GRAZIA INTERVIEW
The ’90s icon Claudia Schiffer is back in the spotlight with a new movie. But, discovers Emma McCarthy, she’s got competition – her cat is threatening to steal the limelight…
Claudia schiffer. A woman so famous for her astonishing good looks that her name has become a byword for beauty. She’s like the Uber of modelling. The Google of sex appeal. And yet, the first thing that strikes me about the founding member of the OG supermodel club and star of more than 1,000 magazine covers is that – in a devastating blow to mere mortals everywhere – she’s a good laugh, too. ‘I’ve adopted the dry English sense of humour, which has got me into trouble with my German friends who sometimes don’t understand my attempts at British sarcasm!’ says the Teutonic bombshell, who lives between London, Suffolk and Oxfordshire.
The ‘English countryside, Marmite and a great curry’ all feature on her list of very British things she’s fallen in love with, along with, of course, her film-maker husband Matthew Vaughn – a born-and-bred Londoner of Kingsman, Rocketman and Layer Cake fame – with whom she lives along with their three children, Caspar, 20, Clementine, 19, and Cosima, 13, and a menagerie of four dogs, two cats and three tortoises. In fact, one of her brood is now a future star in the making, courtesy of a lead role in Argylle, the latest movie from MARV film studio (which the power couple co-founded together, with Schiffer as executive producer on Argylle with Apple Original Films). But this isn’t the standard nepo-tale you might expect because it concerns not one of her offspring, but her cat, Chip.
In a plot twist no one saw coming, her three-year-old feline has made his silver screen debut in the role of Alfie, the lovable sidekick of Elly Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) in the spy comedy. ‘There was another cat originally on the film set, but he turned out to be a terrible actor,’ says the model-turned-momager. ‘Since being in the film, Chip has become buddies with his co-stars Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa and his ego has become insufferable. I hardly see him these days, between his Paw-lates sessions getting ready for his appearance at the world premiere, he has no time for me.’ There’s that wicked sense of humour again. But seriously, this is far from your average moggy – Chip has accompanied Schiffer on numerous photo shoots, boasts over 10k followers on Instagram (@chipthecat) and recently appeared on The Jonathan Ross Show. ‘Now I will be accompanying him on his travels,’ Schiffer jokes. He’s even penned his memoirs – Blue Chip: Confessions Of Claudia Schiffer’s Cat – which features charming illustrations by Angelica Hicks and details an encounter with fellow ‘It’ feline Choupette, owned by the late Karl Lagerfeld, whom Schiffer counted as a close friend and mentor since the pair met after she was
