Olivia Attwood frowns as much as her botoxed brow allows while she calculates how much she spends on looking good.
‘A couple of grand a month? That’s for skincare, vitamins, gym membership, all my aesthetic procedures. It’s mental but that’s the tax I pay for the life I’ve put myself into.’
Certainly, Attwood, 33, wouldn’t have had the career she has had without looking very good indeed. Having left school at 16, with long blonde hair and a skinny 5ft 10in frame, she landed a job first modelling, then as a grid girl, paid to bring glamour to motorsports. ‘My appearance wasn’t just social currency, it was economic currency for me,’ she says. ‘Part of the job is taking care of yourself and looking a certain way.’
Shirt, just seen, Armani. Earrings, Tiffany
In 2017 she was picked for ITV’s Love Island villa, coming third but captivating the nation with her gobbiness, while bequeathing us the phrase ‘the ick’ – something she’d picked up from Sex and the City to describe that moment when attraction towards a partner turns to disgust. ‘I’ll take full credit for bringing that to the UK,’ she beams. ‘It’s incredible to think the first time I used it, the Love Island producer didn’t know what it meant.’
Two years ago she pulled off what many of her 2.3 million Instagram followers consider the ultimate coup: marrying a footballer, Gillingham midfielder Bradley Dack, 31. Some expected her to go full stay-at-home Wag, filling her days with shopping, spa treatments and exotic getaways. Instead, Attwood is devoting her energies to moulding an impressive career. Today it’s not her looks, but her wit and intelligence that are making her television’s hottest primetime star, described by ITV’s director of reality and acquisitions, Paul Mortimer, as ‘the face of the future’. ‘I believe she will be the new Cilla Black,’ he told the Edinburgh TV Festival audience in 2023.
‘When I heard that I cried. It will probably be one of the core memories of my life,’ she says. ‘I was like, “Is this satire?” I’m youngish and someone said to him, “I don’t know how she’s going to feel being compared with Cilla.” Paul texted me: “I hope you saw the compliment in that.” I was, like, “Cilla’s one of my entertainment icons!” Anyone who didn’t take that as the highest compliment would be insane.’
I’d say Attwood is less Cilla and more Parkinson (she studies YouTube clips of the interview maestro) and/or Louis Theroux, thanks to her portfolio of ITV documentaries including three seasons of Olivia Attwood: Getting Filthy Rich, exploring how women make money from the sex industry, and Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection, which (aptly) illuminates the dark side of the cosmetic procedure industry.
Dress, Versace, Fenwick. Earrings, Tiffany. Bracelets and rings throughout, Olivia’s own
She’s also a Loose Women regular and hosts a podcast, Olivia Attwood’s So Wrong It’s Right. Last month she began presenting Kiss FM’s radio show The Sunday Roast with reality TV alumnus and friend, Pete Wicks. She also has her own production company.
Working constantly brings Attwood satisfaction. ‘Before Love Island I didn’t know what I brought to the table apart from looks. But now people are interested in what I’ve got to say and that’s done enormous things for my self-worth,’ she says, sitting in a West London photographic studio dressed in a black Coucou tracksuit with Prada specs and New Balance trainers. ‘I love to look good, but it doesn’t envelop my identity any more. When I tally what makes me feel valued by society, my appearance doesn’t come up nearly as high as it used to.’
Which is not to say Attwood is slouching, glamwise. Funny and down to earth, she’s happy to talk about having Botox and fillers every two to three months, along with regular laser treatment for skin pigmentation and ‘medical-grade’ facials.
She pays for it all rather than accept freebies like many influencers (‘If it goes wrong you’re in a very grey area legally’). ‘By 70 I’ll probably have had a facelift,’ she shrugs. She thinks it’s immoral to lie about the amount of effort it takes to look like her. ‘It sets an unrealistic standard for women.’
Olivia on Love Island, 2017, where she came third
Yet she’s learnt the hard way not to overdo tweakments. Aged 20, she paid £3,000 for a boob job that gave her 32E ‘watermelons’ completely disproportionate to her slender frame. ‘They were uncomfortable. They stretched and distorted my skin,’ she says. ‘I didn’t look great when I was clothed or when I was naked.’
