Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe details her struggle while working as a model

Caitriona Balfe has detailed her struggle while working as a model in her early career in the fashion industry, prior to going into acting.

The Outlander star, 41, reflected on her time as a model in a candid chat on the Thanks A Million podcast with Angela Scanlon on Tuesday.

Looking back, Caitriona, who plays Claire Fraser in the show, hit out at the ‘s**t agencies’ she worked with in the past as she criticised the ‘weird balance of power’ in the industry as a whole.

The actress worked in advertising campaigns with brands like Chanel, Dolce And Gabanna and Balenciaga for a period of ten years before going into acting. 

While she didn’t name companies, Caitriona said: ‘You’re supposed to automatically be this fun, interesting, edgy person that fashion people want to be around. But then at the same time you have to be so skinny and so androgynous. 

‘There was always people doing better and constantly being compared to people. I think, as a young woman in your teens and twenties, it’s hard enough. 

‘You know, there’s so many times where you would go into castings or even fittings for jobs that you already supposedly had and somebody in the room would just be annihilating how you look or your lack of personality or you talk too much. 

‘All in front of you. It’s really tough. I have so much admiration for girls who can come through that unscathed.’

She went on: ‘I think everybody goes through a really wobbly phase afterwards trying to sort of find their footing or find what their next step is, because in one way, it opens up so many doors and it does open your mind to so many things and it does give you an incredible education in a certain way. 

‘But in another, it infantilises you and it stunts you in so many other ways. I think it takes a while to sort of like rebalance all of that… There’s such a veneer of like ‘everyone’s so cool in this industry.’

‘And that’s drilled into you from quite a young age about, you know, don’t rock the boat, don’t be uncool, being uncool is defending yourself or questioning something or being deaf and not stiff or not taking your top off.

‘”Why wouldn’t you take a top off? It’s just t**s. Come on, like just be cool.” I can’t tell you how many times that situation happened. I was very lucky. 

‘I had some amazing bookers and had some amazing agencies, but I also had some absolute s**t agencies, and they’ve positioned themselves, I think, as they protect the girls. 

‘But because they’ve made themselves management companies, they also take zero responsibility. So all the girls are self-employed and, in fact, they employ the agents. 

‘It’s such a weird balance of power because the people that you are supposedly employing are the people who are the gateway to all the jobs.

‘They dictate your earning power, but they also dictate everything…. The worst thing, I think, if you talk to any model, used to be the days you’d have to go into the agency and you walk in and literally everybody is scanning you head to toe.

‘What are you wearing? Do you look cool? Are you thin enough? Are you going to the right places or dating the right people?’.

But Caitriona did add that she felt there were ‘parts’ of being in the industry that ‘were good’.