Amanda de Cadenet tells Elizabeth Grice 

about her wild days as a teenager 

and her new life as actress and mother 

 The Telegraph(?), UK. Tuesday
                                             6 October 1998

AT a table deep inside a Notting Hill coffee shop,

I am waiting for the Walking Pout to appear.

Identifying Amanda de Cadenet should be no problem: big lips, big hair, big ego, big everything.

This is the Lolita who shocked her way through the Eighties. She was put into care because of her sexual precocity at 14, hosted television's most reviled chat show at 17, married Duran Duran's bass guitarist, John Taylor, at 19, had his baby before she was 20, then disappeared to America with him to give everybody a well-deserved rest.

Suddenly, there is a buzz at one of the tables outside. Two men and two girls have been joined by a streaky blonde in pink-rimmed sunglasses, a little denim skirt, bare legs and trainers. Her famous breasts are tightly hugged by a beige cashmere jumper, which in turn is being hugged by the foursome.

De Cadenet, the schoolgirl terror, mouthy celebrity and shameless presenter of Channel 4's The Word, is back in town. She says she has just bumped into some "really, really" old friends, people she's known since she was really young, and she hasn't seen them in years.

"It's a nice feeling," she says. "I don't have that in LA. How did I know I was going to come here and see people I knew 13 years ago?"

Within two minutes, de Cadenet is perched on a bar stool talking babies. Though her body language says something entirely different, her drawly, transatlantic voice dwells languorously on the idea of becoming a mother again.

She says that even in her wild days, all she ever wanted to do was settle down and start a family. When everyone else thought she was sleeping around, she was apparently assessing boyfriends as potential fathers. Taylor was the first and only ideal candidate. Until now. . .

She attributes her present dreamy mood to the arrival of a half-brother. Her father, the former racing driver Alain de Cadenet, has a four-month old baby by his long-time girlfriend.

"It was beautiful that they asked me to be there for the birth. Because they live in LA, I get to take care of my little brother, which makes me terribly broody."

De Cadenet has "just turned twenny-six" but, without the trademark lashings of lipstick and eye make-up, looks younger and prettier than she did at 16, and is certainly a lot quieter.

Her new voice is soft and sleepy, long drawn-out vowels curling upwards with her cigarette smoke. "Thankyooou, thankyooou," she sings to the waitress with the fruit salad. Even before she moves to a seat in the window, everybody seems to be watching her.

These days, she is trying to establish herself as a serious actress, and looks back on her hell-raising past through a conveniently milky film of forgiveness and forgetfulness. The bunking-off to London nightclubs from Benenden School, the brief modelling career, the plunge into a club scene rife with drugs and underage sex, the nude pose for Playboy magazine. . . why is that all that people want to talk about? "It seems so long agooo," she pleads.

Trouble began when she stopped training four hours a day to be an Olympic gymnast. "Within a period of about six months, I suddenly had a female - very female - body and I really didn't know what to do," she says plaintively. "People looked at me when I went down the street and responded to me differently. It was a real shock."

The way she responded to them was an even bigger shock, especially for her parents, who felt compelled to put her into care. She spent three months in the White City Children's Home, sleeping in a windowless room to avoid photographers.

"I was more dangerous inside than out," she says. "The other inmates were very aware of me, people camping outside, the attention. 'Oh, that's her.' I probably needed to be one among many and not given that special sort of treatment."

Some of the other girls didn't take kindly to her and smashed up her room, but she prefers to remember the friends she made. She bears no grudges towards her parents. "I resented my father for a while, but not any more. He did the best he could at the time. It was a desperate measure."

She claims she doesn't attract trouble any more, because she's not looking for it. "One gravitates towards what one is at the time."

Recently, she took her six-year-old daughter, Atlanta, to see the Spice Girls and recognised in them something familiar. "Guuurl power," she purrs. "You can be what you want. You can wear shiny, sparkly clothes. You can go out with a cute guy and have a career. Guuurl power. That's what I was like at 15."

