Abbey Lee Kershaw went on a modeling hiatus to focus on her acting, landing her debut role in the Mad Max: Fury Road remake, also starring Charlize Theron and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. But, unlike fellow model-turned-actress Gemma Ward, she hasn’t totally thrown in the towel on her modeling career.
Kershaw is now the very naked focus of Hedi Slimane’s lens for the latest issue of 25 magazine. Wearing a messy brunette bob and little else, she shows off her truly insane body while posing amidst bed sheets, music instruments and the great outdoors (see the whole spread here). The black and white photos are beautifully grainy and don’t look at all forced. Probably also helps that Kershaw has no qualms about taking her clothes off — before her “comeback campaign” for Gucci’s Fall 2013 ads, the last time she made headlines was at the Met Gala when she lifted her sheer Rag & Bone dress to reveal “GUN CONTROL” Sharpied across her torso. And you probably remember the wildly NSFW music video for her Brooklyn-based band Our Mountain’s single “IV Horses” that was momentarily removed from YouTube.
The Met Gala brouhaha is also touched upon in an interview for i-D magazine’s recently relaunched website. Her favourite reaction to the ‘Gun Control’ statement was “she’s a stupid slut who was just looking for an excuse to take her clothes off,” concluding that they were spot on. Take that, haters. She also compares filming Mad Max to falling in love, and reveals that her dream role would have been Lisa Rowe in Girl Interrupted (with her blonde hair and default sleep-deprived chic beauty look, we can see this working).
Though she hopes to see herself in more movies than fashion campaigns, hopeful forum commenters make a valid point that a comeback could be in the works. Fellow Australian Catherine McNeil is back and better than ever after keeping a low profile for a few years. And Abbey Lee recently parted ways with the mother agency she’d had since 2005 to be locally managed by her father Kim Kershaw (she’s with NEXT overseas). Either way, we just hope she doesn’t let those ruthlessly Photoshopped Jill Stuart beauty ads be one of her final fashion legacies.