After Love Island she paid around £10,000 to have her implants removed, so she’s now a 32DD. She also recently had her lip filler dissolved. ‘I looked grotesque, but everyone I knew had lips like that.’
Attwood has posed bare-faced today for YOU’s cover image and says she bothers less and less with make-up – not least when she’s filming a documentary. ‘It’s not practical and I don’t want to distract from what the film’s about. I want to be the B-storyline.’ Yet, she emphasises, she isn’t endorsing the current ‘natural beauty’ trend. ‘That’s what gives me the “ick” right now. It’s snobby to look down on someone with big eyelashes or overdone filler. People want celebrities to look like they haven’t had cosmetic interventions. But [the ‘natural’ look] is contrived and just a wealth divide between those who can afford really well-created and well-performed tweaks versus people who can’t. It’s another way to make women feel inadequate.’
Top and shorts, Madeleine Thompson
Attwood’s career path is one many former Love Islanders would love to emulate – take Tasha Ghouri, Molly-Mae Hague and Maura Higgins. Recent reports of a feud between Higgins and Attwood surfaced after Attwood posted a cryptic story on Instagram last November: ‘You can try to hire all the same people, regurgitate my stories as your own, study the playbook, follow the recipe blah blah blah, but it will NEVER taste the same’, seeming to imply Higgins was ‘copying’ her career path.
‘That was nothing to do with Maura,’ she says now. ‘I can’t go, “She hasn’t followed the same path” because evidently there’s a massive similarity. But I don’t have negative feelings towards her – there’s space for everyone in this industry. Someone said,
“Do you not worry someone is going to come and take your shows?” They can maybe make their own version, but they can’t fire me from something that’s got my name on it. It’s a very privileged position to be in.’
What did Attwood make of the furore surrounding Higgins (who had previously dated Attwood’s friend Pete Wicks) drunkenly kissing McFly star Danny Jones, a married man and father, at The Brits?
‘It’s not nice for the other party, is it?’ she shrugs. ‘As much as we all love salacious gossip, there is a wife and child on the other end of that.’
A huge mentor for Attwood was Love Island presenter Caroline Flack, whom she describes as ‘a kindred spirit’. Flack died five years ago, taking her own life amid fears of prosecution for allegedly assaulting her boyfriend. At her memory, Attwood’s eyes fill with tears.
Olivia with Bradley Dack, now her husband, in 2021
‘I heard a psychiatrist say that in medieval times people got a kick out of watching hangings in the village square. Civilisation has progressed, but now we do it differently. We love putting people on trial. It’s animalistic. Caroline’s death was much more complex than being about social media, but her fear of that unkindness factored into it. [After the alleged assault] I publicly supported Caroline, which not many in our industry did, and the abuse I got was really vicious – “You’re disgusting”; “She did this to her boyfriend” – then she took her own life and you saw the comments deleted.’
Attwood grew up with her younger brother and sister in middle-class Surrey, the daughter of a former model mother and a financial translator father. She struggled with dyslexia at her private school and dropped out at the start of A-levels to focus on clubbing and finding an older man as a meal ticket. But her first serious relationship taught her the error of that pathway.
‘He was earning a lot, and within about six months of living together I left my job as a receptionist at Champneys spa with encouragement from him. I was doing bits of modelling but he always talked me out of jobs, “Why do you want to go there and earn £80? You don’t need it.” I saw that as, “My god, I’m so lucky.”’
He treated her terribly and eventually she took the grid girl motorsports job to escape his influence, soon realising how empowering it was not to depend on a man for happiness or money. ‘That stayed with me. I’d rather experience it at 21 than at 50 with kids – having your husband go, “I’m leaving” when you’ve got nothing.’