Never mind that this was the age at which she revealed details of her sex life to a Sunday tabloid newspaper. What she remembers is an affinity with the spirit of Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech about being beautiful, talented, happy and free and living to your fullest potential. "That's how I felt. But I didn't have a clue. I was too young to know what to do about how I felt."

Having lived her teenage years on fast forward, by the ridiculous age of 19 de Cadenet was ready to settle down. "I wanted to make my own family because I have a dysfunctional family," she admitted later. "My parents split up when I was eight and that caused me immense problems."

Fed up with the sniping of the British press, she left for America with John Taylor and their three-month-old baby. For a time, she lived a bucolic idyll in a canyon above Beverly Hills. "I breastfed my child and grew vegetables and cooked with my child on my hip. My husband was at home. It was so simple. My heart was happy."

But the combined effects of domesticity and anonymity soon made her restless. De Cadenet, you feel, was not born to blush unseen among the racoons and the grasshoppers. She had celebrity contacts, such as Jack Nicholson, Courtney Love, Gérard Depardieu, Keanu Reeves, and she was a good networker.

"It's a fantasy to think that just 'cos of the way you look, or who you know, you'll get a job. No one's going to risk it if you don't know what you're doing. When I'm not working, I go right back to acting classes. I don't want to be a weak link."

First, there were small parts in Tarantino's Four Rooms and Allison Anders's Grace of My Heart. Later this year, she will be seen in Mascara, playing a woman who has a nervous breakdown. And there are two more films to come: Jonathan Kaplan's Brokedown Palace, in which she plays a convict in a Hong Kong prison who befriends two girls (Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale), and the independent film Implicated, where she is an American barmaid.

For the past three years, she and Taylor (who also has a home in LA) have lived apart, in a state of mutual "love and respect", while jointly caring for Atlanta. "We are really good friends, but we couldn't live together. To me, the most important thing is that our child has two parents who are happy."

She paints a picture of the simple life: early rising, packed lunches, school runs, wholesome cooking, food shopping, drama classes, photography, having girlfriends round.

"I really like being at home. I'm not bothered if I become a movie star or not. I just want to keep on earning my living the way I do. It no longer matters to me whether anyone knows who I am."

But just in case, she makes regular appearances in Hello! magazine (four since 1990) and has just done a photo-shoot for the cover of Esquire.

"I take my responsibility as a mother very seriously," she says, more than once. "The reason I haven't been involved with anyone for years is that whoever is in my life is in my daughter's life. I don't want to share it with just anybody.

"I have been very happy by myself, actually. I don't want some once-in-a-while casual thing. I'm not that kind of woman. I tried to be for a time, but all I ever wanted was to have babies. . . I still feel that way."

De Cadenet, the original wild child, says many curious things, but this is not the most improbable. When a woman comes into the café pushing a sleeping child in a buggy, the conversation stops and she falls into a helpless reverie.

"My daughter said if I didn't have a child within the next two years, could I please adopt one. I really think I should oblige."

Does she have someone in mind as potential father? Keanu Reeves, perhaps? (Their names have been linked for at least three years.)

"He is one of my closest friends and has been for years. But because I haven't been with anybody, and neither has he, it has been assumed. . . but no."

As a diversionary tactic, she pounces with scorn on a recent newspaper photograph of the film star, looking gaunt and therefore assumed to be ill. On the contrary, she can vouch personally that he is "a healthy boy" who lost all his body fat practising kung-fu six hours a day for his new film.

That sort of assumption, she says, is why she doesn't read newspapers or watch television. "It pisses me off. I got sick of seeing stuff like that about myself and about people I know and love and care about. I know the feeling."

So she wasn't the impervious brat we all took her for. She was, of course, an attention-seeker, but she suffered and she is still angry. "There's no respect for human life and inner quality."

Just as the conversation shifts back to her own reputation, her eyes narrow and grow dreamy again.

