Product Code Database
Dame Lesley Lawson ( née Hornby; born 19 September 1949), widely known by the nickname Twiggy, is an English model, actress, and singer. She was a British cultural icon and a prominent teenage model during the "swinging sixties" in London.
Twiggy was initially known for her thin build and the androgynous appearance considered to result from her big eyes, long eyelashes, and short hair. Best Models of All Time: #7 Twiggy Harper's Bazaar. She was named "The Face of 1966" by the Daily Express and voted British Woman of the Year. By 1967, she had modelled in France, Japan, and the US, and had appeared on the covers of Vogue and The Tatler; her fame had spread worldwide.
After modelling, Twiggy had a successful career as a screen, stage, and television actress. Her role in The Boy Friend (1971) earned her two Golden Globe Awards. In 1983, she made her Broadway theatre debut in the musical My One and Only, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She later hosted her own series, Twiggy's People, in which she interviewed celebrities, and appeared as a judge on the reality show America's Next Top Model. Her 1998 autobiography Twiggy in Black and White entered the best-seller lists. From 2005 onwards, she modelled for Marks and Spencer, appearing in television advertisements and print media. Twiggy has been credited for the company's successful revival at that time.
Twiggy's mother taught her to sew from an early age. She used this skill to make her own clothing. She attended the Brondesbury and Kilburn High School.
In January 1966, aged 16, she had her hair coloured and cut short in London at Leonard of Mayfair, owned by celebrity hairdresser Leonard. The hair stylist was looking for models on whom to try out his new crop haircut and he styled her hair in preparation for a few test head shots. A professional photographer Barry Lategan took several photos for Leonard, which the hairdresser hung in his salon. Deirdre McSharry, a fashion journalist from the Daily Express, saw the images and asked to meet the young girl.
McSharry arranged to have more photos taken. A few weeks later, the publication featured an article and images of Hornby, declaring her "The Face of '66". In it, the copy read: "The Cockney kid with a face to launch a thousand shapes... and she's only 16". The Daily Express, 23 February 1966. Quoted in:
Hornby's career quickly took off. She was short for a model at , weighed and had a 31–23–32 (79–58–81 cm) figure, "with a new kind of streamlined, androgynous sex appeal". Her hairdresser boyfriend, Nigel Davies, became her manager, changed his name to Justin de Villeneuve, and persuaded her to change her name to Twiggy (from "Twigs", her childhood nickname). De Villeneuve credits himself for Twiggy's discovery and her modelling success, and his version of events is often quoted in other biographies. In her 1998 book Twiggy In Black and White, she says that she met Justin through his brother, when she worked as a Saturday girl at a hairdressers in London. This is where she began to see the models in the magazines, but never thought she could do something like that. Jean Shrimpton was her idol, so she grew her hair long to look like her, before having to have it cut off for her headshots by Barry Lategan. Ten years her senior, De Villeneuve managed her lucrative career for seven years, overseeing her finances and enterprises during her heyday as a model.
Twiggy was soon seen in all the leading fashion magazines, commanding fees of Pound sterling80 an hour, bringing out her own line of clothes called "Twiggy Dresses" in 1967, and taking the fashion world by storm. "I hated what I looked like," she said once, "so I thought everyone had gone stark raving mad." Twiggy's look centred on three qualities: her stick-thin figure, a boyishly short haircut and strikingly dark eyelashes. Her signature look was achieved in part by applying three layers of false eyelashes.
One month after the Daily Express article, Twiggy posed for her first shoot for Vogue. Since then she has appeared on the cover of Vogue (and numerous international editions) 14 times.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2009 catalogue for its exhibition stated:
Twiggy's adolescent physique was the perfect frame for the androgynous styles that began to emerge in the 1960s. The trend was manifested in a number of templates: sweet A-line dresses with collars and neckties, suits and dresses that took their details from military uniforms, or, in the case of Yves Saint Laurent, an explicit transposition of the male tuxedo to women. Simultaneously, under the rubric of "unisex", designs that were minimalistic, including Nehru suits and space-agey jumpsuits, were proposed by designers such as Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges, and, most famously in the United States, by Rudi Gernreich.
