When the young British actress was “found hanging from the ceiling of her mansion block apartment near the River Seine” in Paris two days before her 29th birthday last Wednesday, most of the post-mortems echoed Wikipedia in saying “she starred as the reporter Jennifer Dugan in the 2007 film Spider-Man 3.” In truth, she was in the film for a grand total of 13 seconds—reporting breathlessly outside the scene of the Arachnid Avenger’s latest sting operation when he was strangled and left for dead.

Frenzied news crews would gather outside her French flat exactly two years later: “It was a horrific scene,” gasped one grizzled gendarme. “The young woman has taken her own life in terrible circumstances. We are not seeking anyone else. It was a clear case of suicide.” But despite Lucy leaving two personal notes, her live-in lover—bespectacled, bearded cinematographer Jérôme Alméras—was questioned for two days by French police! The forty-something father of four became famous for his brilliant camera work last year on I’ve Loved You So Long … which recounts an inexplicable murder … but had only loved Lucy for a matter of months when she moved from Manhattan to Paris to be with him.

“It must have been very impulsive,” recalls her New York neighbor Amitabh Gordon {no relation} of the actress’s abrupt flight from her East Village apartment to join her new lover. “I asked Lucy how old Alméras’s kids were and she said there was quite an age spread. One maybe close to college age and one quite little.” Added another New York girlfriend:  “She packed up all her things and moved to Paris a few months ago. She trusted everyone. She was very sweet and kind. When she told me she had a new boyfriend, I thought, ‘What’s the real situation?’ She said he was in his 40s and had four children. I wondered, ‘Is he still with the mother of his children, is he divorced?’ Lucy didn’t say. She was just very excited.”

“She told me she was in love with her boyfriend,” confirms photographer Michel Haddi, who photographed Gordon just before her death for an Italian layout in which the guy was left hanging. “I told her she must like older men,” recalls the 42-year-old lensman. “She looked like a girl with a plan. She had everything to live for. But she was hiding that turmoil inside {though being choked by a pearl necklace in the Rome shoot was quite a harbinger}. It’s devastating. All of us have a tendency to want to kill ourselves {let’s not get carried away!}, but it’s different to just think about it.”

“Call the police, my girlfriend has hung herself,” Lucy’s lover screamed as he ran into the street after cutting her body down, insisting he “was asleep” when she hanged herself. “Why? Why?” Alméras wailed … though neighbors “reported that the couple had been heard arguing” late that night “and Lucy was audibly crying” through the apartment wall “before being found dead the next morning.” A judicial source stated: “We will try to establish a motive for her sudden suicide {Almeras alleged that she “had been deeply affected by the recent suicide of a friend in Britain,” so Sleuth offers her Facebook page as possible evidence}. She was flourishing in her professional life {glowing at the Spider-Man 3 premiere in New York}, so emotional problems related to her personal and love life would be a principal line of inquiry.” Despite reports of the loud “lovers’ tiff,” a French police spokesman stated: “The autopsy is a routine procedure which follows an apparent suicide. Hanging appears to be the obvious cause of death, considering the horrific circumstances in which the young woman was found.”

So let’s concentrate on what was lost: Born May 22, 1980 in Oxford, England, Lucy was attending her  $20,000-a-year hometown Oxford High School—whose most famous pupil is Dame Maggie Smith {Sleuth unearthed this topless outtake of mid-40s Maggie deleted from 1978’s California Suite}— when she was “spotted” by a modeling talent scout as she and her  mother visited a local clothing exhibition. Signed at 16, Lucy quickly became the face of prestigious Cover Girl cosmetics in 1997…while continuing her studies in history, biology and French. “I’m terrified about taking my A-levels {Advanced Placement Exams},” the Sweet Sixteen (with garotte like scarf) said at the time, “but equally terrified about not having any option apart from modeling in the future” {her last major ad}. Though hardly in Dior straits, Lucy listed “a number of things that keep me at school. I could get bored with being a model. I could even get fat {hardly—with her then 32B bust}. I don’t want to be stuck for choice at 25 {she didn’t make it to 29}. If I’ve passed my exams, then I will still be able to do a lot with my life.” Instead, in one of the more bizarre international headlines in Internet history, she was reportedly “baffled and devastated” by her own death! As another Cover Girl ad of hers noted, “Life is complicated.”

And ironic: Lucy’s first acting role was alongside hearththrob Heath Ledger in The Four Feathers {at its 2002 premiere}. Just 16 months before Gordon’s demise, “The Joker” was found dead of a mysterious drug overdose—meeting his end in an apartment owned by Mary-Kate Olsen!