"That's my man," she says, as a tall, lean boy with dark curls and stubble lopes across the road. She introduces him as Nick Kamen, whom she has known, yes, since she was 13.

Kamen - one-time model, pop singer and now a professional artist - is best remembered for removing his 501 jeans in a launderette for an Eighties Levi's ad. He is packing up to join her in LA.

"I am very lucky to be with someone who honours my child," she says, "and has been selfless enough to say: I want to be with you."

Does he have children of his own?

"No," she says, "but he'll make a good dad."

First The Word, now the pictures

Amanda de Cadenet, the wildchild who made her name dancing on nightclub tables and hosting yoof TV now grows celery and understands the spirituality of animals. Oh, and she's also a photographer

ByHarriet Lane
Sunday March 4, 2001
The Observer

'I've been around such a long time, you'd think I must be 50 by now,' sighs Amanda de Cadenet. For someone who is 27, she certainly has packed it in. Since becoming Famous For Being Famous at 14, she has been in constant search of a niche to accommodate her peculiar brand of celebrity, a celebrity that has become more commonplace since the advent of docusoaps, reality TV and Heat magazine. Amanda was arguably the first WAIF (Why Am I Famous): young, posh, blonde, buxom and desperate for attention, she danced on nightclub tables in a rubber dress in 1987, much to the consternation of tabloid readers and the staff at her Wiltshire boarding school, who were under the impression she had been tucked up in her dormitory at the time.

After that, every step was a matter of public record: the three months in White City children's home after her parents called in the police; the relationship with the boy-band singer (when she was 15); the gig presenting Channel 4's notorious The Word (17); the Playboy shoot and marriage to a pop icon (19); motherhood and the grand exit to Hollywood and what was supposed to be a career in movies (20); a divorce (22) and a romance with Keanu Reeves. Nowadays, Amanda calls herself a photographer and has an exhibition coming up in LA. We should probably give thanks that she never experimented with pop - unlike her boyfriend of the past three years, Nick Kamen, who became very famous indeed after taking his jeans off for a 1986 commercial set in a launderette, and subsequently launched a successful assault on the charts. Amanda has known Nick (now a painter, 'quite abstract', firmly based in London) forever - since she was 14.

Do not make the mistake of assuming that Amanda is no longer famous. Why, news of her pregnancy was all over the Sun in January. Just one little problem there, as she points out with a philosophical shrug: she's not pregnant. No, she isn't having Nick's baby, she doesn't know where that came from, she's heard so many weird rumours about herself over the years. But she wouldn't mind having another child 'one day, one day, I don't know. I love him a lot.'

I ask if she always had her eye on Nick.

'Always, always,' says Amanda, guilelessly. 'There are only two men who I, like, big-time fancied.'

'Who's the other one?'

Amanda pulls a wry, isn't-it-obvious face: 'Keanu.' When asked how Nick and Keanu get on, she casts me a significant, omigod look, and gives the impression of longing to talk about them all afternoon - only not to a journalist. 'But Nick's the best-looking man I've ever seen, to me. There is never a time when he doesn't look good. Never! Ever-ever-ever. Which is great. Listen, I don't see him for months at a time. So when I'm with him, I stare at him. You know? I watch my boyfriend while he's asleep.'

On The Word, Amanda's voice was sloanily mid-Atlantic: the sort of voice that loiters at the junction of the King's Road and Rodeo Drive. Today, the languid consonants of the West Coast dominate, with a vocabulary to match. Her life, she says, is much easier now that she has found her 'format', by which she means eight hours' sleep, no dairy products, no wheat, no caffeine, a little yoga, an hour with a book every day. (Currently, she's reading Cherry by Mary Carr, an autobiographical account of a rebellious Texan adolescence.) Without blushing, she explains she has 'a real love of life', 'a thirst for life', and talks about 'my primary focus' and 'my emotional, psychological place at that time'. Statements conclude with a rhetorical 'you know?'

