Gemma Ward warned her looks were fading at 20

Celebrities: 28 year old Australian model Gemma Ward said she was warned her looks were fading at the age of 20 citing the pressure the modelling industry puts on young girls.

In 2008, Ward vanished off the spotlight just when she was at the top of her game following the death of her friend Heath Ledger.
Ward who returned to the catwalk in 2015 has spoken out about the undue pressures that comes with the industry, adding that her break was necessary.

“It wasn’t a choice to stop, it was like I needed to stop, I actually couldn’t go on. But I also was very sure of what I needed to do.”

“There was a time when I stopped auditioning, I stopped doing anything, and I just wrote, and practised music, because I felt like I needed to have a focus on my voice rather than my image — that was actually really healing. For me, it helped.

“And I wanted to focus on things I could develop and get better at because for a period of time I had people telling me, ‘You’ve got to do this when you’re young’, ‘Your looks are going to fade’, ‘You’re not going to get better’. Like, you hit your teenage years and everything goes downhill — it’s kind of horrible to think.”

Ward during her time out of the industry ventured into acting and music and also had a baby with her photographer husband, David Letts.