Twiggy has been photographed by such noted photographers as Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Melvin Sokolsky, Ronald Traeger, Bert Stern, Norman Parkinson, Annie Leibovitz and Steven Meisel.
On 10 December 1969, despite being 20 years old, Twiggy was selected as the subject for one of the first editions produced by Thames Television of the television series This Is Your Life.
Twiggy then embarked on an acting and singing career, starring in a variety of roles on stage and screen, and recording albums. In 1971 she made her film debut as an extra, dressed as a male courtier, in Ken Russell's The Devils. The same year, she performed her first leading role as Polly Browne in Russell's adaptation of Sandy Wilson's pastiche of 1920s hit musicals, The Boy Friend (1971). This marked her initial collaboration with Tommy Tune and won her two Golden Globe Awards in 1972 (New Star of the Year – Actress and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy).
She broke off with Justin de Villeneuve, who had been overseeing her business affairs since 1966, and released him from his duties as her manager, claiming in later years that "her career had more to do with that famous picture of her with those funny painted eyelashes, which appeared in the Daily Express under the headline 'The Face of '66 than with his promotional efforts.
Also in 1971, Twiggy released the single "Zoo de Zoo Zong", written by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway and credited to Twiggy and Friends. In 1974, she made her West End stage debut in Cinderella; made a second feature, the thriller W (co-starring with her future husband Michael Witney); and hosted her own British television series Twiggs (later renamed Twiggy). In 1973, she appeared with David Bowie on the cover of his seventh album, Pin Ups. which entered the UK chart on 3 November 1973 and stayed there for 21 weeks, peaking at No. 1. She was also name-checked ("She'd sigh like Twig the wonder kid") in Bowie's song "Drive-In Saturday" for his Aladdin Sane album.
In October 1975, she sang at the live performance of Roger Glover's The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast album at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The concert was filmed and produced by Tony Klinger and released to cinemas in 1976. In November 1976, she made an appearance on The Muppet Show, in which she sang the Beatles song, "In My Life". In 1976, she signed to Mercury Records and released the albums Twiggy and Please Get My Name Right, that contained both pop and country tunes. Twiggy sold very well, peaking on the UK charts at No. 33, and gave Twiggy a silver disc for good sales. The album contains Twiggy's top-20 hit single, "Here I Go Again". "Please Get My Name Right" made it to No. 35 in 1977. The single, "A Woman in Love", failed to chart for Twiggy in 1977 but was a hit for the Three Degrees in 1979. Twiggy also sang some of the songs in the first volume of Captain Beaky and His Band in 1977.
In 1978, the television distribution arm of American International Pictures, in an effort to gain additional syndication value in the US to the LWT rock music series Supersonic, repackaged the musical performances with Twiggy replacing Mike Mansfield's introductions. The new series, titled Twiggy's Jukebox, ran in most of the major television markets in the US during the 1978–79 TV season. Coincidentally, Twiggy had performed "Here I Go Again" and "Vanilla Olay" on Supersonic in September 1976, and these performances were included in the refurbished programme. After the initial season, Twiggy left the series, and American International Television continued Jukebox with Britt Ekland as host, using standard music videos rather than clips from Supersonic. Twiggy appeared in "There Goes the Bride" with Tom Smothers in 1979.
In 1991, she co-starred in her first American network dramatic television series, the short-lived CBS sitcom Princesses. Of eight episodes completed, only five aired. (Her Princesses co-star, Fran Drescher, later spent some time with Twiggy and her family in England while developing Drescher's hit series The Nanny, and modelled the character Maxwell Sheffield on Twiggy's husband Leigh Lawson.)
In 1993, Twiggy appeared alongside Mark Hamill in the short segment "Eye" from the made-for-cable horror anthology Body Bags. In 1994, Twiggy guest-starred in the first ever Heartbeat Christmas special (in series 4), playing Lady Janet Whitley.
