David Bailey was never one for decorum. The 82-year-old photographer rose to fame in 1960s London with his bold fashion shoots, Fittingly his new memoir, “Look Again,” currently out in the UK, is frank, foul-mouthed and utterly fabulous.
He calls Elizabeth Taylor a kleptomaniac.
Mother Teresa, a “tough old bitch.”
Mick Jagger was always “mean with money. Still is.”
His first impression of now-ex-wife Catherine Deneuve? “Short, bit on the fat side.”
He doesn’t even spare his three children. “Well, ‘love’ is an exaggeration!” he writes of his kin. “When they can play chess I like them.”
Speaking with The Post on the phone from London, Bailey insisted that there are no hard feelings. “Catherine [Deneuve] still wears a pair of my old jeans!” he said.
His friends, he added, “just say, ‘I read your book,’ and maybe they’ll laugh.” Though he admitted he was surprised to receive a Christmas card from Paul McCartney, since he did write that John Lennon was the only Beatle he could stand.
“It was the least likely Christmas card I would get,” he said chuckling.
On Jean Shrimpton “People could identify with Jean Shrimpton because I didn’t make her look like a stuffed shop mannequin,” Bailey wrote. “Suddenly she was someone you could touch, or maybe even take to bed.”
He met his second wife, Deneuve, in 1965 through Roman Polanski, who wanted Bailey to shoot the French starlet for Playboy, to promote the film “Repulsion.” Neither Deneuve nor Bailey was keen on the nudie magazine, but Polanski was “persistent.” Despite Bailey’s initial chill toward Deneuve, sparks flew on the shoot, and the two began an affair. Still, he really only proposed to her because one of his mates bet “10 bob” that she wouldn’t marry him.
“I got my 10 bob,” said Bailey, laughing. The marriage lasted seven years.
The photographer even suspects that he inspired John Lennon to write “Eight Days a Week”: The two were sharing a joint at a party one night when Lennon asked Bailey how much he worked; Bailey joked “eight days a week.” That same year, the Beatles had a hit song with that title.
In 1986, Bailey married model Catherine Dyer, and the pair got a house in the country and had three children. He’s still friends with his three ex-wives — “you can’t spend all that time with someone who you don’t like at all,” he said. But while his personal life has relaxed a bit, his professional one has not. “I filmed three movies while on lockdown,” he said. “I’m busier than ever.”