However, there are signs that the charms of Los Angeles are beginning to pall. Because she grew up in London and France, the daughter of a French motor-racing driver and a Manx model-turned-interior designer, she has 'a different kind of sensibility. Part of the life is very alien to me. Americans really love pop culture and I can only handle it for so long.' Amanda, a glorious product of the pop-culture factory line, has a habit of saying things like this without realising how comical they sound: her conversation is a curious mixture of woolliness and heartfelt sincerity. Listening to her, you're struck by how sophisticated she sounds, and at the same time how naive.

Were it not for her eight-year-old daughter Atlanta, she'd be back in the UK like a shot, but she and her ex-husband, Duran Duran's John Taylor (the one with the amazing chin), have joint custody, and he has remarried an American, 'so he's firmly stuck in Los Angeles'. But they're talking through the possibilities. 'I would love to come back for good, but it depends. It's just a question of working it out. I can't leave Atlanta in LA, I could never do that. I may end up staying there... I don't know.'

She and John originally stormed out of England in the early Nineties, after a photographer snapped her breastfeeding Atlanta on a Hyde Park bench. They ended up in Los Angeles because she was unknown there and 'as far as John was concerned, in America you've got Julia Roberts at the grocery shop, nobody cares - everyone's famous out there'. But things have changed a bit. 'I'm not anonymous in America any more, you know.' It must be a source of irritation that this is less attributable to her film career ('English prisoner' in Brokedown Palace , 'Receptionist' in Grace of My Heart ) than to a splashy social feud with ex-gal pal Courtney Love ('I, uh, don't really have anything to say about that'). Now that the National Enquirer is doorstepping her over the pregnancy story, London seems increasingly appealing, despite the fact that the British paparazzi bring out the bunting whenever she comes to town. Two hours after touching down at Heathrow, she was coming out of a Westbourne Grove health-food store with a girlfriend, clutching a soya barley cup, and there they all were, snapping away. 'Things are only as important as you make them out to be,' says Amanda, mellowly. 'That's really my experience. I've learnt that if you can't get rid of something, you have to find a way to live with it.'

At her suggestion, we've met in a smart, noisy little west London deli not far from Nick's home. She does not attract much attention until she tugs off her aviator shades, scarf and overcoat, releasing her tangle of lion-coloured hair (her brunette phase, captured in the recent self-portrait above, was shortlived) and those celebrated undulations. Nowadays, she favours jeans, a candy-pink V-neck and Converse sneakers, which she calls her 'Womble' look - light years away from those tight little black dresses and dagger heels she wore on telly - and despite the fact that she has been suffering from ME for the past year, there is a fetching milkmaid robustness to her appearance.

When the waiter comes over, Amanda, who has really lovely manners, gives him a dazzling smile and orders a hearty lunch: organic sausages and dairy-free mash with a decaf soya latte. She has come to London to talk about a possible exhibition of her photographs and to audition for a British film, but she will proceed with care. 'I will not sell anything ever again that I do not believe in. I'm not willing to do a job for pure financial gain. I've done that, and it wasn't worth it. I didn't even know that was what I was doing until a few years later when I realised, "Oh, the price was me".'

At the moment, she is putting together a collection of her work for the exhibition in LA. The subjects are 'flowers and women who are quite severely physically scarred. I always like imperfection. That's sort of human to me. That's why I photograph women's bodies: I'm not interested in some Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. It's the rolls of fat, saggy tits, whatever. That is beauty to me. That's what I look for. It's the truth. That's real.'

Her next project is 'women who marry men who have life sentences, or who are on death row. Don't you think that would be really good?' With a blithe lack of inhibition, Amanda declares: 'I tend to side with people who are considered the underdog. I have empathy.' She tells me about her latest project, photographing people with terminal illnesses for Marie-Claire magazine. The experience taught her that a) it's not worth worrying about tomorrow, and b) it helps if you have a faith.

