Much less apparent is the vexing competitors for modeling. As her fame grew, Ms. Johnson anxious that she can be overshadowed by youthful black fashions, particularly Iman, a prospect that added to her already rising anxieties.

It did not assist that she and her friends typically resorted to cocaine to suppress meals cravings. Ms Johnson mentioned medicine had been an occupational hazard. “As a mannequin, it’s important to be a garments rack. You may weigh 90 kilos and be chiseled, they usually idolize you for it. You’ll be able to’t get too skinny.”

Maybe, inevitably, she developed physique dysmorphia, which nonetheless plagues her to this present day. “I have been in remedy my entire life,” she mentioned. “Now I really feel fats.”

In her stage monologue, as in her memoir, she recalled her regrets about her two marriages, significantly her 1977 marriage to Mr. Sims, whose infidelity and threats of violence Main her into despair and extra medicine. She sought assist from her sister Sheila, a therapist and college counselor who Johnson mentioned within the interview requested her bluntly: “Should you keep on this relationship, are you going to die? Your physique.” Will he actually die?”

“I assumed, ‘Sure, I will die.'” This epiphany prompted her divorce from Mr. Sims in 1979. As a toddler, Anantha was despatched to dwell along with her father, solely to return to her mom after she was born. teenager.

Ms Johnson has been linked to tennis star Arthur Ashe, boxer Mike Tyson and actor Chris Noth over time. She settled in Palm Springs, Calif., a few dozen years in the past with financier Brian Maillian, who accompanied her to New York final week. They had been married in October.