Kelly Brook has said it was the ‘best decision’ breaking up with Hollywood star Jason Statham just as his career was taking off.
Rising to fame as a glamour model in the late 1990s, Kelly also presented The Big Breakfast in 1999.
While she’s now been with her husband – Italian model and actor Jérémy Parisi – since 2015, Kelly has spoken about choosing to break up with Jason after they moved to the US together.
Kelly, 45, dated the Fast & Furious star from 1998 until 2004 – with the couple also becoming engaged before their relationship ended.
This week Kelly appeared on the How to Fail podcast, where she shared details about her high-profile relationships over the years.
Speaking about setting boundaries after being a ‘people-pleaser’, Kelly said she’d become more ‘selfish’ as she’d grown older.
Asked by host Elizabeth Day what that involved before she met her husband – whom she married in 2022 – Kelly spoke about her relationship with Jason, 58.
‘I think definitely in my first relationship, there was definitely elements of co-dependency. And there was elements of me putting my career and my life on hold. I had a really good job at MTV, where I was hosting a daily show, which was just after I got fired from The Big Breakfast.
‘I got a really great show at MTV and was there for about a year and my boyfriend at the time was an actor. I remember he got offered a few roles in things, it was like a bouncer on the door in EastEnders doing something.
‘He had so much talent and charisma, and I was like, “you know what, we have to go to America”,’ she recalled.
Kelly went on to share that that she watched Jason’s career ‘flourish’, while hers started to ‘flounder a bit’ because she didn’t have the same opportunities.
‘I was just kind of flying back and forth between the UK and LA. It was quite taxing and expensive and exhausting,’ she said.
‘His career just took off and it just became the most incredible thing. But because I did so much and didn’t look after myself, I didn’t look after myself. I just felt so neglected in that dynamic. And to the point where actually, I fell out of love with him in the end because he hadn’t showed up for me like I’d showed up for him.
‘So, we broke up. And I think he just turned around to me and was like “why are you leaving now?” Like “look I’m a movie star and millionaire, why now?”. And I was like “you just haven’t been there”.’
Reflecting on her decision to walk away, Kelly said that Jason ‘hadn’t been there’ for her, adding she felt the ‘need to become a woman.
‘During this process I became a woman and I don’t think he knew who I was anymore. It was a really hard time. But I think it was the first time where I really kind of did something for myself and it was the best decision.’
Questioned by the host if ‘this person was Jason Statham?’, she responded: ‘Yes, I think everyone kind of knows. I’m not saying anything that isn’t in the public domain anyway.’
Jason later went on to meet model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, 38, whom he’s been in a relationship with since 2010 and shares two children with.
After being cast in Guy Ritchie’s films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, his career took off and he later went on to appear in The Bank Job, The Expendables, the Fast & Furious.
He has since been credited with leading the resurgence of action films during the 2000s, with his movies grossing over $8.5billion (£6.4billion). The actor is now estimated to be worth around $100million (£76million).
In the How to Fail interview, Kelly also spoke about the ‘interesting chapter’ of dating younger men when she was in her thirties.
‘I think that was more of my maternal side coming out,’ she said. But Kelly added she believed that ‘those guys were probably with me for the fact I was on television and a famous woman’.
After breaking up with Jason, Kelly dated rugby players Thom Evans, 40, and Danny Cipriani, 38.
In 2010 she met her now-husband after stumbling across a photo of him online.
‘I thought he was the most beautiful looking man I’d ever seen,’ she said.
After following him on social media, the pair started chatting and were friends for six months before romance eventually blossomed.
Although Jeremy didn’t speak English when they met, Kelly said he learnt it fluently when they started talking. ‘He just made so many sacrifices to be with me, which were in my eyes, just the sheer definition of love. We are 10 years in now. It’s been the most incredible 10 years of my life.’
This weekend she will also be seen on screens again in the upcoming season of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!. While she is ‘terrified’ of the challenge, Kelly added she was looking at it as an ‘empowering’ way to tackle her phobias.
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