Amanda has been interested in spiritual matters for the past six years. She says she believes in the earth force. 'You know, "the force is with you".' Her mother, Anna, who is deeply involved with Aids charities, Crisis and the Hurlingham Club, is Born Again. Amanda suspects her wildchild period, itself triggered by her parents' divorce, nudged her mother towards the Church. 'It sent her off in the right direction, I would say.'

Mother and daughter are now close. When Amanda was a child, Anna's passion for routine drove her crazy: now she and Atlanta have their own format, which involves having Chinese takeaway one night a week. Sometimes Monday, sometimes Thursday. Never the same night every week, because that would be too regular.

'When I was younger, routine was hell,' says Amanda earnestly. 'It felt like a trap. I hate the idea of people not being able to say what they want to say, be who they are. I don't think it's fair to crush the human spirit. When I was at school, I was told to wear knee socks. Well, now, what's that got to do with anything - with my future, with my career, with my exams, with my brain? But you got punished if you didn't wear knee socks. It's a power trip. Ephemeral shit. That I don't do well with, people asserting authority over others just for the hell of it. Like, injustice,' she continues, sounding very Californian. 'I have a major over-empathy with victims of injustice. Which is why if I watch the news I'm in tears all the time.' Oh dear.

There's lots to like about Amanda. She does have a sense of the absurd, though it is fairly well-hidden. After describing, at some length, the spiritual satisfaction she gets from growing beets and celery in her back garden, she adds quite mildly: 'Look, I live in LA, I can get a little metaphysical sometimes.' She is very engaging when talking about Atlanta, a football fanatic who rises at seven when Chelsea have a match so she can watch it live; and about their menagerie: 'cats and dogs and birds and fish and rabbits'. The chihuahua sounds like a bit of a star. 'I really hate dogs like that, but Zig is the cutest dog. People pay 300 bucks for cashmere sweaters for their dogs in LA, you know? Fuck that. We've made his out of socks. We cut the holes for his front legs and stitched his name on it - it's very ragga.'

Is Amanda's past always going to drown out her present, her future? She is doing her best not to let it. 'I'm not interested in sitting here and talking about choices I made when I was, like, 14 years old. I've done all that. Of course all those things make me the person I am today, but it is not where I live.'

Mostly, she tolerates my questions and addresses them with killer solemnity, but at one point she puts down her latte and says: 'I suddenly realised... I don't really do interviews so much any more. I find it quite exposing in a way. I have a friend who will not talk about anything to do with his personal life, nothing. If anyone talks about anything other than his work, he'll just sit there. He's a very hard interview.'

I say that he must be a bit of a superstar to get away with that.

'Yes, he is,' says Amanda, proudly.

Who?

'Oh, Keanu. He will just look at people. He will not answer the question.' It's a nice moment: Amanda, smitten with Keanu's mystique, effectively blowing her own.

Hello! UK interview

Amanda de Cadenet Interview

Amanda, what brings you to London after such a long spell away? "Basically I hadn't been in England for nearly three years and I wanted to see if perhaps I could work over here. I needed to know what acting opportunities would be available to me. I've been working hard over the past two weeks and it's great to be back.

"Another reason I'm here is that my daughter asked if she could come to England for her birthday treat. She's very American but she has this thing about being British, and wanted to return to her birthplace. It's also been great to see my mother and brother again - there's been so much to catch up on." What was the catalyst that forced you to leave England in the first place?

"I wanted peace and quiet in which to raise my daughter. The anonymity factor was important to me. I also think I needed a change, I'd lived here all my life and I wanted to study acting and I found a great teacher in LA whom I'd known since I was 16, so it was a place that I could go, study, and really take care of my kid." You've been quite critical of England in the past, saying it's full of suffering and misery with none of the "good life". Do you still feel that way?

"I think my perspective has changed. I'm not sure whether England has, but my perspective certainly has. I'm a very different person from the one I was. I've really enjoyed being here and so has Atlanta." Is there a temptation to return for good, having been here these past two weeks? "I have to say I am very tempted. London is where I'm from. I grew up here and I love it. It always feels like I'm coming home whenever I return, even if my real home is in Los Angeles."

