Cara Delevingne is a model actress with attitude

She’s feisty, but she’s her own woman, writes Susan Griffin of the actress and model about to

AS ONE of the world’s most in-demand models, it’s not a shock to see Cara Delevingne splashed across newspapers.

Recent headlines about the 22-year-old fashion star didn’t have anything to do with photo campaigns or glamorous parties, however, but a particularly awkward interview on an American TV show.

Following the encounter, Delevingne tweeted “Some people just don’t understand sarcasm,” while John Green, the author of Paper Towns (Delevingne stars in the upcoming big-screen adaptation), leaped to her defence, pointing out the “annoying” questions she’d faced and describing the process of selling a movie as “inherently dehumanising”.

The model-turned-actress might be young, but she’s not lacking in confidence. Before today’s interview can commence, she bemoans the previous journalist’s efforts.

“The last one was terrible, right?” she says over her shoulder to an assistant.

Despite the precociousness, the British star says she’s full of self-doubt. “I never think I’m going to get something and I doubt myself constantly. I don’t expect anything out of life, because then, I’m never disappointed,” she says.

Delevingne reveals she was so sure she hadn’t got the role of the mysterious Margo in Paper Towns, and was alone in a hotel room when the call came through to say she’d been cast. She promptly “freaked out”.

“I can’t tell you how I felt, because I was in love with the book and the character so much. Oh god, it was one of the best days of my life,” she says. “I ran around the room throwing things up in the air and screaming into pillows.”

Based on the 2008 novel by Green, who also penned The Fault In Our Stars (and also adapted for film), Paper Towns is a coming-of-age story centred on 17-year-old Quentin (or Q, played by Nat Wolff), and his enigmatic neighbour Margo.

Delevingne claims she was a lot more self-conscious in her late teens than her on-screen alter ego, but they do share the same daring and sense of adventure. “She’s fearless and I’m pretty goddam fearless. I love adventure more than anything. I don’t like to think before I do something, I just do it,” says the London-born model (her maternal grandmother was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, and her godmother is Joan Collins).

She attended boarding school from the age of 11 and notes “my parents didn’t have much say on my teenage years”.

She wouldn’t say she was rowdy, but “I would like to stir things up”.

“I’m not dumb, but I am very stubborn and like what I like,” she says.

“I was very opinionated and would like to disagree with teachers and debate things and answer back, but not in a rude way, I’m a polite person. A lot of teachers didn’t like that, and once a teacher didn’t like me, I decided not to try at all.”

Despite her status as a top-earning model, she reveals she’s wanted to act since she was five. “I’m a bit of a parrot, being the youngest child in quite a loud family. I used to sit and watch everything and copy and mimic people.”

Delevingne, who is reportedly dating singer Annie Clarke (St Vincent), asked her parents for an agent for her 13th birthday present. “I think my parents really wanted me to finish school and go to university. I just didn’t want to and my parents both left school at 16, so I was like, ‘I can do whatever I want’.”

After leaving school however, she signed up with Storm Models, after being spotted by the same woman who discovered Kate Moss. Her impish features and statement brows have earned her countless high-profile cover shoots and campaigns, but modelling was never going to be enough.

At 16, she says she came very close to being cast in Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, but the role went to the Australian actress Mia Wasikowska.

In 2012, she made her film debut with a small, non-speaking part in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina alongside Keira Knightley, and last year starred in Michael Winterbottom’s The Face Of An Angel. Following Paper Towns, she’ll appear in Pan with Hugh Jackman, London Fields alongside Johnny Depp, Kids In Love opposite fellow rising star Will Poulter and Tulip Fever co-starring Judi Dench.

She also recently began production on the superhero movie Suicide Squad, in which she’ll play a villain.

There’s been “a lot” of training in preparation for the role, she says. “I can’t really talk about it because I’ll get my hands chopped off, but it’s a lot.”

Delevingne loves nothing more than proving people wrong, she adds. “I love it when people make assumptions of me,” she says.

“When they meet me, they’re like, ‘god, I thought you’d be way more of a bitch’. But I like to charm people. That’s what I do.”

Paper Towns is released on Monday