“Being a model,” Lucy lamented, “doesn’t make you immune to your insecurities, either {evaluating her ass-ets in the mirror}. One thing you get used to is rejection.” It’s been speculated that perhaps her “distraught” fortyish Frenchman wasn’t…but there’s no doubt that gamine Gordon’s career was headed straight to the top: She had just won raves for her portrayal of model-turned-actress Jane Birkin in the upcoming biopic of legendary lover Serge Gainsbourg, Vie Héroique, which was previewed at the Cannes Film Festival on the eve of her death! In fact, Lucy “had been due to appear in a live interview at Cannes” within hours of when she was found hanged. “We are devastated,” gasped the festival’s official spokesman. “All those attending had been hugely impressed by Lucy’s work. Lucy was a star in the making.” Read ‘em and weep…

“The film owes a lot to the generosity, gentleness of spirit and immense talent of Lucy Gordon,” the producers of Gainsbourg, A Heroic Life said in a statement. Not to mention her uncanny resemblance to the bohemian beauty of the Swinging Sixties. So much so, that she beat out Birkin’s own daughter by Serge, lookalike Charlotte Gainsbourg for the part! And in a final macabre twist to the harrowing hanging, Charlotte won the Best Actress prize at Cannes within days of Lucy’s death. How’s this ad from Gordon’s early modeling days for foreshadowing the grim Gainsbourg connection?

Yet Sleuth can’t help noting that the still-striking 62-year-old Birkin’s other lookalike daughter, mad hatter Lou Doillon is now represented by the same modeling agency, IMG as fronted for the late Lucy.  And speaking of fronts, they also shared identical 32.5 inch bust measurements! As did mom Jane…so it’s transparently clear that little Lucy was born to play her. And that daughter Charlotte’s web couldn’t quite measure up to the Spider-Man starlet. Why even Gordon’s boyish pose mirrored Jane sans clothes! Speaking of which, I’ve managed to uncover Lucy’s one and only nude image … which stands as a fitting leg-acy. “Her career had just been taking off,” sighed her forlorn father Richard, “and it’s a tragedy that it has been cut short so soon. Her death has come completely out of the blue. Everything about how she died is just speculation at the moment, and we want to concentrate on paying tribute to our daughter. We are obviously devastated.”

Her only famous film, Spider-Man 3, became “the most successful new release in history” two years before she “ended her own days,” as Gordon’s agent put it—taking in $148 million in its opening weekend. “There were many factors that contributed to it,” the studio’s chief executive explained, “and there’s a part that you just put down to ‘We’ll never know.’” Perhaps the most fitting epitaph to lovely Lucy in the sky…

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Suicide Brunette: Spider-Man’s Lucy Gordon is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“Make Me a Supermodel exists on a different level” than Tyra’s “tired” America’s Next Top Model, opined Buddy TV when the two fashion shows aired this past Wednesday. “Not only do most of the contestants actually look like working models, the challenges they are given are worlds more believable than other modeling shows. Make Me a Supermodel is about modeling first, and then Reality TV second. And Celebrity Sleuth is always about revealing reality…

The supermodels were first “made” by fashionistas Tyson Beckford and Niki Taylor, the co-hosts for Season One of Bravo’s answer to the CW’s Top Model, fronted by Top Heavy Tyra Banks. Holly Kiser, described by MenStyle.com as “the quiet one, the small-town Virginia girl saving herself for marriage (she met her fiancé in church, naturally),” beat out 13 other contestants on the initial Make Me a Supermodel “to win a spread in GQ magazine, $100,000 and a modeling contract with New York Model Management.” Not to mention this inimitable Sleuth exposure!

“There is a second season but I’m not doing it,” Taylor tersely announced in late ‘08…and not only because the pregnant poser was beginning to show. “They decided to take the show in a more…not risqué…but, just a little more” raunchy direction…and nice-girl Niki transparently balked. “Tyson Beckford has traded in a Niki for a Nicole,” it was revealed shortly thereafter. “Bravo’s Make Me a Supermodel has chosen Australian supermodel NICOLE TRUNFIO to join Beckford as a mentor to the model wannabes for the show’s upcoming season,” debuting March 4th. “Nicole will offer advice and says she may let them in on a few industry secrets”: “I have a great amount of background for them to learn from,” Nic notes, “whether or not they listen and use the advice to progress is another story.” So let’s examine the story of this mentor’s Model Behavior, shall we?

“Trunfio will offer a unique perspective to the contestants,” observed zap2it.com, “because she was the winner of the Australian forerunner TV series Search for a Supermodel {in 2000 and later finished third in the international version of the show, Supermodel of the World. “I was found on the street,” Nicole recalls. “We were shopping and this lady was following me.” The girl had doubts about the proposition, but signed with the Vivien Agency: “I was 16 and going through this really rebellious stage in my life–I had just gotten my tongue pierced. And I had no interest in modeling, because I had heard all these stories about the drugs…and the sex {Sleuth unearthed this video of Naughty Nicole}…and the backstage bitchiness.” Sleuth has only seen her backstage casualness.

