Kate Moss’ Calvin Klein feud with ‘d***head’ Mark Wahlberg who body shamed her

Kate Moss and Mark Wahlberg’s iconic Calvin Klein shoot was fraught with animosity and led to Kate having a breakdown

Some say the iconic 1992 Calvin Klein ad campaign with Kate Moss and Mark Wahlberg was the making of her career.

But for Kate, who turns 46 today, the shoot actually sparked one of the darkest times in her life.

Then just 17 and painfully self conscious about the size of her breasts, Kate was deeply uncomfortable about straddling the rapper-turned-actor whilst wearing no top.

But to make matters worse, she and Mark, who was then known as Marky Mark, are said to have absolutely hated each other.

There was no chemistry between the pair and the set was not a happy one.

“Oh, my god. [Mark] and Kate couldn’t stand each other,” Calvin Klein told Marc Jacobs about the campaign in 2013.

“I had a tough time with her, too… from the very beginning. She had gone through some difficult times, and it sometimes came through in the work and in the attitude… She ended up being really great, though.”

Image:
The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

Apparently annoyed by his preening and vanity, Kate later accused Mark of making an awkward situation even worse.

“I was such a nervous wreck,” she told writer Glen O’Brien.

“At the time he [Mark] was such a d**khead. He wasn’t very nice.”

And Mark fired back, taking aim at Kate’s slender figure and sniping that he liked women with more meat on their bones.

Image:
PA)

PA)

“I wasn’t into the waif thing. She kind of looked like my nephew,” he told Nuts magazine.

“I mean she’s beautiful – she’s a very pretty nephew – but I’m more into curvy women.”

But behind the mud-slinging, at the time of the shoot Kate was drinking heavily and burning the candle at both ends.

And it was on the Calvin Klein shoot that things finally came to a head.

“I had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18, when I had to go and work with Marky Mark and Herb Ritts,” she once told Vanity Fair.

“It didn’t feel like me at all. I felt really bad about straddling this buff guy. I didn’t like it.

“I couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die.”

Desperate to get help, she turned to her photographer boyfriend Mario Sorrenti’s mum Francesca, who saved her from a path of medication.

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PA)

PA)

Kate recalled: “I went to the doctor, and he said, ‘I’ll give you some Valium,’ and Francesca Sorrenti, thank God, said, ‘You’re not taking that.’ It was just anxiety. Nobody takes care of you mentally.

“There’s a massive pressure to do what you have to do.”

Nevertheless, the campaign revived Calvin Klein’s fortunes and made Kate’s look – and her career – the next big thing.

Klein reflected: “For me, Kate’s body represented closing the door on the excessiveness of the eighties.

Image:
Getty)

Getty)

“So many women models would come to me where they’ve distorted their bodies by implants in their breasts, changing their hips, changing their knees… I mean, you just cannot imagine what models were doing to themselves, what women have been doing to themselves.

“I think something changed dramatically in the ninties. And I was looking for someone who could represent something that’s more natural.”

Kate went on to enjoy one of the most successful careers in history, amassing an estimated £55million and becoming one of the most photographed faces on the planet.