If Paulina Porizkova could go back in time, the 56-year-old former supermodel would tell herself, “don’t confuse love and money.”
“Make sure that you don’t hand off the responsibility of who you are…to the man that you love” Porizkova told MSNBC’s Know Your Value at Forbes’ 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi earlier this week. “Make sure you have a bank account, and you keep your money.”
Porizkova famously married The Cars frontman Ric Ocasek when she was 24 years old and he was 45. In 2019, Porizkova found Ocasek dead at the age of 75 in their New York City townhouse — and the following day discovered he had cut her off completely out of his will. The duo, who had two children together, was in the process of going through a divorce prior to Ocasek’s death.
The Czechoslovak-born, Swedish–American supermodel, actress and author has since opened up about the ordeal and her money mistakes, saying she was “naïve” when they merged their finances and regretted not signing a prenup.
Porizkova was in Abu Dhabi to talk about the evolution of influence and social media.
During the panel, she recounted joining Instagram at the urging of a friend. Initially, Porizkova, who has 736,000 followers on Instagram, just posted “happy pictures of me wearing handbags and makeup and, you know, eating food.” Then, her husband died. “And then I started sharing my feelings about grief, and it was Covid… Everybody seemed to be in this sad spot. And I think the women who were feeling lonely, and that were feeling heartbroken or grief found me. And so, I feel like I have this little community of women like me who I communicate with. I don’t feel like I’m influencing anybody. I feel like I’m having conversations.”
Porizkova has since taken to Instagram to share unfiltered views on everything from aging, betrayal, the crisis in Ukraine and it what was it was like to live under Soviet rule as a child, and more.
She is currently in the process of writing a book of personal essays called “No Filter,” about the complexities of womanhood at every age.
“I’m writing about beauty and grief, love and being a tall girl…you know a little bit of everything. But it’s very, very deeply personal,” she said. “At my age, I feel like I’m such a repository of other people’s secrets, there’s so much that you carry, that I’m just going to give up all of mine. I’m going to give up the shame from my secrets.”