Do you sometimes worry that LA isn't the best of places to bring up your child?

"Yes, and in many respects it isn't. Hollywood is very fickle, but I suppose you could say that of anywhere - it depends which circles you choose to mix in.

"There are aspects about it that I love thought. We live in a very quiet street with lots of trees and it's only 20 minutes drive from the beach. If you go an hour in the other direction you can snowboard. It's full of variety. In a way it offers a very free and natural life for a child."

You have brought up Atlanta as a single mother for four years now. Has it been tough on occasions? "I think it's hard being a single parent wherever you are. I'm lucky though because John is an amazing father and still remains very active in her life. He lives very nearby so she does have both of her parents around, which is great for her. We're both very involved.

"It can be hard though. I had to simplify things and ask myself what life is about. And I decided my life is primarily about my daughter - that's what is important - then my work and friends." How often does John get to see Atlanta?

"He sees her at least three times a week and we're always together for school events. We had a very amicable divorce and are good friends. In fact, we got divorced without lawyers and just figured it out between us! "We've worked hard to maintain an open communication because we are both Atlanta's parents and we have a lot of history and time together."

Is there any chance of the two of you rekindling your relationship? "Who knows? I never say never to anything but I should think it's extremely unlikely. Basically we're very good friends and I really care about him." What was it that drove you apart?

"John and I grew up together and however much we may love each other, when you're with each other from such a young age you suddenly realise you want different things out of life.

"I was only 17 years old when we started going out. We were married in Chelsea registry office when I was 19 and didn't have any idea what marriage was all about. What marriage means to me today and what it meant to me then, at 19, is entirely different. I now look on marriage as being a major commitment which involves honouring someone and taking serious vows in the eyes of God.

"If I were to get married again, I think I'd probably be more comfortable with a Buddist or Hindu ceremony. I'm more familiar with the beliefs of these two religions and I practise them. What I like about Buddism and Hinduism is there are no strict doctrines. It's about consciousness and your higher self and honouring that in people. "Having said all that, I like that fact that I've had a husband and that John's been my husband." Following your break-up, you've been linked to a series of desirable men from Keanu Reeves to Ashley Hamilton. Are you involved with anyone at the moment?

"I hate this question! Of course I still see Keanu, but as he's in Australia for eight months, it's a little difficult right now. But we stay closely in touch. Keanu doesn't like to discuss his private life and I have to honour that. Just asking me about it puts me in a difficult position. I'm just keen to let whatever happens, happen. I'm not holding onto any one idea or person, I'm just letting my life unfold naturally." It must be said that you achieved more notoriety in your teenage years than anyone to date. What drove you to behave in such an outrageous manner?

"A lot of my behaviour, I admit, was completely unacceptable to society, but what did I know? I went against the rules because other people were trying to make me into something I wasn't.

"Looking back I can now recognise that my behaviour was not on a par with what a 15-year-old should be doing. But who knows why I did everything earlier than anyone else. In a way I'd got it all out of my system and by the age of 19, I was done. I was sick of it. I've had a career now for 12 years and not many 26-year-olds can say that." What was your wild child lifestyle born out of - a desire to please, to get attention or just to have fun? "I have no idea. I could be in therapy for years trying to figure that one out. As far as I'm concerned, it's just what I did and thank God I'm alive and healthy and in the place that I'm in.

How would you feel if Atlanta were to follow in your footsteps and tread the same precarious path? "If that's her path, I wouldn't try to stop it - you can't. You can only educate your kids to see the cause and effect of certain actions. And either they adhere to it or they don't. You can't lock them up. I raise my daughter in a very open manner. There are no secrets. Atlanta is a really smart, loving little soul. She's a wonderful kid. And she's a great mix between John and me - she's got the best aspects of both of us." Were you close to both your parents as a child?

