The model-turned-actor tag can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, producers are keen for your beautiful face (and large following) to be involved with their project. On the other, well… Hollywood is littered with the broken dreams of models who thought they could act. Jourdan Dunn, one of the most successful models of her generation, is deter - mined not to be one of them.
I felt like I owe it to myself,’ she says over a cardboard cup of tea in a boardroom at ITV’s White City HQ. ‘Acting is something that I’ve always wanted to do, since I was a kid, way before I knew anything about fashion. I was always in front of the mirror at my grandma’s house, acting out different scenarios.’
Now 32, she has her first proper role in London-set ITV drama, Riches. It’s about a scramble for power between five siblings when their business mogul father dies, leaving his empire to the least-expected of his offspring. And it’s a fun, sexy, twisty six-parter that’s exactly what we all need in our lives right now. Dunn plays Davina, a small but pivotal role that allows a tantalising glimpse of her acting skills. She’s seductive, then vulnerable, then defiant. ‘She has main character energy,’ laughs Dunn, who holds her own against the show’s radiant star, Deborah Ayorinde, who has been in films as varied as Harriet and Girls Trip.
Today, Dunn is in ‘serious artiste’ attire of a black polo neck with jeans and a black beret. Although you expect a supermodel to be beautiful, it’s astonishing how striking she is, with long braids, longer limbs and God-given cheekbones.
You might wonder, if acting is what she has always wanted to do, why did it take until her 30s to do it? The main reason is that it wasn’t until the pandemic that she had time to pause and assess where her career might take her next. Before then, she was rather busy.
I felt like I owe it to myself. Acting is something that I’ve always wanted to do, since I was a kid, way before I knew anything about fashion.
Famously scouted in Hammersmith Primark at just 15, Dunn went on to walk for Prada and Valentino, and star in campaigns for Burberry, Yves Saint Laurent and Maybelline. In 2008, aged 18, she was Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards. Other career highlights include appearing in not one but two Beyoncé videos. She was at her mum’s house when she got the call about that particular job. ‘I was freaking out,’ she laughs. ‘I said to my mum: “All those years that I was upstairs practising like I was the fourth member [of Destiny’s Child] are finally paying off!”’ Meeting Bey did not disappoint. ‘One thing that I took from working with Beyoncé is how she makes everybody in the room feel,’ says Dunn. ‘She knows every - body, she looks everybody in the eye, she says hello and goodbye to everybody. People want to feel seen and she gives them that.’
So, barely time to take a breath, let alone consider her career, until the world ground to a halt in the spring of 2020. ‘Then I started asking myself the big questions, like what is my purpose? The pandemic was the perfect time to do a deep dive,’ she says. ‘I thought, you’ve got this time. How are you going to use it?’
Dunn had become disenchanted with the fashion industry. ‘I was at a stage where I was like, this doesn’t feel meaningful for me any more,’ she says. ‘I feel like I’m not expressing the different parts of Jourdan. There’s so much more.’
Having perfected the actor’s art of talking about herself in the third person, she signed up for classes at Identity School of Acting, which is also an agency, and which launched the careers of John Boyega and Letitia Wright. No one can say she isn’t taking the process seriously, putting in the hours to learn it properly. And therapy has been a big part of this creative shift.
She had tried therapy in the past, but it didn’t work for her. ‘I was in the headspace of: no one can tell me about me,’ she explains. ‘I am an A* student when it comes to Jourdan Dunn.’ But then she found a therapist who really got her, and helped her see things from a different perspective. Now, Dunn says she is ‘big on speaking to my inner child’ and, whenever she’s feeling exhausted or disenchanted, she imagines what her child - hood self would think of her life. ‘When I’m on set doing a TV show, or in Paris for a day… if you’d have told me this would be my life I would’ve been like, “What the hell? No way. Me?” So it’s exciting to feel like I’m becoming the woman I always wanted to be.’
She also loves meditation, affirmations and journalling, having written down her thoughts since she was 10. I wonder aloud if she would ever publish her diaries, and she doesn’t hesitate. ‘It’s great material,’ she says, ‘it should be published.’
Brent-born and Greenford-raised, Dunn is a west London girl through and through. Her mum, Dee, is her role model. She raised her daughter and two younger sons, Antoine and Kain, as a single parent — then supported Dunn when she got pregnant aged 18. Dunn has also been a single parent to her son, Riley.
‘Seeing my mum, my gran and my great gran being independent was an inspiration to me,’ she says. ‘Mum was superwoman and I was striving to be that, too. It’s only now that I can separate her from that role of superwoman mum, Riley’s grandma, and see her as just Dee, a woman. She did everything on her own because she had to, she was in sur - vival mode. If she could’ve chosen, she would’ve had more help. So I grew up wanting to be Little Miss Independent: “I don’t need help from nobody. I can do it on my own.” But now I’m realising that we all need support sometimes and, actually, that’s okay. You don’t need to be superwoman.’
She lights up when talking about her family, particularly Riley. He turns 13 this month and she is dealing with very relatable parental anxiety about his use of social media. ‘He’s on TikTok but only recently, and I’ve used the features to monitor that,’ she says. ‘But he has asked for Twitter and Instagram and all of these things. It’s so hard because I want to protect him, but also I have to trust him. He’s not easily influenced, he’s very clued up.’
When I remove all the politics — and there’s always politics in any industry — I love fashion and I love what I get to do
He recently appeared on her own Instagram feed in a shoot for H&M, which he loved ‘because he was getting paid’, she laughs. ‘He’s smart.’ Whether or not he’ll follow her into acting or modelling remains to be seen. ‘He doesn’t know what he wants to do yet,’ she says. ‘We’ve had good talks about it because, even though he’s only 12, his friends all seem to know what they want, which puts pressure on him. I want to remove that by saying, don’t stress. There are people my age and older who are still figuring it out.’
Dunn seems in a good place and excited about the future. Despite previous headlines, she hasn’t ‘quit’ the fashion industry, so we haven’t seen the last of her on the catwalk. ‘When I remove all the politics — and there’s always politics in any industry — I love fashion and I love what I get to do,’ she says. ‘It will always be a part of me for sure.’
Although there are no 2023 projects that she is able to talk about yet (‘I’m forever manifesting’), the future is bright. She says she would love to act on stage and the big screen, citing Viola Davis as an inspiration. ‘I’m stepping into my purpose,’ she says with certainty. ‘I’m stepping into the woman that I want to be; the woman that little Jourdan would be proud of. I’m honouring little JD.’
