An indication of Oxford supermodel Laura Bailey's current fame is that getting an interview with her is harder than squeezing into a pair of size eight jeans, writes Katherine MacAlister.

But then the 27-year-old model, actress, columnist and would-be UN ambassador, who now lives in New York, obviously leads a pretty hectic and private life.

Earlier this month, Laura kicked up so much fuss when The Sun re-used photographs taken for lads' mag Later that they cannot be used again.

And her agency, Models One, would not issue any photographs unless we promised not to mention her prominent 15-month affair with Richard Gere. But as that's the main reason her name became so well-known, it would be hard not to, especially as her recent Vogue diary column mentions constant meetings with "an old friend". She has also been photographed leaving plays, visiting art galleries and strolling through East Village with the Hollywood heart-throb since his marriage to supermodel Cindy Crawford broke up.

So, no Laura and no pics. Where should I start?

Perhaps with her Wheatley past. For this swan was certainly a studious, if not ugly, duckling. Her friends remember her as a hard-working intellectual with little time for socialising or romance. One classmate remembers her as "chunky, chubby and certainly nothing special". But what she lacked in the looks department she made up for in the classroom and on the sports field. Another former pupil said their mothers always asked: "Why can't you be more like Laura?" because she was such a model pupil at Wheatley Park School. But she added: Her own parents put enormous pressure on her.

Laura was in the A-stream in every subject and was also captain of the hockey, netball and rounders teams. But friends noticed that all work and no play was making Laura pretty dull. "When the rest of us were going out to a local nightclub, she was most likely discussing literature on a country walk," her friend adds. Nor was her home life particularly happy; her parents, Gwendoline, a lawyer, and father, Prof Peter Birk, split up when she was just five. She was brought up by her mother in Ladder Hill, fuelling speculation that Laura was obviously looking for a father-figure in Richard Gere.

Indeed Laura once told the Daily Mail: "When your absolute hero, your father, doesn't come back, it's really frightening, whatever age you are. The danger is that it sets a pattern in relationships. My father's leaving is probably a huge part of all the relationships I've had with men in my life. Her relationship with her father, a former professor at All Souls College, Oxford, deteriorated further when he expressed his "deep sadness" about Laura's chosen career in a national newspaper.

"He made me feel completely abandoned. I felt the one person who should have been there for me wasn't," she told the Mail.

Perhaps leaving Wheatley for Southampton University to study English was the best thing that could have happened. She emerged three years later with a first, having lost two stone in weight along the way. When she returned home, an Oxford hairdresser asked her to model for publicity shots and suddenly her career took off.

She took on any work that came her way to fund her MA. But when lucrative contracts with Cadbury's and Thomas Pink came along, she found herself in the limelight, began enjoying her celebrity status and even dated a member of rock group Primal Scream.

Even so, her former schoolmates are still amazed that she chose a career on the catwalk instead of a life in academia. This now looks set to change though, after Laura indicated this month that she wanted to concentrate on her acting career and would love to work for the United Nations. Maybe the frivolous, superficial world of the fashion industry has soured and she is desperate to return to something more meaningful despite the megabucks, celebrity parties, and high profile she has achieved since crossing the Atlantic.

Laura escaped to America when the Richard Gere fiasco blew up. She was photographed climbing over the wall of his London flat one morning in 1994, while he was still married.

The pair met at a religious gathering in London, held in honour of the Dalai Lama and their affair was said to be the final nail in the coffin of Gere's marriage. So, when faced with the full force of the tabloid press camped on her doorstep, Laura understandably decided to scarper.

But considering she was virtually unknown when she arrived in the USA, she has done very well out of it, landing her top contracts with Guess, RayBan and Pretty Polly. She has also graced the front cover of Vogue and she now commands up to 3,000 a day. But her acting aspirations may overtake her modelling career, however lucrative it is. "I'm bored of modelling and really want to act," she said last year after landing a role in award-winning film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Unfortunately, after ten months of filming, her scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor.

But the more I research Laura Bailey, the more of a contradiction she seems. She's a swot who went into fashion. Got a first in English but chose to model her body rather than test her brain. Her deadly serious Buddhist beliefs seem to clash violently with the superficial modelling world she lives in. The former Wheatley schoolgirl is rarely seen in these parts, let alone the country. It seems we have scared her away.