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Naomi Campbell on Fame: "I'd Like to Live Anonymously, But I'm Different"

The British beauty shares how she maintains normalcy under pressure.

(Photo: Interview Magazine, September 2013)

With good looks as famed as her persona, supermodel Namoi Campbell has spent years in the spotlight. It hasn’t always been easy, but the South London native says she accepts that scrutiny comes with the territory for being one of the world’s most famous models.

"I'd like to go around anonymously and just see things in a normal way like everybody does. But I'm different," she tells Interview in its September cover article, for which she is a featured cover along with fellow top models Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Amber Valetta, Daria Werbowy and Stephanie Seymour.

"It's an occupation, but I'm just a human being. Fame and all that, what can you do? It comes with the job. So I try not to let it stress me out,” Campbell says.

And while she relates that the modeling world still feels like a family, she admits that it has changed considerably since she first stepped onto the scene. “I was fortunate enough to have the wonderful designers and amazing photographers around me, and editors that I knew, and if I wanted to ask a question, I asked them,” she says, adding that today “the gap has broadened” between models and designers, something she addresses as a mentor on the Oxygen modeling competition series, The Face.
"I liked the idea because I like the word mentor. I don't want to judge someone. I like sharing my knowledge with my girls, and anything they ask me I'll try to do to help them. Any of my real friends who know me, know that's how I really am."

With more than 20 years in the business, she still looks back fondly on the days when she was starting out and on her mother who who served as her earliest mentor. "It wasn't easy to convince my mom, because she had put me into a private school and paid all this money for me to learn another type of job. But she was a trustful mother and I promised not to let her down."

We would have to agree that Ms. Campbell has certainly kept that promise.
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