New Zealand Woman’s Weekly Issue 45, 2022

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium turned 21 on October 25 and the Belgian palace celebrated the young royal’s coming of age by releasing an official portrait. As the eldest child of King Philippe, 62, and Queen Mathilde, 49, Elisabeth is heir to the Belgian throne – but the princess isn’t resting on her laurels. After receiving her International Baccalaureate from a college in Wales, she spent a year at Belgium’s Royal Military School. There, she studied Social and Military Sciences, and didn’t hold back when it came to donning her khakis and doing the hard yards. She now studies history and politics at the University of Oxford, but the palace has emphasised she will frequently travel home to the Castle of Laeken in Brussels, where the King and Queen live with their three…

On her 70th anniversary on the throne, the Queen declared that, when the time came, “Camilla will be known as Queen Consort as she continues her own loyal service.” With these words, the Monarch ensured the future of her daughter-in-law. Now, in a new book, author Angela Levin has spoken to many people to learn about the woman who has turned public opinion from one of dislike to respect. Angela sat down for a chat with our writer Donna Fleming and shared that the one word people most use to describe Camilla is “authentic”. She also tells from page six of the Queen Consort’s impact on Charles and why it will make him a better king. Elsewhere, Jeanette Thomas, who has just turned 50, opens up about motherhood, menopause and what…

It’s now a familiar story: how Camilla Parker Bowles went from being one of the most reviled women in the world to respected Queen Consort. She’s the woman whose life turned into a modern-day fairy tale. But what is she really like? That’s What biographer Angela Levin set out to discover when she decided to write a book that painted a true picture of King Charles’ wife. The journalist and author had no problem getting people to share their insights into Camilla or convincing them to be named in her book Camilla: From Outcast to Queen Consort. But she did strike a problem when it quickly emerged that everybody she talked to, from old school friends and ex-employees to the heads of charities Camilla supports, was saying pretty much the same thing…

Matthew Perry has revealed that at one point during his battle with addiction, he was given just a two percent chance of surviving. In his new memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, the Friends star, 53, says he spent two weeks in a coma in 2018 when his colon burst due to excessive opiate use. He underwent 14 operations, remained in hospital for five months and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months. “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and lungs,” explains the star in his searingly candid autobiography. “There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night and the other four died.” The actor, who played jokester Chandler Bing in the hit ’90s sitcom, began…

It’s often customary these days for those in the public eye to tout the joys of ageing. But if you had asked Jeanette Thomas a year ago how she intended to spend her 50th birthday, she would’ve bluntly replied, “Under a rock!” In the throes of menopause leading up to the big milestone, the usually upbeat broadcaster reveals she wasn’t living her best life. Plus, she had already received the only gifts she needed at the time: a hand-held fan given by her breakfast co-host on The Breeze Robert Rakete, followed up by a neck fan from her husband Dave. “All summer long, I just sat there with my two fans to get me through my hot flushes,” she recalls with a wry smile. But there were other “crazy symptoms” too. Jeanette barely slept…

She’s loved the world over for her butt-kicking roles in movies like Thelma & Louise and The Long Kiss Goodnight. But Geena Davis says she was raised in such a straight-laced household, she spent the first decade of her acting career being a craven people-pleaser. The 66-year-old recently released an autobiography, Dying of Politeness: A Memoir, and in it the Hollywood icon reveals her upbringing was so repressed, her parents made sure her name was spelled with a double “e” so it could never be mistaken for “vagina”. Her dad William was a machinist, carpenter and inventor, and her mother Lucille was so thrifty, “our collection of used foil was something to marvel at. In fact, I’m not sure they ever bought a second roll!” From the age of three, Geena wanted to be…