I know the REAL Kate Moss – this is what I can tell you about the new film about her bizarre relationship with Freud vs reality: ALEXANDRA SHULMAN

I had very low expectations for Moss & Freud, the new movie about Kate Moss and artist Lucian Freud. Making biopics of charismatic figures is difficult because the qualities that make them so special are nearly impossible for an actor to capture.

And the thought of any actress trying to be Kate — a woman who is not only one of the top models of her age (someone I covered 37 times during my tenure as Vogue Editor), but whose blend of beauty and personality transcends the role of a clothes horse — seemed like an especially high bar.

But it was clear from the opening shots of Ellie Bamber as a model, driving her vintage convertible wildly down a country road at dawn, chain-smoking, blasting music, stealing a mobile phone, that she would pack a punch in the job.

As she wobbled through the quiet rooms of the National Gallery in her fuzzy, vintage white fur in her impossibly high, spiky black heels, she could have been Bamber Kate. The model had pulled up an all-nighter to meet Freud, who was allowed to visit the sanctuary at any time outside working hours.

This scene, like many scenes in the movie, was a real event. Freud had learned from his daughter, fashion designer Bella Freud, that Kate wanted to be painted by him, and one of the most admired British artists offered the supermodel the opportunity to sit in his place as she stood in front of Titian’s masterpiece Diana and Actaeon. He takes the process of creating art as seriously as she does, provided he shows up with religious punctuality three nights a week.

Kate is evasive about her commitment, and we see her continue her crazy life, ending up miserable in an S&M club in Berlin.

During her tenure as Vogue Editor, Alexandra featured Kate on 37 covers; The first was in the March 1993 issue, when he was only 19 years old.

Kate’s hectic existence of shoots and catwalk shows, often a disaster when edited into the film, is brilliantly captured by Maria Ines Manchego’s cinematography, which uses a rapid kaleidoscope of imagery to convey the model’s sultry presence.

The fast-moving camera work also helps make Bamber believable, giving us substance that makes up for the fact that Kate has too much going on to capture.

The truth is, while there are many beautiful models and many high-voltage personalities, there is no one quite like Kate.

The Croydon schoolgirl has completely owned her look since the age of 14, when she first began her career as a slightly bow-legged waif and strutting her stuff on the catwalk alongside glamazons Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. Even at the age of 52, he did not and does not look like anyone else.

That’s why I chose her for my first Vogue cover in 1993. It summarized the change in fashion towards the new grunge movement, which I titled ‘London Style’.

Once described as having an ‘insolent beauty’, Kate is intriguing. No actor can replicate this, but there’s enough going for Bamber’s portrayal of the model touching Kate.

He has a voice that sounds like the sarcastic guttural sound of South London. He manages to show the contradiction between someone who hates giving interviews but is the first to dance on the tables at a party. It’s successful in showing Kate’s lack of shyness around other famous people and her ability to draw anyone she wants into her orbit.

I have spent time with Kate on many occasions over the years. As a model, she would sit down and do her hair and make-up, entertaining everyone on the set with anecdotes from the previous evening. Then, when he was in front of the camera, he became whoever he needed to be; a Hollywood hero, a vampire of the 20s, a baby of the 60s.

It’s her charm that has led artists to choose Kate as their muse over the years. Artists who, like Freud, were never interested in painting portraits of celebrities.

In 2000, I commissioned a collection of then-fashionable Young British Artists to photograph Kate for a special issue of Vogue. Marc Quinn, who recreated his head with ten liters of his own frozen blood, shaped it from ice; Tracey Emin drew her naked; Sam Taylor-Wood, as she was then known, photographed her as a virgin in a leather jacket. Sarah Morris’ photo of Kate as a pop icon, drinking a Coke from a paper cup with a white straw and wearing the diamond necklace Johnny Depp gave her, made the cover.

Good artists are not interested in beauty, but in something else that they can infer from or reflect on their subjects. And since Kate is a strangely intriguing character who is never quite pinned down, never ready to conform to expectations of behavior, capricious and loyal, cunning, witty and sometimes impossible, there’s a lot for artists to draw from.

‘Lucian Freud’s cold looks while sitting in restaurants made it clear that he did not want to be talked to. But just like Kate, her presence was impossible to ignore,’ says our columnist

Derek Jacobi fails to live up to Bamber’s success as Lucian Freud. Although the film manages to show how much more important art was to Freud than any other subject (as is often the case with the best artists), Freud comes across like a hulking Quentin Crisp.

At no point do we see the nature of wildlife danger that makes him so fascinating as a human being and so compelling as Moss.

Although I never met Freud in any meaningful way, I remember staying at a friend’s house in Tuscany one summer. Freud telephoned every afternoon.

There was only one person he wanted to talk to and he never asked his name. He would know from your voice that it wasn’t him and would hang up the receiver.

Similarly, when seated at their usual tables at The Wolseley restaurant in Piccadilly or Clarke’s in Kensington, their cold, penetrating gaze made it clear that they did not want to be watched or spoken to. But like Kate, her presence was impossible to ignore.

The film benefited from Kate’s role as executive producer. He gave the costume designer access to his wardrobe, including the John Galliano Union Jack jacket he wore on an open-top bus at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. There was the vintage sequined dress that Bamber wore in the movie, to the infamous Beauty and the Damned 30th birthday party.

And because Kate was given editorial control, it seems she was happy with the sometimes over-the-top emotional narrative; the feeling of meaninglessness in his life before he agreed to commit to the portrait, a stupid dream sequence with opium, and most importantly, the devastation he experienced when the final Naked Portrait appeared. It was about her coming out as a real person, not a model, and the end result wasn’t what she expected.

She was pregnant with her daughter, Lila Grace, and she can’t show it. He hates the way Freud sees him and is horrified when Freud tells him that he is trying to capture his ordinariness. “I usually don’t want people to see the real me,” he declares in distress.

How much of the real Kate is revealed in this film will undoubtedly be the subject of much debate. But given that he has the power to veto things he doesn’t like, we have to assume there’s a version of himself he’s happy for us to see.