In 1997, Twiggy acted in the Chichester Festival Theatre revival of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit. A year later, she played Gertrude Lawrence in the biographical stage revue Noel and Gertie at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, Long Island. In 1999, she returned to the New York stage in an off-Broadway production, If Love Were All, a revised version of Noel and Gertie, written and directed by Leigh Lawson; what set this edition apart were its tap numbers in period style. She starred as Gertrude Lawrence opposite Harry Groener's Noël Coward.
In 2006, she portrayed herself as a 19-year-old in the radio play Elevenses with Twiggy, for BBC Radio 4's The Afternoon Play series. She did not return to America's Next Top Model in its tenth season due to scheduling conflicts. Her replacement was model Paulina Porizkova. Also in 2007, Sepia Records released a previously shelved album, Heaven in My Eyes "Discotheque", that Twiggy recorded in 1979, produced by Donna Summer and Juergen Koppers. She appeared in Marks & Spencer's 2008 Christmas ad campaign alongside Myleene Klass, Lily Cole, and others.
In the summer of 2009, the beauty products company Olay debuted its "Definity Eye Cream" campaign depicting Twiggy. Accusations of airbrushing created a stir with the media and public. A website campaign set up by Jo Swinson, the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP, attracted 700 individual complaints. Procter & Gamble admitted to minor retouching and replaced the image. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced that the ad gave a "misleading" impression, but that no further action was required because the image had already been withdrawn. Its announcement said:
In 2010, she started a Home Shopping Network fashion line called the "Twiggy London" collection.
On 21 November 2011, she released an album, Romantically Yours, through EMI. A collection of pop and easy listening standards spanning several generations, the album features versions of such compositions as "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", "Blue Moon", "My Funny Valentine", "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "They Can't Take That Away from Me", and London anthem "Waterloo Sunset". The album also includes a guest vocal appearance by Twiggy's daughter, Carly Lawson, on Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", a guitar solo by Bryan Adams, and a version of Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting" featuring duet vocals with the American songwriter himself. In 2012, she worked alongside Marks & Spencer's designers to launch an exclusive clothing collection for the M&S Woman range. In 2016, archive images of Twiggy, alongside images of Shrimpton and Jane Birkin, were used for Tod's Fall/Winter campaign.
On 22 November 2022, actress and filmmaker Sadie Frost teamed up with Twiggy to create an interactive virtual documentary about Twiggy's life. On 16 May 2023, the documentary's final scene was produced live at Cannes Marché du Film Festival (the Cannes Film Festival) 2023, in just 48 hours, using the on-site virtual production stage of film studio, Film Soho. Alongside this, a live virtual experience by metaverse company, Hadean, and live event visualisation solutions provider, disguise, made use of Unreal Engine to create a photo-realistic recreation of London's Carnaby Street in the 1960s, engaging users with interactive elements based on Twiggy's memories of the time.
Sadie Frost's documentary about Twiggy's life was released in UK and Ireland cinemas on 7 March 2025.
A jukebox musical based on Twiggy's life titled Twiggy The Musical was written and directed by Ben Elton and had its world premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London in September 2023 (originally as Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical). It will tour the UK from September 2025.
She met Leigh Lawson in 1984. In 1988, they worked on the film Madame Sousatzka and married that year in Sag Harbor, New York (on Long Island). The couple reside in Kensington, London and own a home in Southwold, Suffolk.
On Twiggy's official website, she states she is a supporter of breast cancer research, animal welfare, and anti-fur campaigns. She was one of the celebrities, including Tom Hiddleston, Jo Brand, E. L. James, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Rachel Riley, to design and sign her own card for the UK-based charity Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. The campaign was launched by crafting company Stampin' Up! UK, and the cards were auctioned off on eBay during May 2014.
| Uncredited |
| TV movie |
| TV movie |
| TV movie |
| TV movie |
| TV movie |
Singles
|
|