Asked if there is any nude modeling from the contestants this seasons on MMASM, Nicole backed off by snapping, “Next question. No, I’m kidding”—but is otherwise laid back about the subject. “Even me and Tyson got half naked {here’s the top half, inverted nipples and all}. You just have to watch {she supplies the TV set}. It was very spontaneous,” Trunfio trills…and thrills with this mirror image candid changing! “It was not planned at all.” Why, look what just turned up! “I was skinny as a stick” starting out with her 32A bust, Nicole admits, but her shadowy figure has since filled out to a model perfect 34B-24.5-34. “I’m a lot more relaxed now and comfortable in my body”…and thus ready to get down and dirrrty.

“She’s one of those models who really isn’t scared of getting her gear off in front of the camera,” says an industry insider. “A lot of models can be very reserved when it comes to posing nude” {Nic thinks they’re all wet. Which is why, when asked last week, “What do you do if some female contestant on the show says they don’t want to go nude?,” their miffed mentor mused: “Kick them off.” One thing she wouldn’t do, it’s rumored, is kick them out … of bed! “I’m just comfortable being me,” the tomboy proclaims, while an Aussie fashion friend whispers: “I have heard that she sleeps around in Manhattan.” The question is with which sex? “All the Aussies stick together in New York–we’re so tight,” Trunfio trills. “Jessie Gomes is here,” she says of the bosom buddy model who lives in the apartment right below her and is Nic’s constant—and clinging—companion.  “We hang out every day.” Gomes hangs out beautifully, while her “best mate” drools at the prospect!

“And Gemma Ward is now here too,” says of the blonde teen she beat out on Search for a Supermodel back in 2000. Eight years later, they were “getting in touch with their ‘hippie spirit’ by sharing a beach house in Australia for a month” this past Christmas–perhaps Nicole snatched this shot of Sophie waking up one morning! Yet while Ward was reportedly “still struggling with the loss of her lover, Heath Ledger” from earlier in the year, Trunfio—who’s only been linked to one man ever, Robert DeNiro’s son Raphael—was “spotted partying with blonde supermodel Cheyenne Tozzi on a luxury yacht, cozying up to British mannequin Lily Cole, and checking out Russian Valeria Avdeyeva’s lingerie and lips.

Which brings us back to where we began: with Nicole’s “lips.” Her very first words on this year’s Make Me a Supermodel—after being lowered in a giant box—were: “Well, do I know how to make an entrance or what?! That was never more true than in early April 2007,  when Nicole strutted her stuff at FashionWeekLive in Houston … and accidentally exposed her “landing strip” on the runway in plane view! “I grew up in the Bush,” says the supermodel from Down Under about its untamed Outback…but it was her Outfront that manifest itself in full “Flaps Up!” mode! “The dress only gaped wide for a few seconds,” reveals an eyewitness to the accident, “and for just a short stretch of the runway” … yet the combination of cockpit and intake ignited ample thrusters for Nicole’s career to take flight! {Headlines were still buzzing a year and a half later.}

The fallout was felt most in her native Oz—you’d think they’d be used to seeing wool, eh mate?—with a popular teen magazine named for its girl sheep being recalled for running Nic’s wind shear: “50,000 copies pulled from the shelves so teenage girls aren’t exposed to a front-on picture of a female’s genitals,” asked one editorial writer.  “Am I mistaken, or don’t they all have them? Does this make any sense at all?” And some scribes even lauded the unconcerned T-bird for her air-ial maneuver: “Australian model Nicole Trunfio is a true professional,” a reporter remarked. “Who else could glide down a catwalk totally exposed and still keep going…and going {the Energizer ‘Cunny’} ? Nice work, girl! Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it!” But a final observer sounded a warning: “Now watch PETA get all twisted because a model is wearing BEAVER!”

Before folding in the wings, Sleuth should notify the tower that this wasn’t the first such takeoff from the formerly Best Dressed cover girl: In 2004, she shocked spectators at the Imitation of Christ fall show {avant-garde actress Chloë Sevigny was the line’s creative director} by parading in a totally diaphanous mesh dress that had onlookers reading the labia rather than the label! “I love the runway,” Nicole gushes {her first show was Gucci…rhymes with Coochie}. “It’s something you can’t describe {oh yes we can}. I think to become a supermodel, you need to have an X-factor…it’s a mixture of outer but more inner beauty…to create iconic art that will never be forgotten.” And will never END …

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Runway "Landing Strip" is a post from: The SleuthSayer