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Screencaps > 3.13 The Hurt Locket

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2010 Candids > March 8: On the set of ‘Gossip Girl’ in NYC

Taylor Momsen is doing just fine in primetime on the CW’s Gossip Girl, playing Jenny Humphrey, a Brooklyn girl who is realizing her dream of becoming Queen Bee at a pricey prep school on New York City’s Upper East Side.

But the 16-year-old is just as determined to score as a singer with her band, The Pretty Reckless. Momsen told Parade.com’s Jeanne Wolf why music is the love of her life and what to expect when Gossip Girl returns tonight.

Jenny will still be Jenny.
“Jenny gets in a lot of trouble — what else is new? I’m not really sure what I’m allowed to say or what I’m not. I don’t want to give anything away because I don’t watch the show every week. But Jenny gets involved with a couple of different guys and there’s lots of drama. As I said, it’s Gossip Girl, so would you expect anything different?”

Connecting with Jenny’s identity search.
“She has money now, but she still never really fits in. That’s been the constant struggle for her since day one, looking to be accepted. But whether she’s the bitchy mean girl or the nice girl from Brooklyn, she still never fully finds herself. It’s been kind of like that for me my whole life. I’ve never really fit in anywhere. I’ve been to a lot of different schools and I’ve had a very strange life growing up. It was always a struggle.”

Finding herself.
“I’ve done an album. Music is where I can be me. I really do it because I love it, honestly. It’s what I want to do with my life. I mean, it’s my only goal. Acting is easy. I’ve been doing it for so long and I totally love it. But you’re playing a character instead of yourself. Music is more personal because you’re writing it and you’re involved in every step of it. I’ve been writing songs since I was, like, five and I’ve been singing since, like, I can’t remember. But talking about music is like, as Elvis Costello said, ‘Dancing about architecture.’ Music speaks for itself, so I’m excited for people to finally hear my songs and let them speak for themselves.”

Expect to be surprised.
“It’s rock and roll, but nothing like I did when I went on tour with the Veronicas last year. A lot of that stuff is on YouTube but it’s not what you’ll hear on the record. It’s very personal. I’m not going to change for anybody and I’m not interested in changing the sound of my music or changing anything about the way I am just to sell something.”

She’s doing it her way.
“I don’t read that crap that describes me as having an attitude, but I don’t know why that’s a bad thing. Attitude is in the eye of the beholder. I didn’t get into this to be a role model for 7-year-olds. I have no interest in doing that, you know? If parents don’t like some of the stuff I do then they shouldn’t let their kids watch me.”

Like, her smoking.
“I smoke, so what? Why do people give a s— what a 16-year-old girl who they’ve never met does? It’s not like I’m sitting there going, ‘Kids, you should go buy a pack of cigarettes.’ When I walk outside with a cigarette and someone takes a picture of it and puts it on the Internet, its not my problem. I’m just living my life and I’m not gonna live my life for other people.”

Not playing the fame game.
“I’m not Paris Hilton. I don’t really care about being a celebrity. It comes along with the territory so you can’t totally avoid it. But there’s a difference between doing the red carpet and having people invade my personal life taking pictures of me. And that’s why celebrity is so stupid. You don’t want to become something that a few million people watching your show want you to be. I want to be who I am because, if I lose that, then what am I doing this for? It’s not about fitting in. If you don’t fit in as yourself, then you don’t fit in.”

What she got from her parents.
“They’ve never cramped my creativity. They’ve allowed me to be myself, which I think is the best thing you can do. If you try to change your child and morph them into what you wish you were like, they’re not being themselves. You have to allow them to grow and develop the way they want. They love me for who I am, which is really what’s important.”

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2010 Candids > March 5: Filming ‘Gossip Girl’ at Grand Central Station in NYC

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Scans > Fabulous Magazine (UK) April 2010

‘Bullied for being uncool - now girls want my style’

Taylor Momsen is not your regular teen starlet. The actress best known for her role as Jenny Humphrey in Gossip Girl is not old enough to drink alcohol, drive a car or buy cigarettes (even if she does smoke them) but she’s got the ambition and attitude of a showbiz veteran - not surprising given that she has been acting since she was three. Yes, you read that right, people. Three.

In fact, just one look at her CV is enough to give even the most accomplished child genius an inferiority complex. She may be sweet 16, but she has already made her name in one of TV’s most popular teen dramas to date, is a lead singer in a punk rock band and has been feted as Hollywood’s hottest fashionista, with designers falling over themselves to dress her. They know that what Taylor is pictured wearing today will become tomorrow’s latest trend. So it makes perfect (style) sense that fashion’s latest muse fronts our new-season special.

But not everyone is a fan of Ms Momsen’s edgy look. Some conservative types have lambasted Taylor’s love of long socks, grungy tops and barely-there skirts, saying she’s a poor role model for her teen fans. Not that she’s bothered.

“Clothes are a form of self-expression. I don’t care what other people think,” she says. “I’ve had lots of people say I’m disgraceful because I should act like a role model for other young kids but I’m not a role model. I’m an actress, I’m a singer and I don’t want to be a role model. If you like me that’s fantastic - but if you don’t, stop giving me a hard time.”

When we finally catch up with her (it’s taken five days to pin her down) it’s in the back of her chauffeur-driven car in New York en route from a Gucci fitting to a night out with friends from her band, The Pretty Reckless.

