She’s been doing the rounds in a series of glossy magazines since being named the Hottest Woman on Earth by Maxim, but Rosie Huntington-Whitely wasn’t always so popular.
The model-turned actress has opened up about her battle with former school ground bullies, who would call her ‘kipper lips’ and ‘t**t lips’. The 24-year-old revealed the taunts while stripping down to a sheer deep red gown and bikini bottoms for the July issue of GQ magazine.
It’s not the first time Rosie has posed for the magazine, but this time she admitted: ‘I was teased about the way I looked at school.’
While being photographed topless with her arm covering her modesty, she said: ‘I got teased because of my lips. ‘I used to get called T**t lips – because I had big lips but no breasts. And then I was called Kipper Lips.
‘There was a big group of girls that was Devon’s answer to Mean Girls, and they would storm the bathrooms shouting, ‘I’m going to f****ing deck you, Lips! See you on the school bus’.
‘And boys didn’t really go out with me.’
Despite the grim portrayal of her childhood, the Tavistock-born beauty did say she had fun with friends too. ‘We’d hang around in soggy jeans drinking cider. I did long for the city. But I was a very outdoorsy kid.
‘Until I was 15, riding was my thing – I was horse-obsessed.’
But her whole life suddenly changed when she was 17 and started a summer internship in the back room of a modelling agency. ‘I was shocked. I used to see all these supermodels walking into the agency – tall, elegant glamazons. I was just a big lump from Devon.
‘But within a year I was travelling to America, being booked for French Connection, Tommy Hillfiger, Abercrombie & Fitch. I started to make serious money.
‘Suddenly school didn’t seem quite so important.’
Since her big break, Rosie’s modeling career has sky-rocketed and seven years later, she has transformed into an actress for Michael Bay’s latest film. She replaced Megan Fox in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, out next month, and plays Shia LaBeouf’s girlfriend in the film.
The modest star says that although she doesn’t think she’ll become the next Meryl Streep, she’s willing to work hard for a shot to make it big in Hollywood.
‘Would I like even a sniff of Angelina Jolie’s career? Yes. Do I think I have a future in this business? I certainly hope so. And I’m going to work damn hard to make sure I do,’ she said. Rosie, who currently dates Jason Statham, added: ‘I’m not standing here and saying I’m an amazing actress or that I’ve had a heap of thespie training. But you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.’
