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She struggled growing up with a troubled family.
By Nia Tipton — Written on Oct 03, 2022
Amid concerns about Cara Delevingne's mental state, her harrowing childhood, which the model has previously described as being "stressful," could point to the reasons behind her current behavior.
Fans of the 'Suicide Squad actress first noticed her distressed behavior after she was seen acting erratically as she disembarked from a private jet owned by Jay-Z last month.
A source told OK! magazine that Delevingne's behavior prompted her friends to start "planning an intervention."
"Everyone knows her mother abused substances for years. Her mother is lucky to be alive. Cara spent her whole life being around drugs. She comes from a very troubled family," they continued.
Here are details about Cara Delevingne's childhood and her mother's drug issues.
Delevingne previously opened up about her "very stressful" childhood during a cover story for Harper's Bazaar UK in February 2022.
The "Paper Towns" actress's mother, Pandora, had struggled with heroin addiction before giving birth to Delevingne and her two sisters, Poppy and Chloe.
While Delevingne was still a young child, her mother was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
"Everyone has something they go through with their family," she explained to Harper's Bazaar. "My life I feel was very stressful, because there was quite a lot of chaos, not being sure if people were okay or not."
Despite Delevingne's luxurious upbringing in London, as the model previously shared with Vogue in 2015, her mother's addiction and mental health issues greatly impacted her as she grew up.
"It shapes the childhood of every kid whose parent has an addiction," she explained. "My mother’s an amazingly strong person with a huge heart, and I adore her. But it’s not something you get better from, I don’t think."
"I know there are people who have stopped and are fine now, but not in my circumstance. She’s still struggling.”
Along with her mother's tragic background, Delevingne also struggled with mental health problems, which caused her to drop out of the Bedales School in Hampshire, England.
"I dropped out, and I really just wanted to be able to prove that I wasn't the deadbeat I thought I was," the model said. "When you have mental health struggles, you can't see anything, it blinds you."
When Delevingne became a model at 17, she told Harper's Bazaar that she struggled with severe depression and anxiety, which heightened as she tried to figure out her sexuality — eventually coming out as pansexual in 2017.
In a 2020 interview with Daily Mail, Delevingne's mother, Pandora, candidly spoke about her addiction and revealed that she'd first tried heroin just days after her 18th birthday, immediately getting hooked on the substance.
While Pandora Delevigne ended up beating her heroin addiction, she still found herself struggling with addictions to other substances.
"I had one go and that was it. It was the drug for me. It gave me all the things I didn't have - self-confidence mainly," she told the publication.
"My parents, who had to be quite strong with me by the end until I hit rock bottom, checked me into a treatment center in Weston-super-Mare. Later on, it was morphine pills, opiate-based pills, the strongest painkillers you can get."
"I just wanted to be able to live a normal day without the anxiety - or what I thought was normal. For a while, I would [but], of course, the addiction caught up with me. It always does."
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Keep up with her on Instagram and Twitter.