“I’ve always been into my own look and love what I wear,” she says. “I’m not like a lot of other actresses. I don’t use a stylist and mostly do my own hair and make-up. When I get dressed up I always wear what I want to. Fashion is a big part of me but I always believe it’s not what but how you wear clothes.

“I’m not some cute girl that’s been stamped out of a Disney studio and I’m proud of that. Some people like me for it, others hate it. I’m used to that. I’ve had it all my life.”

A teen tantrum this is not. Taylor’s defensive for good reason. She was just three when she started to act professionally, six when she made her big-screen debut alongside Dennis Hopper in the thriller The Prophet’s Game and seven when she got the part as the lead little girl in the Jim Carrey movie The Grinch.

You would expect that such amazing parts at such a young age would have been the sign of a charmed life, but Taylor - who grew up in Missouri with parents Michael and Colette and younger sister Sloane, 13, and then moved to New York aged 12 - shakes her head. “I didn’t have a great childhood,” she says. “I loved my family, I loved my work but I hated school. I had a really bad time. Other kids didn’t like me. I didn’t fit in.

“Maybe a lot of people think I have a great life. I do in lots of ways, but believe me it’s been pretty tough. I know a lot of girls couldn’t handle everything I’ve been through.

“The way I am in my attitude, my clothes, my music is all to do with what has happened to me in my life so far. I do what I choose, I wear what I choose, I sing what I choose and I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’ve had to learn to get tough enough to be like this but it’s the way I have to be.

“I was made fun of all the time - the other kids used to taunt me religiously. I never had a best friend.”

It’s undoubtedly this that has led to her “trust complexes” and she’s said in the past she’s only close to two people. “My life was just not normal. I was in commercials, I was in TV series, then I was the Grinch Girl.”

And it was a hint of the wild dress sense that got her noticed more recently which set her apart from the rest of her peers too. “I dressed differently. I definitely wasn’t a fashion icon at school,” she admits.

“I used to always wear knee-high socks and I got teased all the time. Girls would point at them and laugh. It makes me laugh now that one of my fashion statements are my knee-high stockings. Now a lot of girls think they are pretty cool. You have to admit that’s ironic.”

These days, everyone is desperate to be Taylor’s friend, but back then those dark days were terribly lonely for her.

“I really wanted a friend but it just never happened,” she explains. “I didn’t get talked to or invited anywhere. I never got hit or anything like that. It was much more snidey and personal.

“I also never got asked out once at school. I was the weird one. Maybe people thought I was stuck up, maybe they thought I was above them. I wasn’t.

“I was very, very unhappy at school so I moved schools a lot which didn’t help matters. I guess my parents and I thought that I’d finally find somewhere where I’d be OK. But it was the same story.”

It’s clear that Taylor is nothing like the social climbing, squeaky-clean character she plays in ITV2’s super-cool US series Gossip Girl. She started out on the show when she was 13 and over three years transformed her preppy innocent character into a bit of a rock chick.

“I started dressing myself for events,” says Taylor. “The producers noticed and wanted to incorporate that into Jenny’s wardrobe, so I was very lucky. Now if someone doesn’t like what I’m wearing, I don’t care.”

But does that extend to her nearest and dearest? Ask Taylor how her mum reacts when she steps out in revealing outfits like the black stockings and suspenders combo she wore at the Teen Vogue Block Party in New York last September, and she laughs. “There are a few occasions when she raises her eyebrows but she never tells me to get changed,” she says.

It comes as little surprise that Taylor’s role models are outrageous rock stars. “I love people like Joan Jett and Kurt Cobain. But what I love is more about their attitude than what they wear.

“I don’t copy anyone in how I dress,” she insists. “It bugs me when people say I’m the next Courtney Love. Number one I’ve never been a heroin addict like she used to be, and number two I don’t look anything like her.”

And Taylor - who recently collaborated with US designer Jen Kao to create tour outfits for her band - doesn’t take her role as a fashionista remotely for granted.

“I’m so amazingly lucky because I get to go to fashion shows, I have designers giving me clothes and I can pick what I want,” she says.

“But I mix everything up to put my mark on it. If a designer gives me a dress I may hem it up to make it shorter - I’ll make it how I want it. I’m 16, I have an opinion and I think I can go out and do what I want and wear what I want. I want to inspire other girls to follow their own ideas and not care what other people think.”

And like the big names before her - Agyness Deyn, Alexa Chung, Lily Allen and Pixie Geldof - Taylor recently bagged a contract as the face of New Look. But she’s not just modelling the clothes. This is an opportunity to put her style spin on the whole collection.

“The cool thing about the campaign was wearing clothes with my twist,” says Taylor, who is currently single and who has commented in the past that she would “eat a boy my age alive”.

“I don’t dress for men, I don’t dress for boys, I don’t dress for women or other girls. I dress for me.”

With so many years ahead of her Taylor knows only one thing about the future - that she’ll be doing fashion her way. “I don’t know how I’ll be dressing when I’m 20 or 30, but I know it’ll be my style and it won’t be boring.

“I absolutely love fashion because it reflects who you are,” she says. “When I was a kid I always used to think: ‘What would I save if my house was on fire?’ Even now it would have to be my rag doll, but it would also be my guitar and my vintage leather jacket.” A style statement if ever there was one.

BELOW, YOU CAN SEE TWO NEW UNSEEN ‘NEW LOOK’ CAMPAIGN GORGEOUS PICTURES:

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2010 Candids > March 5: Filming ‘Gossip Girl’ at Grand Central Station in NYC