After decades of speculation about her famously stoic expression, Victoria Beckham has finally lifted the lid on why she rarely smiles in public — and it turns out her husband, David Beckham, is to blame.
In her new self-titled Netflix documentary, the 51-year-old fashion designer admitted the real reason behind her icy red carpet demeanor isn’t about attitude — but angles.
“Here’s a fact,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve looked miserable for all these years because when we stand on the red carpet, this guy has always stood on my left. I didn’t realize that when I smile — which I do! — I smile from the left. If I smile from the right, I look unwell. So I’m smiling on the inside, but no one ever sees it.”
Victoria confessed that her confidence took a serious knock after the Spice Girls split in 2000, when she tried to launch a solo singing career with the single Out of Your Mind alongside Dane Bowers. “At that point, people were questioning what I was doing. I’d be lying if I said I was the best singer or dancer, but when you’re constantly told you’re not good enough, it really hurts. I became so self-conscious.”
David, 49, recalled that his wife was “smiley, bubbly, and confident” when they first met — but that spark dimmed under relentless public scrutiny. “People thought I was a miserable cow who never smiled, and they weren’t wrong,” Victoria said candidly.
She added that fame made her instinctively tense up whenever she spotted a camera. “The minute I see a camera, I change. The barrier goes up, my armour comes on, and that’s when the miserable cow who doesn’t smile comes out. I’d love to have the confidence to just walk out of a restaurant and smile, but I can’t do it.”
The new Netflix series — produced by the team behind Beckham and Michelle Obama’s Becoming — follows Victoria’s fashion empire and the intense preparation for her Paris Fashion Week show last year. Despite her reservations, David convinced her to take part, praising her as “unbelievably hard-working and very clever” and saying the world deserves to see that side of her.