Naomi Campbell Gets Prison Sentence: ‘America Horror Story’ Star Could Spend Six Months Behind Bars
Naomi Campbell may soon be forced to trade her designer duds for drab prison garb. The catwalk queen has been sentenced to six months in an Italian prison for assaulting a paparazzo and injuring his eye, and American Horror Story fans can only hope that her legal woes won’t affect her recently-announced role on the FX show.
On Friday, Naomi Campbell was convicted of assault by a Sicilian court and sentenced to a six months suspended prison term. The Telegraph reports that the supermodel will be serving time for an incident that happened in August 2009 after a paparazzo started snapping photographs of Campbell and her then-boyfriend, Vladimir Doronin, while they strolled down the streets of the Sicilian island of Lipari. The paparazzo’s presence evidently annoyed Naomi Campbell, so she attacked him with her handbag. The purse hit him in the face and scratched one of his eyes.
The eye injury was bad enough that the photographer, Gaetano Di Giovanni, spent three days in the hospital. However, he decided to withdraw his charges against Naomi Campbell after his attorneys reached an agreement with her legal team outside of court. Unfortunately for Naomi, prosecutor Francesco Massara recently decided that her actions should not go unpunished because of “the gravity of the charges against her.” Campbell’s attorney, Guido Carlo Alleva, told E! News that he’s planning to appeal the ruling.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, Naomi Campbell recently scored a role on the FX horror series American Horror Story: Hotel. There’s no word on whether her fight to stay out of jail will have any effect on her latest acting gig, but the show started filming earlier this month. Perhaps Naomi will be finished filming before she has to head back to court or to the clink.
Campbell’s American Horror Story: Hotel character is a fashion editor who gets on the wrong side of a villainous fashion fiend being played by Lady Gaga. Gaga sings “Telephone” and Campbell seems to be rather fond of throwing phones, so perhaps one of their characters will end up strangling the other with a phone cord. This would be a fun reference to their connections to the Alexander Graham Bell invention that has played such an important role in many horror movies (think Scream and The Ring).
Naomi Campbell’s weapon of choice is usually a phone. The model isn’t exactly known for her model behavior, and the handbag attack is just one of many angry outbursts on a lengthy list of violent acts. The Mirror took a look back at her greatest “hits,” and many of her worst temper tantrums involved a phone — she assaulted one assistant with a telephone and threatened to throw the poor woman out of a throwing car, she hit a housekeeper with a “jewel-encrusted mobile phone,” and she beat another assistant on the head with a Blackberry. She’s also been involved in scuffles with police and her drug counselor.
During a 2013 interview with the Guardian, Naomi talked about her notorious temper. She sees it as nothing more than a normal emotion, and she doesn’t care what people think about it.
“Well, everyone has a temper. A temper is an emotion. But do I care what they say?” she said. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion.”
“I’m a work in progress. But yes, I’m happy with the way I am now. I’m very observant and very instinctive. In life, you have to have the vulnerability to accept when you are to blame. And I do have that and I am open enough to say it. I’ve made mistakes. You know all that stuff, I’m not going over it again. And I admit to them, but I don’t regret anything. I don’t live in regret.”
Perhaps Naomi Campbell should start regretting the actions she takes when she loses her temper — she might stay out of trouble (and out of prison).
[Image credit: John Raedle/Getty]
