I had been looking forward to reading excerpts from Sadie Frost’s tell-all about her life with Jude Law, her sexy times with Kate Moss, and all of the drugs and parties and all of that. Jude fought the publication of Sadie’s book, without much luck, and now The Daily Mail has begun excerpting large chunks of Sadie’s story. The full Daily Mail piece is here, and it’s quite extensive. It involves Sadie’s explanation of her postpartum depression, her self-harming and cutting, the breakup of her first marriage (to Gary Kemp), and how her passion for Jude overwhelmed her. These were the days, honestly. I’m obsessed with this time, when Jude was roommates with Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller and Jude was 19 years old and he met Sadie (then 24 years old) and suddenly they were too hot, the hottest London couple. Sigh… I’m just going to do the highlights.

Sadie says she was bedevilled by internal conflicts: a ‘battle between the good girl and the bad’ during her chaotic childhood and, later, her experience of ‘paradise syndrome’ – when she ‘had it all’ but felt compelled to ‘destroy whatever was good before someone took it from me’.

She details her early romance with Law – they met when he was 19 and she was 25 and a married mother – and the guilt she suffered because of it.

She writes: ‘I knew that by even entertaining thoughts of Jude, I was jeopardising an idyllic home life, the most secure relationship I’d ever had. I crushed my unwelcome ideas about Jude, but it wasn’t easy.’

Eventually, Sadie left her husband, Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, and bought a house with Law.

‘The force of the love I felt for Jude and his intense ambition made me feel out of control,’ she recalls.

She writes of the pressures their careers brought to bear on their relationship, in particular the long periods apart. In 1996 she discovered she was pregnant with their first child.

‘Jude was away a lot, while I was sitting on the sofa, getting fatter and gripped by a nagging sense that I was jeopardising my love,’ she writes.

After their baby, Rafferty, was born Sadie says ‘unease’ pulled her down. ‘Eventually I wanted to press the self-destruct button. One night I arranged a babysitter and went out.
‘I partied all night and got home the next day racked with guilt. I was sitting at my dressing table, not feeling anything – just numb.

‘I watched my hand slowly pick up a pair of scissors. It was as if I was being sucked down lower into the chair and the scissors seemed to be drawn to my arm. I appeared to have cut myself. Blood dripped down my arm. There was no sense of panic within me – I just felt empty.’

The end of Frost’s marriage to Law came after a holiday in Thailand.

‘Right away I knew something was wrong,’ she writes. ‘I knew it was over, the way he looked at me. I was underweight, depressed and scared . . . I asked him if he loved me but he didn’t need to reply – I knew the answer. The moment had arrived and I knew the relationship with the man I loved was over.’

[From The Daily Mail]

It’s good stuff. I always knew that Sadie kind of grabbed the very young Jude probably before he was even ready for that kind of commitment. That being said, I think Jude was and is a good father to his kids with Sadie, and I do think he tried to keep their marriage in tact, at least for several years when it was on life support.

In a further excerpt, Sadie writes about meeting Jude for the first time, and how their affair began when she was still married:

The sallow, blond youth was leaning against a wall in the theatre foyer.

‘Sadie, I want you to meet Jude Law,’ a friend said.

I smiled at this man, who returned a shy smile and offered a hand. I was 25, a married woman with a young child. He was thin and gangly, and couldn’t have been more than 19, but something about him made me nervous. I blushed.

A week later, I was in a rehearsal room in East London waiting to do a screen test with Jude. Across from me, he sat astride a chair, waiting pensively. The silence between us crackled and I couldn’t help but watch him surreptitiously.

After the test, as I left the room, I felt a weight pressing on my heart. I tried to cut the weight loose but I couldn’t. It was an unshakable and unwelcome premonition – like being confronted with the juicy apple in the Garden of Eden. I felt it was my fate to spend the rest of my life with Jude.

Soon after our son Finlay was born in 1990, I started shooting Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Francis Ford Coppola. My childhood dreams were coming true. My agent urged me to stay in Los Angeles after filming with Coppola, but instead I took a role in a lowbudget British film called Shopping, which would have an unknown actor for the male lead – Jude Law. I’d gone to see him performing in a play before our screen test.

Filming began in 1992. Gary was as devoted as ever and I knew that by even entertaining thoughts of Jude, I was jeopardising an idyllic home life, the most secure relationship I’d ever had. I crushed my unwelcome ideas about Jude, but it wasn’t easy. I was beginning to prefer this straightforward young man to my intellectual older husband. Still, I tried to reject my dark thoughts, until it became clear that Jude was interested in me, too.

A night shoot in which we sat in a car was almost painful, so powerful was the force drawing me to him. He turned to me, his stare intense and hungry. I allowed my gaze to take him in as his almond-shaped, avocado-green eyes thundered their way into my soul. His head was shaved and he was wearing tight black trousers. Time slowed down inside our bubble and I realised we were destined to be together. ‘Cut!’ shouted the director, shaking us back to reality.

After that we spent all our time together between shots, hanging out in my caravan. Jude would chain-smoke and loaf around with his rangy arms and legs dangling. His easy charm and calm were a breath of fresh air after Gary’s controlled power-dressing and artistic leanings.

The more I felt for Jude, the more guilt I felt. Much as I tried to fix things with Gary, we started to row. I couldn’t be logical about the attraction to Jude. It seemed I was suffering from ‘paradise syndrome’. I had it all – a career and a perfect family – but I felt I had to destroy whatever was good before someone took it from me.

[From The Daily Mail]

Eh. I mean, I think most women would totally understand being with a controlling guy, and here comes a young, beautiful Jude Law and he’s all over you and you’re like “Sure, this works for me.” But Sadie seems determined to make herself into the biggest victim in the world. And she’s just… not. Sure, she has issues (join the club). But she also made some sh-tty choices that have nothing to do with her being a “victim”.

Sadie and Jude in the header in 2002, credit: WENN.