THESE days she appears in Vanity Fair's best-dressed female authors list and turns up at premieres wearing dresses by Oscar De La Renta and heels by Christian Laboutin,
THESE days she appears in Vanity Fair's best-dressed female authors list and turns up at premieres wearing dresses by Oscar De La Renta and heels by Christian Laboutin,
But JK Rowling says she resents having to make an effort with her appearance since she became famous.
Speaking on Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 today, Rowling, 48, says she decided to "tidy myself up a bit" when people began to comment on how she looked when she first began to appear in the public eye after the success of her Harry Potter books.
"I would be a liar if I said I don't care," she admits on the programme, which she is also guest-editing.
"I found it very difficult, when I first became well-known, to read criticism about how I looked, how messy my hair was, and how generally unkempt I looked.
"I did tidy myself up a bit. But I do often resent the amount of time it takes to pull yourself together to go on TV."
Rowling is the first guest editor in Woman's Hour's 67-year history and in the programme she will highlight the plight of the world's eight million children forced to live in institutions.
She is also tackling why Scotland has the highest number of multiple sclerosis sufferers in the world, and her loves of rugby and shoes.
But speaking to presenter Jane Garvey she also argues women are under greater pressure than their male counterparts in terms of public image.
"It must be so nice to be a man and just think 'which of the three suits will I wear today?' and nobody would say a thing.
"With us it's our weight, our clothes, how we're ageing, our hair."
Rowling says she wishes she was strong-willed and didn't care how others see her, but describes herself as "weak-willed".
The best-selling author also reveals that it was "painful" that her mother never knew about her enormous success.
She described the "guilt and worry and anxiety" brought on by her mother's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. Her mother died aged 45.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article