Kelly Brook giggled as she regaled me with tales of her very colourful love life.
There were laughs galore as she recounted the hilarious tales of rugby player Danny Cipriani’s terrible behaviour during an afternoon we spent at Hollywood’s world-famous Chateau Marmont gossiping over tea, and she smiled as she recalled what a ‘sweetie’ another ex, the American actor Billy Zane, had been.
But her tone suddenly changed when I mentioned Jason Statham, the British hardman actor who Kelly, then a very successful glamour model, dated for eight years between 1997 and 2004.
Back then they were top tabloid fodder and one of the most talked about celebrity couples.
Few will forget that dress, the very revealing Julien McDonald number she wore on the red carpet for the premiere of Snatch, the Guy Ritchie-directed gangster film in which Statham starred in 2000.
‘He was the best,’ she told me, coming across as melancholic for the first time during our meeting.
Kelly went on to express her regret at not making that relationship work. She even confessed that she knew how very different her life would have been had she and Jason made it down the aisle.
Few will forget that dress, the Julien McDonald number that Kelly Brook wore on the red carpet for the Snatch premier in 2000
Kelly with Jason Statham, the British hardman actor, when she was a very successful glamour model dated for eight years, from 1997, pictured in 2004, the year they broke up
Since then, Kelly has been engaged to Titanic star Billy, ex-rugby international and Strictly contestant Thom Evans, and Dave McIntosh, who starred on the Saturday night show Gladiators.
But she didn’t marry until she met Italian model and actor Jeremy Parisi, 40.
She even revealed that she would have probably had a family with Jason had they stayed together, conceding that his long-time fiancee Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is a ‘lucky woman’.
It is clear that Kelly, despite being in the early throes of love with judo champion Jeremy, is a woman with regrets over the ending of her relationship with Jason. He was, after all, her first love and she has fond memories of him.
When I first met Kelly I was working as a journalist and she was starring in the American sitcom One Big Happy, which was executive produced by Ellen DeGeneres.
I could relate to what she was going through as I’d once been a member of a panel on ITV’s Loose Women when they were discussing how a woman feels if her husband goes on to have children with someone else following a split.
Today, Kelly is married to model, actor and judo champ Jeremy Parisi. They wed in Italy in July 2022
Today, Jason and Rosie have two children: a son named Jack, eight, and a three-year-old daughter, Isabella.
Kelly, who turns 46 in November, last week spoke frankly about not being a mum. ‘The time has probably run out,’ she said, ‘I don’t know, I just have to get my head around it.’
She even discussed how she might feel if she and Jeremy broke up and he became a father with someone else.
‘If our marriage doesn’t end up successful in the long term, how would I feel seeing him go on and have children with other people? We made the decision early on that we wouldn’t have children, but I can’t say I wouldn’t be heartbroken.’
Kelly met Jeremy when she was 36 and, when we met shortly afterwards, she said that meeting her partner later in life played a big role in their choice.
She had just been involved in a nasty split from Dave McIntosh, who she had suspected of cheating on her (a claim he staunchly denied), and was thrilled to have found love again.
But she was conscious that she was no longer in the first flush of youth. ‘I met the love of my life so late, I met him at like 36!’ she said, adding that they had both agreed to prioritise a calmer lifestyle.
‘We just wanted a nice, peaceful life together,’ she admitted, explaining that neither she nor Jeremy felt drawn to the organised chaos involved in raising young children.
In 2011 and 2012, Kelly was devastated when she suffered two miscarriages while dating ex-rugby star and Strictly contestant Thom Evans, who is now dating former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger
While Kelly may have been open about not having children, indeed she has previously said she is ‘childless by choice’, she was devastated when she experienced a miscarriage in May 2011.
At the time she was in a relationship with Thom Evans and the couple lost a second child to a miscarriage a year later.
The couple broke up in January 2013 and Evans is now dating former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger.
Given Kelly’s willingness to be open about her private life, she is often asked about children during interviews.
Back in 2015, she seemed quite certain that motherhood wasn’t for her. ‘I think at this point it’s the wrong thing to do,’ she said. ‘I have everything I want right now. I love travelling, I love my job, I love being creative.
‘I’ve set myself up so nicely, I’ve got all my ducks in a row. It will take a really amazing person for me to change anything in my life right now because I have worked too hard.’
She went on to tell me how hard it is for self-employed women like herself to survive financially when they have babies because of the impact it has on their working life.
In 2009, with former professional rugby union player Danny Cipriani
Pictured shopping in Los Angeles in 2014 with ex-fiancé Dave McIntosh who starred on the Saturday night show Gladiators
Talking of which, it’s fair to say that work has always come first for Kelly, who grew up on a council estate in Rochester, Kent.
She fell into glamour modelling aged 16 and later became one of the UK’s most popular Page 3 girls. She hosted the original Love Island back in 2005, having presented Channel 4’s Big Breakfast before that.
‘She was always treated like an A-lister even though she is a glamour model,’ I remember one member of her circle telling me once.
Determined to break out of the modelling circuit, she went to acting school before jetting off to Tinseltown.
While Kelly returned to the UK after a year in Hollywood, Jason of course is still there, living between Los Angeles and Dulwich, south-east London, close to where he once lived with her.
As someone who saw the sadness in her eyes when she spoke of her break-up with the Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels star, I do so hope that Kelly doesn’t yearn too much for what might have been and that she really does mean it when she says that she is childless by choice.
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