People are seemingly spending more time than ever thinking about how to stay alive longer—do you think about it?
Staying alive and fit. There’s only so much you can… I mean, you wish there was some new thing that you could [try], but is there really anything? There’s nothing really … I mean, there’s lots and lots of upcoming things you always read about, and then did they ever really arrive? Meanwhile, you’re in the gym, meanwhile, you’re in the dance studio.
I don’t like being hot for too long.
So there’s nothing that you can chalk your own longevity up to?
I think, unfortunately, you can’t really, after a certain age, do loads of drink and drugs.
That’s unfortunate.
Unfortunately. Cause it’s a lot of fun. However, if you want to have fitness and longevity, you can’t do loads of drugs and drink all the time.
When did you stop all of that?
I was about 40.
Okay, that’s good to know. Up until 40, you might be okay.
I mean, you can still do it! But you can’t do it crazy all the time like you used to be able to. Because something will catch you out. It might catch you out anyway. There’s no guarantees. You’re just doing the best you can. And you might get some terrible illness, and you’ve been clean, and you’ve done everything, you’ve been in the gym, and you might just get some terrible illness. But at least you’re doing your best.
Do you get hangovers?
Yeah, terrible hangovers. [Laughs].
It gets worse, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it gets worse. It doesn’t get any better.
Four Beatles biopics are being filmed this year. Would that kind of treatment for the Stones interest you?
Yeah, it interests me. I don’t want to impart it to you, but, I know how I see it. There’s lots of ways of doing biopics. So most of the time when you do a biopic, you do one small section of someone’s life bookended by some other stuff. Take the Bob Dylan movie. You do the moment when Bob went electric. You’d have to think, what are you going to zero in on? And where’s your two years of interest? I mean that Bob Dylan one was two years, [the] James Brown one that I produced was slightly more.
What section would you go for out of the Stones’ history?
I don’t know which section, because it’s a long period.
Do you have an idea of someone you’d like to play you?
No.
What is the biggest misconception about you?
People have preconceptions of everyone. Even if you’re not even very well known, people say, [whispering] “She’s a bit of a bitch.” Do you know what I mean? Everyone comes with some kind of baggage. But I’m at a disadvantage because a person can Google me and find out a lot, and I can Google them and not find anything.
In the old days, they would not know about you and they’d be surprised that you could even speak. Because in those days, pop stars were supposed to be ridiculously stupid and [too] badly educated to know about anything. And so they were really surprised when you put a three-syllable word together.
A version of this story originally appeared in British GQ.