There are many great duos in the history of cinema: Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma and Louise… One more will be added, the supermodel Kate Moss and the painter Lucian Freud. Their friendship is the subject of the anticipated film Moss and Freud, conceived by Moss herself and produced by the Lucian Freud Archive.

Moss was at the height of her glory when what the film narrates happened. She was the face of the ‘heroin chic’ period in modeling, starring in campaigns for Dior, Calvin Klein and other houses. In 2002 she was pregnant by her then-partner Jefferson Hack, co-founder of Dazed Media. Lucian Freud, grandson of Sigmund Freud, was a member of the ‘School of London’ group, along with Francis Bacon and David Hockney. He rarely painted celebrities, but invited Moss to pose for him after – it is said – reading an interview with her in iD magazine, in which Moss said one of her life’s goals was to pose for the painter.

For nine months during their seven-hour meetings, Moss appeared at Freud’s studio in Holland Park, learning from the artist “discipline”. He even scolded her for being five minutes late. A close relationship was born between them. The resulting painting was auctioned at Christie’s in 2005 and fetched £3,928,000, a record sum for the artist at the time. The catalog described the work as “a union of opposites”. Moss has a permanent memento of those months, as Freud tattooed two swallows down the model’s back. In an interview he gave to the Belfast Telegraph he said: “I mean, it’s an original Freud work. I wonder, how much would a collector pay for it? A few million?’

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