"I had a great childhood until I was about nine, then my parents split. After that my world rather collapsed but I can't blame my behaviour on that. Although they both had custody I lived with my mum and for a while I wasn't at all close to my father.

"Having Atlanta has changed all that though. He now has a house just up the road from me in LA and I see him frequently."

There was that obviously terrible spell in your life when you were put into care, just how much did that affect you?

"At the time I resented it, but looking back it was probably the best thing for me. The mere fact of being put there was an enormous shock, but I realise now it all happened the way it was supposed to. Basically, the past is the past and I feel it is irrelevant to the reality of today."

How was your childhood different from the way you're now bringing up Atlanta?

"I don't really know. In fact it's probably pretty similar. Atlanta has two parents that travel a lot and I raise my daughter with a lot of love, openness and acceptance, the same way I was raised." What drives you?

"I enjoy life. I enjoy making and creating things and I'm naturally curious. I hate to do nothing, which is why if I'm not working on a film, I'm writing poetry or articles, studying photography and of course attending acting school.

"The bottom line is that whatever I'm doing, if it doesn't bring me peace or happiness then I don't want to do it. I don't want to be tortured by what I do. And of course I want to do my best at all times." What projects have you been working on recently?

"I've just finished a number of films, including Implicated with Billy McNamara and Brokedown Palace with Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale. But whenever I'm not working I go back to acting school. I need to keep up with what's going on and to stay on top of the profession."

What, to date, has been the proudest moment of your life?

"I have to say raising my daughter. I long for more children, but right now the time isn't right. I have so much to work on and being the kind of mother I am, I want to wait a while until Atlanta's a little older and things calm down, so I can be totally committed to looking after a baby."

How would you describe yourself?

"I just try to live truthfully and be open with myself. You have to be able to put your head on the pillow at night and be OK with your day. You have to look at how you interacted - what you gave, as opposed to what you took - and how you treated other people you came into contact with. All that's important to me." What ambitions do you have for the future?

"Probably to remain as content and happy as I am now."

If you could turn back the clock is there anything you'd change?

"Not at all. Everything happens the way it's supposed to happen. My life isn't what people imagine. It couldn't be more different from what it was all those years back. I changed completely after Atlanta and I'm disinterested in my past. It's over. Basically my life consists of my daughter and my work and that's it."

HOLLYWOOD LOVERS, produced by September Films, is a Meridian

presentation for  ITV. The series, devised by David Green, was

produced by Jannine Waddell and directed by David Cumming. The

executive producer is Paul Buller.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

AMANDA DE CADENET

As a single woman living in LA, Britain's original `wild child'

and former presenter of The Word Amanda de Cadenet finds herself

a target for predatory men.

"Over here, men are certainly of the opinion that women are easily

available," says Amanda in Life Without Men, this week's edition

of HOLLYWOOD LOVERS. "I feel bad generalising about it but it's

really true. I went to a Hollywood party the other night, not

having been out in a very long time. It was scary. Men are just

like piranhas. It's as if they think everyone has a price. I

just thought, `I don't care what kind of car you drive, I don't

care what studio you work for, I ain't into you.' But some people

are so desperate for success they get suckered into it."

At the age of 19 Amanda married one of Britain's most successful

rock stars, John Taylor of Duran Duran, and settled down to life

as a housewife. But after moving to LA and giving birth to a

daughter - Atlanta - the marriage broke down. Since then she has

dated, but only recently met someone special - on the Internet.

"He's a guy who's in a band who I think's really hot," says

Amanda, who refuses to name her new love. "I'd seen him around

but I'd never had his `phone number. He said in a letter that he

left on my computer that he'd split up from his girlfriend and

someone had given him my e-mail address.

"The Internet is a much more impersonal medium for people who

don't know how to interact when someone they like is in front of

them. So yes, I'd recommend dating on the Internet - it's worked

for me!"

Amanda believes she has more privacy in LA than she had in

England, and that she is able to be far more discreet. It's one

of the reasons she moved there in the first place.

