Since her sudden death just a couple of days ago, we’ve learned a lot about Charlotte Dawson’s on-screen persona, but also the Charlotte Dawson behind the screens. The woman who, for many years, has battled a dark depression.
We’ve learned that Charlotte was a caring and compassionate person; one with a wicked sense of humour, who nurtured young people in the industry.
But what we’ve also leaned is that Charlotte Dawson had a troubled life, from the very beginning.
Born in Auckland, Dawson’s biological mother, who was a teenager at the time Dawson was born, put her up for adoption.
At the tender age of sixteen, Charlotte Dawson left her native New Zealand to work for Ford Models in New York. And she never looked back.
In the early 1990s Dawson moved to Australia where she worked as a fashion journalist on the Today Show, which is also where she met colleague and close friend Richard Wilkins.
Her career took off, and she became the beauty and fashion director for Woman’s Day and the Style Editor for New Idea. In 1999 she married Olympic swimmer Scott Miller, but the marriage ended just a year later.
Dawson – who was 32 at the time – later admitted that she had fallen pregnant but had an abortion. In her book Air Kiss and Tell that was released in 2012 she said:
“I could sense some hesitation in Scott”. “My due date would clash with the 2000 Olympic Games and this was very concerning.
“Everything Scott had done was leading up to this moment and nothing could stand in his way, so it was decided that we would terminate the child and try again later. Who needed a developing foetus when a gold medal was on offer, eh?”
“I felt a shift,” she wrote. “Maybe it was hormonal, but I felt the early tinges of what I can now identify as my first experience with depression.”
In 2001 the couple, who were known for the partying ways and fun loving lifestyle, divorced. Rumours began to emerge that Miller had cheated on Dawson, but it has never been confirmed.