Kelly Brook: More than meets the eye

It's impossible not to warm to Kelly Brook. It's not just the huge, pearly-white smile, the wide, generous lips, the pretty girl-next-door face. It's the fact that she's such a professional. She turns up for an entire day of hair, make-up, a zillion outfit changes, endless tweakings and teasings and all that type of stuff, and she doesn't bat an eyelid. She manages to remain energetic, giggly and pleasant throughout the entire day.

More than that, she fuels herself eating the types of things famous people like her don't usually consume. The likes of Madonna and Kate Moss can live on not much more than nuts and pulses, but Kelly Brook spends the day eating Danish pastries, toast and biscuits. This 31-year-old, who is frequently voted the sexiest woman in the world by magazines like FHM, is no stick insect. "Oh, no," she says, popping a big chunk of sticky pastry into her mouth. "I eat everything. I love it! I couldn't deny myself food. What a waste of a life."

So Kelly is really rather refreshing, but also not quite what I expected. I realise, when I meet her in the middle of a huge kitchen in a beautiful house in London, that she is not exactly as she seems. Mostly I have seen her in photographs - in bikinis and swimsuits, lounging around in St Tropez or wherever. I've seen pictures of her in clinches with all her past boyfriends - actors Jason Statham and Billy Zane and rugby player Danny Cipriani, as well as her current boyfriend, Thom Evans - also a rugby player. To me she's like a silent-movie star. In fact, I've barely heard her speak. I've thought of her as a sort of British icon - a bit Diana Dors meets Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Originally, she wasn't well known for acting or dancing but for being a glamour model from the age of 16 in the UK tabloid, Daily Star (which may explain why at first she struggled to be taken seriously as a TV presenter). "Of course I look back on it and think there was something about it that was…" That was what? She pauses for a bit. "I was very young. It was good money but, yes, to have someone of that age posing like that… I think that's probably not great." She didn't think that at the time, though? She pauses again. "No. I don't think I did, but I didn't do it for very long anyway." It also led her down the path of suggestive photo-shoots for loads of magazines.

Which means she hasn't been without her detractors. In the past she's been called ‘stupid' and viewed as nothing more than sex on legs. Both of these assumptions are unfair. The first thing we need to set straight is that she is not stupid. This accusation has followed her since the age of 20, when she was presenting The Big Breakfast on the UK's Channel 4.

"It was very unfair," she says. "It was my first job. Of course I was going to make mistakes. What I couldn't understand was why people got so upset about it! It was a big programme in terms of what the media wrote about it, but not that many people watched it." Still, it took a long time for her to get over the fact she apparently couldn't read words from the autocue. "Well, I couldn't, but so what? It was made into such a big deal and it was very upsetting, because it was tantamount to being bullied. I wasn't bullied at school so I couldn't understand what was going on."

But back then Brook decided that her motto would be to keep striving. "I suppose I could have given up," she says, "but what would have been the point? You have to take the knocks, you know. It's a tough business."

It's not the toughest knock she's had. Over the past 15 years or so she's been fired as a judge from Britain's Got Talent, lost her father to cancer while she was on Strictly Come Dancing, had very public break-ups with boyfriends and then, more recently, had a miscarriage.

Kelly says she deals with her professional setbacks by making sure she doesn't put all her eggs in one basket. "I have a business as well as my acting career," she says.

With her financial hat on she designs lingerie and swimwear for New Look. Today her new underwear collection is hanging up on a rail at the back of the room. It's very pretty - all push-up 1950s-style bras in lace and gingham with matching knickers. "It's lovely, isn't it?" Brook says enthusiastically. "It's the style that suits me. I've got curves. Most girls have curves, so that's who I design for."

She thinks her curves make her popular not just with men, but with women, too. "I can't bear the fact that girls these days think you have to be thin to be beautiful and successful. I'm not thin," she says. "I don't starve myself. I don't look at my face and body and think I need surgery or a boob job or a bum lift. It makes me very angry when women in the public eye talk about what work they've had done, because it makes other women feel devalued. They should just shut up about it!" She giggles as she takes a bite from a Danish pastry.

She's refreshingly opinionated, Kelly. She reckons her family has a lot to do with it. "They do more interesting jobs than me," she says. "My brother's in the Armed Forces and he's off to Somalia and places like that. He does something meaningful. My aunt's big into politics."

After The Big Breakfast fiasco, Kelly hit the headlines for dumping her then-boyfriend, Jason Statham, and going off with American actor, Billy Zane, before she'd told poor lovelorn Statham of her defection. "That was terrible," she says. "Jason was the love of my life. I'd met him when I was 17 and I really loved him, but I was so young. It was always going to happen, I suppose." What was? "That we'd split up. It couldn't last."

Zane, she says, was different from the men she'd dated previously. "He's so bohemian! He taught me so much. We went round the world and he told me about art and theatre and opera. I was blown away by him, really. He has a little girl now. I'm very happy for him."

I remind her that she once said she thought it an achievement to have got to 30 without being married or having children. "Did I say that?" she asks. She looks slightly shocked. "I think I was trying to say I am proud of the fact that I've earned my own money, done things the best I can and never asked for handouts. I think it was more that."

What would she like to say when she hits 40? The opposite, I imagine? She laughs. "I don't want to pressurise Thom," she says. "Actually, I'd like to work on being more focused. I often think if I had been better at focusing on one thing exclusively I'd have had an acting career like Kate Winslet or a career as a top dancer. But in many ways I've gone with what people want me to do rather than what I want to do. I am changing that now."

In what way is she changing it? Is she going to concentrate solely on acting? Or dancing? Or…

"I'd like to focus more. Anyway, I have to remember, it's not the be all and end all, this business. There's always something else to do."

With that, she gives me a huge smile and tucks into another delicious-looking Danish pastry.