"I can live my life without looking over my shoulder," she says

in the Californian twang she has developed. "I've been seeing

someone for a while and no-one knows about it. If I lived in

London and had the friends and relationships that I have here,

I'd probably never hear the end of it."

But however much Amanda is enjoying her life and freedom in LA,

she still has a huge amount of love and respect for John Taylor

- they are not divorced.

"I think marriage is the ultimate expression of your love for

somebody. I love my husband immensely. We don't live together,

but he is still my husband and I am still his wife. It's

something that's special. We married because we loved each other

hugely and still do and, you know, I always want him in my life.

"So I consider my marriage lasting. We don't hate each other and

he's still my best friend. If you love someone you want them to

be happy, to achieve their hopes and desires. I wish everything

for John that he wants. And if a woman comes into his life who

loves him the way he wants to be loved and vice versa -

wonderful."

Woman's Weekly (UK), November 20, 1995 

Keanu's wild child love

by Kate Russell

Can Hollywood's most private man handle Britain's wildest woman?

Keanu Reeves is planning to break the habit of a lifetime and go public about his love affair with blonde British wild child Amanda De Cadenet. In the past Keanu has shrouded his private life in secrecy, but friends say he's so crazy about Amanda that he can't stay silent any longer.

"They've kept their relationship quiet so far but it looks as if they're ready to go public," says one.

Shortly before he flew to New Zealand, to perform with his band Dogstar, superstar Keanu (30) was spotted enjoying an intimate motorbike ride with Amanda. The pair then sat right out in the open at a Beverly Hills pavement café and shared a drink or two.

"Keanu's just mad about her - he has to be, to be seen out with her, because he's such a private guy," says a friend.

The first public glimpse of Hollywood's hottest new couple came some weeks ago at the premiere of a new play, Four Dogs And A Bone, Amanda was snapped at the wheel of her Mercedes as she drove Keanu away from curious photographers who'd only ever seen him out in the past with his sister.

Friends reveal that this was hardly a first date - the couple have been meeting secretly ever since Amanda split from her husband, Duran Duran heart-throb John Taylor, early this year.

Keanu - who was interviewed by Mai FM's Robbie Rakete and Paul Holmes while in Auckland - has certainly earned his reputation for discretion. He shuns the limelight and no longer reads any articles written about him. "I get too angry at being misrepresented, misquoted, manipulated, being put on a pedestal and then knocked down."

He also tends to keep a low profile in Hollywood. "I hate being the centre of attention and I loathe my private life being discussed in public," he insists.

"I've never been part of the party scene - I don't have enough personality. And I really hate the idea of being recognized everywhere I go."

The same can hardly be said of notorious Amanda who's famous for packing more living into her 23 years than most people manage in 70.
 

·  At 12 she dyed her hair blonde

·  At 13 she smoked dope

·  At 14 she became a fixture on the London party scene

·  At 15 she was taken into care by the local council

·  At 17 she posed for Playboy, met John and became a TV presenter on the cult youth show The Word

·  At 19 she became pregnant and decided to marry John

·  At 20 she moved to Los Angeles in search of movie stardom.

In the three years since then, she's concentrated on bringing up her daughter Atlanta and finding small parts in several film - the latest being a role in Four Rooms, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Her antics have including posing for photographs totally naked from the waist down. "It's all about being in control of your sexuality," she pouts.

Before her marriage break-up, Amanda was romantically linked to a series of stars, including Jack Nicholson, Liam Neeson and Ashly Hamilton.

"I fall in love so easily," she says, "Once in a while I get carried away - I get irresponsible.

"I have lots of eligible men friends and, for me, intimacy isn't difficult."

But Keanu, it seems, is special.

"I can go over and see Keanu and talk to him about the most truthful and honest things about myself," she admits, "I don't have to hide anything."

The one thing that's certain is that, for the moment, neither she nor Keanu is interested in marriage.