That point is 80. And the life is extraordinary; a film waiting to be scripted. Impoverished immigrant parents (mother a Hungarian ballerina, father an Italian violinist; she was born in New York); foster homes; rheumatic fever at 12, which put paid to her own balletic ambitions; modelling at 13 (she made her first Vogue cover by the time she was 15); three husbands of varying unsuitability; numerous spectacularly catastrophic financial scenarios, of which depositing most of her life savings with Bernie Madoff is merely the most recent.