Olivia with adult actors Josh Moore (right) and Justin in Olivia Attwood: Getting Filthy Rich, 2022
Now, she says, passionately, ‘I don’t think there’s any sweeter feeling in life than financial freedom.’ She has little time for Instagram ‘tradwives’. ‘We’re going into a really weird time where this idea of being a stay-at-home wife is being glamorised. I’m not saying you cannot have a fulfilling life that way, but it’s important for women to have autonomy around their own movements. I’d implore them to educate themselves around money, how to save and invest it.’
She thinks young women need to focus on finding a supportive partner. ‘That’s the key to success. If the person you share a life with doesn’t really want you to have your own identity, whether they say it out loud or through micro-aggressions or things that will impact your ability to succeed.’
With Dack, who she dated before Love Island and reconciled with a year after the show, ‘I got lucky, choosing someone with a really secure masculinity who likes women.’ Both make a mint, although his wages dropped dramatically from £18,000 a week with Sunderland to £3,000 now he’s with Gillingham. She’s coy about figures but is estimated to be worth at least £2 million, netting some £350,000 a TV show (that’s without her work endorsing brands).
Dack is proud of her ambition, but people ask constantly if he minds having such a powerhouse wife. ‘We automatically assume the husband’s nose has been put out of joint because his wife’s achieving, but no one ever asked me how I felt when Brad was top goal-scorer in the Championship.’
Dress, Eudon Choi. Bangle, Tiffany
The two seem brilliantly suited. Currently in the process of quitting their Cheshire mansion (home while Dack was with Blackburn Rovers) for her flat in London (‘where my work is’), neither are jealous types. He doesn’t care about her small tattoo bearing an ex-boyfriend’s name, and she says she’d be relaxed the other way round.
‘If I go partying with friends, I never feel I’m treading on eggshells. I can live authentically – so many of us find ourselves in situations where we love or are infatuated with someone but we’re not ourselves, which is exhausting. A lot of my partners felt they loved and fancied me. But would they be my friend if we weren’t intimate? No. Yet if I weren’t married to Brad, I’d want to be his friend. It sounds really gooey, doesn’t it?’
The couple want children, but she would like to wait a bit longer. ‘I’m obsessed with my career,’ she says.
‘I’m living out something that was too much for me to even dream, and I get to be completely selfish, which is a privilege. More and more successful women are saying the having-it-all theory is bulls**t. I know you can 100 per cent have children and a career but there’s that tug, whereas I walk out the door and no one needs me. Other women in my industry say, “Wait a couple more years. Just enjoy your husband and your freedom – everything else will come.’’’ I suspect Attwood is only just getting started.
OLIVIA’S LIFE IN BEAUTY
Make-up non-negotiables? Primer. The key to making make-up look good is the start. I love Nars Radiance Primer and Bobbi Brown Face Base – I’ve used that for about 15 years.
Favourite fragrance? Oud for Greatness by Initio Parfums Privés. I’ve worn it for about two years. I like earthy scents. It’s unisex, so my husband uses it. When we run out I tell him it’s his turn to buy more.
Scent memories? Chanel No 5 reminds me of my grandmother and mum. She only wore it when she was going out.
Do you have extensions? I have had them for about a decade. I get them removed every eight to ten weeks. It’s one of the few times I do collaborate with brands [and accept a freebie] because I think, ‘How wrong can it go?’
What do you use on your hair? Kérastase Nutritive Nourish and Hydrate shampoo and conditioner – my hair’s quite dry. I’m lucky to have any with all the crap I’ve poured over it!
Have you always been blonde? Artificially! I first started messing around at 13, using Sun In – my hair went cat-p**s yellow. I did a black box dye when I was 16 but for 20 years I’ve been consistently blonde.
Enhancements: how far is too far? When something has a negative impact on health or finances. But it’s up to the individual.
Tweakments you were happiest with? Having my boobs and lips redone.
And least? Doing them to begin with.
Best beauty tip? I drenched my face in moisturiser flying to New York, added silicone strips and felt I’d had a collagen facial on landing. It’s easy and cheap.
Biggest beauty regret? Not protecting my skin from the sun.
