...I’m obese!
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pointing to the sky, singing a rousing
hero’s melody, before collapsing in
laughter. “I was on my own little crusade,
crusading for Christ, and the next thing
I was slapped up with my ego saying
‘Oh, you’re obese!’ And that kind of
deflated the super-girl… She went down
the hill, rolled into a corner and had a
Prozac, you know what I’m saying?”
she finishes with a giggle.
As we wipe tears of laughter from our
eyes, Sam tells us about the exploration
into nutrition that followed, resulting
in her own loss of over 20kg, and the
creation of her diet and recipe book that
launches in September this year. “It’s
not about losing weight,” she says with
a smile, “it’s about losing the emotional
attachment that we have to each fat
cell.”
Weight problems and bruised
ego aside, Sam wasn’t deterred from
her outreach work and she became
a counsellor, working closely with
organisations like the Saartjie Baartman
Centre for Women and Children. In
the process of counselling others, Sam
noticed that she was also emotionally
processing experiences from her own
past. “I grew with them,” she says,
simply. “Every one of my clients that
See Behind the Scenes Footage
“SECOND TIME AROUND, SO TO SPEAK,
IS EXCITING. AND IF I CAN STILL MAKE
PEOPLE DREAM AND I CAN TELL A
COOL STORY, AND GIVE THEM A LITTLE
HOLIDAY FROM THEIR LIFE WHEN THEY
SEE MY PICTURE, THEN WHY NOT,
YOU KNOW?” – SAM ON RE-LAUNCHING
HER MODELLING CAREER AND THE
SAM PEGG BRAND.
I’ve ever counselled has counselled
me. And I would be a liar to say they
didn’t. We are all in this together – we
mirror healing and we mirror pain.”
One of the clients Sam remembers
most fondly was a tik-addicted father
who dreamed of kicking the habit and
becoming a chef in a particular local
restaurant. So Crusader Sam put on her
cloak, and knocked on the restaurant’s
door. “I have one of my clients that is
no longer on tik, and he wants to work
as a chef in your restaurant,” Sam says,
playacting the scenario for us. We laugh,
as she mimics the expression on the
restaurant manager’s face. After a little
persuasion, however, she managed to
convince him to give her client a job
washing dishes with the possibility of
working his way up the ranks.
Months later, that client, still sober,
cooked Sam breakfast as a thank you.
And this time, she knew exactly how
she wanted her eggs.