Cara Delevingne says she threw herself into work to avoid dealing with addiction issues

Cara Delevingne is opening up about sobriety in the new issue of Vogue. Only four months clean, the actor and model admits in a new interview that paparazzi photos of her looking worn down following an excursion to Burning Man were a “wake up call” that prompted her to check into rehab. But in the months previous, Delevingne had used her career to avoid doing real work on herself.

During the pandemic lockdown, the Only Murders In The Building star says that she “just had a complete existential crisis.” She continues, “All my sense of belonging, all my validation—my identity, everything—was so wrapped up in work. And when that was gone, I felt like I had no purpose. I just wasn’t worth anything without work, and that was scary.” So when restrictions lifted, she threw herself into work: “I’m classically good at avoiding things, I just didn’t want to deal with my issues. And those are things I’ve been running from since I was a kid.”

Her post-pandemic, pre-sobriety slate included Only Murders, the now-canceled Carnival Row, and Planet Sex, the docuseries exploring sexuality and gender. “It was super personal and I didn’t really realize how personal it would be,” Delevingne says of the latter. “I’d only really learned how to show emotion when I was acting because I didn’t feel worthy enough to feel those things as myself. With Planet Sex, I was just so uncomfortable in front of the camera in the beginning because it was like, Oh, God, I’ve gotta be myself.”

Directors Jessica Chermayeff and Ana Veselic were impressed by Delevingne’s vulnerability. “She was scared in all the right ways,” Chermayeff tells Vogue, while Veselic adds: “Cara was very open. Not everything was this perfect platitude statement, this neat little answer that checks all the boxes. There were definitely gray areas. As a viewer, I really miss that in conversations like this, because it’s not black and white.”

Unfortunately, the death of Delevingne’s grandmother during filming for Planet Sex was another personal setback, and it would be many months before she had her moment of being “face-first on the floor and ready to get up again.” Now committed to the 12-step program, Delevingne has a new outlook. “Work is extremely important, but work is secondary because my self-work is the most important thing.”