She was spotted snogging Harry Styles, but there's more to Emily Ratajkowski ... trends now

Ten years ago this week, a pop single by a U.S. artist named Robin Thicke was released and instantly catapulted to the top of the charts.

Today, that catchy single, Blurred Lines, holds several distinctions, some more positive than others.

For while it became one of the biggest selling singles of all time, its lyrics and accompanying video were mired in almost immediate controversy, panned for being misogynistic, chauvinistic and perpetuating a culture of date-rape.

Featured in the video were three models cavorting around in not very much at all, to the accompaniment of the memorable line: 'I know you want it.'

Thicke has rather faded from public view since then, but one of the women on the video certainly hasn't.

She is Emily Ratajkowski (the 'j' is silent), EmRata for short, who's enjoyed a stratospheric rise to fame as, variously, a supermodel, influencer, businesswoman, feminist — of sorts — divorcee, mother, and one of the most photographed, and body-confident, women on the planet.

And now, adding to that considerable list is the 'accolade' of being the latest glamorous older woman to fall for the charms of serial lothario Harry Styles, with whom she was pictured enjoying a passionate — and very public — embrace on the streets of Tokyo this week.

Admittedly, at 31, she is young for 29-year-old Harry's usual tastes, although the gap seems to be shortening: his most recent lover, U.S. film-maker Olivia Wilde, with whom he split last year, has just celebrated her 39th birthday.

So who is this stunning brunette who's broken the hearts of teenagers the world over?

If you haven't heard of Emily Ratajkowski, you most likely have seen pictures of her. And you've probably seen quite a lot of her, too.

With 29.9 million followers on Instagram, 7.1 million on Facebook, 1.4 million on Twitter and another 2.4 million on TikTok, she's a star for the social media generation.

There have also been numerous appearances in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues, and there's a book — aptly named My Body — a podcast series and her own swimwear company, Inamorata.

Yet despite a typically all-American childhood, growing up in California, Emily was born in London, to English professor mother, Kathleen Balgley, and art teacher father John, and once lived a stone's throw from the Natural History Museum, in South Kensington.

Kathleen was a temporary lecturer at the University of London at the time and although the family returned to the U.S. shortly after Emily's birth, they came back to the UK for a six-month stint when she was four.

Little Emily grew up padding around her father's art studio and joined her mother on trips to the theatre, cementing a love of drama that grew when her parents returned to the U.S. and enrolled her in a theatre group.

Another, lesser known fact about Emily is that she's equally happy in a pair of wellington boots, clambering around the Irish countryside. In fact, Ireland is the place that the model (whose middle name is O'Hara) calls her second home.

Both her parents have Irish heritage (mixed with Jewish, Polish and Scottish roots) and her childhood was punctuated by visits to their stone cottage in Bantry, in the idyllic far reaches of West Cork.

Her childhood was not all picture perfect, however. Emily recently wrote of her parents' turbulent relationship in a series of deeply personal essays, revealing how they'd married after an 'on and off' relationship when Kathleen was pregnant.

'I understood that even before I was born, my existence was the essential glue of their relationship,' she said.

Turbulent it may have been, but the marriage endured. Last November, Kathleen posted a throwback photograph on social media to mark their 30th wedding anniversary in which she looks strikingly similar to her daughter. 

The star's notions about beauty appear to be inextricably bound up with her mother, now 70, whom Emily describes as 'classically beautiful'.

She once wrote how she used to pray to be beautiful and as she grew up, developing curves ahead of her peers, was encouraged by her mother not to be ashamed of her body, telling her to 'wear what you want, don't worry about other people'. 

Notwithstanding that advice, Emily has also recalled how her academic mother would snap at the model-hunters prowling around her 14-year-old daughter, declaring: 'She's going to be a brain surgeon!'

These days, Mum has changed her tune completely, and has proudly shared images online of her daughter's modelling shoots — even the racy ones.

Dad John, 75, is equally proud. Speaking to the Mail this week, he said: 'Emily's very bright; has been since she was a little girl, always did well in school. She has good vision, by that I mean she's a good artist but she also sees life clearly.'

Had life unfolded differently, Emily might have followed her father's creative path.

She went to the University of California, Los Angeles, for one year, studying art, until her modelling career took off and she changed course.

'She's a good artist,' says John, recalling his daughter's early artistic endeavours. 'I would set her up with a big piece of paper on the studio floor while I was painting and we'd work together. It was wild abstract things — very clever, very imaginative.'

There was also a holiday home in Mallorca, an old house with no electricity or running water, renovated by John.

Emily would run around naked, at ease with herself and the topless sunbathers on the beaches — an uninhibited attitude that clearly stayed with her. 

She enjoyed an equally wild childhood in Bantry, which she described in a 2021

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