How Kelly Brook made a killing
Updated: 2007-08-13 10:31
Not yet the fifties starlet: A racy Kelly Brook back in 1999
They are now very much a couple again and this weekend she flew to Berlin to be with him. "They are fully together again," said a friend. "She loves him very much."
There is, though, a problem with geography and culture. Zane, who was born in Chicago, loves his playboy lifestyle in Los Angeles, where he has many friends among the famous, from Tobey Maguire to Leo DiCaprio.
Kelly, meanwhile, is getting tired of the Hollywood Hills, having lived there on and off for six years.
She says that she finds Europe "more sophisticated" and now that she has her dream house in Kent, just half an hour away from her family, she likes to spend her time having barbecues and picnics in the grounds of her house, rather than hanging out with a Starbucks outside a yoga class in L.A.
Some friends suggest, too, that her older fiance can be a rather stifling influwhere ence on Kelly. "She is wonderfully charismatic, sociable and a sweetie," said a pal. "He is not."
Indeed, after the couple got together while filming the shipwreck drama Three, Zane launched a lawsuit to veto some of the nude scenes filmed by Brook, preferring not to share his fiancee with the world. It was not successful.
Certainly her style now - a 1950s starlet in vintage dresses - is miles away from the gorblimey sex bomb who showed her sequinned pink knickers to the crowds when she was dating the British actor Jason Statham.
Her early days as the cheery winner of a local newspaper's Summer Stunner competition, and as the half-naked darling of the lads' mags, are a distant memory.
She now presents herself as an altogether classier proposition, a classic pin-up in the Fifties style, with her curves safely sheathed in vintage chiffon and her lips painted an old-fashioned scarlet.
An ITV source said that Zane is clearly a very big influence in her life. "When she was making Celebrity Love Island, he would sit at the side of the set all day, which I don't think Paddy Kielty (her co-host) was keen on.
"It's not unusual for talent to bring out other halves, and it was a ten week shoot in Fiji, but he was very intense. He used to listen to what was being said over headphones."
It's obviously a relationship with plenty of fire in it. One friend of the couple said: "Billy's much more experienced than she is and he's got an opinion on everything. Kelly's very fiery and they have big bust-ups if he tells her what to do, because she won't have it."
As Kelly confessed: "We have the occasional spat. It can be fiery at times. He's Mediterranean and I'm stubborn. I'm never the first to make up."
One major bone of contention is the long engagement. Their romance became public in August 2004 and she was seen wearing a huge diamond ring worth 35,000 in December of that year. "I'm a lucky girl," she beamed.
Billy had told her, when wooing her away from Statham, that he felt he'd known her in a former life, and she was enchanted by this idea. Both offered the opinion in interviews that their romance was 'fated' to be.
By the time she opened the Harrods sale in January 2005 Kelly was full of wedding news.
"We haven't got a firm date, but the ceremony is almost certainly going to be in Greece," she said. A wedding dress from Harrods was supposed to have been given to her as part-payment for the job.
By the spring of 2005 there was gossip circulating that they would be having a small private ceremony any day. Then it was said that they were going to get married in a famous Kentish pub, the Blazing Donkey in Ham. Then they were supposed to favour Leeds Castle.
The following year, Billy was in high spirits, telling reporters that they were on course for a "big fat Greek wedding" that summer. His mother, Thea, is Greek and had been teaching Kelly how to cook moussaka in preparation for her new status as Billy's bride.
Their time spent filming the movie Fishtales in Greece was even said to be a scouting mission as the pair searched for the perfect spot to get married.
This spring, promoting Fishtales in Cannes, they promised that they would marry over the summer. Zane excused the wait, saying: "We are just so damn busy. I can't wait. I love her so much."
He wears a silver ring on his wedding finger as if they have already tied the knot. But, for whatever reason, they remain unmarried.
It is no secret that Kelly had hoped to settle down with Jason Statham, but their six-year romance never progressed to an engagement. Now there are shades of history repeating itself, with Zane seemingly unwilling to make the commitment.
His first marriage was to actress Lisa Collins, whom he met while filming the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. The union lasted only three years and he went on to become something of a party boy, nightclubbing in Miami and throwing gigantic parties, including a huge birthday bash in London attended by Kate Moss.
He was engaged, to sultry model and actress Leonor Varela, but they never wed.
One wonders if they will work it out. Kelly Brook, bless her, believes very much that they will. "I can't imagine doing anything without Billy," she said before their split this year.
"I've found someone that I want to do everything with. I've never had that before. I want to share everything with him. I've found my best friend."
Intriguingly, she is set to address their romance in her book. Ian Marshall, Orion's publishing director, told the Mail: "Billy is an element of the book. Some of it is autobiographical and some of it is advice from Kelly about clothes."
He added: "She is renowned for not being a Victoria Beckham sort of person who just wears labels. She makes her own style, which is very 1950s. Some of the book will be about icons like Raquel Welch, Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, and there will be other items like the history of the bikini.
"We hope it will do very well. This genre is growing and growing."
And so Kelly Brook, with her talent for reinvention and her ability to bounce back, is well placed to make it as an author, dancer, calendar girl, lingerie designer and perfumier this year.
It's not quite the happy ending she had in mind, but perhaps that chapter is yet to come.
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