"Everyone's paparazzi now"

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has the kind of gentle beauty one might have sketched on the back of a book during double maths in 1991. Sitting with her in the restaurant of a Soho hotel is to gratefully disappear. Not only do the other diners stare at her with the wide-eyed beam of cars at night, but outside in the rain hovers a middle-aged man with a camera. Everything about his posture says, "This wasn't the life I planned."

It is an anniversary, of sorts. It is 10 years since Rosie, now 26, left school (and her parents' Devonshire farm) to became a model. Last summer she was promoted from face of Marks & Spencer to designer (with M&S's Soozie Jenkinson) of her own line – it was the fastest-selling collection in the company's history. A face of Burberry, and a Victoria's Secret "angel", today she lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend, actor Jason Statham, who has helped her move sideways into film – she made her acting debut in 2011, in Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and this year filmed another action franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road. Although she says the words within implied quote marks, "Brand Rosie" is booming.

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