Paulina Porizkova: I had no money for groceries after Ric Ocasek died

The Czech-born stunner met Ocasek on the set of the music video for the Cars’ hit “Drive” in 1984 when she was only 19. They got married when she was 24 and he was 45.

Ocasek had told her that it would be a “bad omen” if they signed a prenup, she said.

“I had this sort of idea that he knew everything about the world and his word was the word of God and I should just sort of listen to what he said because, obviously, he had the wisdom of living that I hadn’t had,” she said. “And he reminded of that every of often, that he knows better because he’s older.”

Despite Porizkova pulling in about $6 million a year at the height of her fame as a model, she was never considered the breadwinner.

“From the very beginning, it always seemed like it didn’t matter how much money I made. It was ‘hobby’ money and his money was the real money,” she recalled.

The couple had two sons, Jonathan, 27, and Oliver, 22.

Last September, Porizkova sold the Gramercy Park townhouse where they had lived for more than 30 years for $10 million. However, she still has her home in upstate New York, and recently moved into a Manhattan rental apartment.

“What happened to me, it seemed like it was so easily preventable,” she said. “And it was based on not misfortune, it was based on my own stupidity. It wasn’t that I had an evil husband. It wasn’t that things conspired against me, this is literally, I have nobody to blame for this except for myself.”

Are we supposed to feel sorry for her?

[quote]The couple had two sons, Jonathan, 27, and Oliver, 22.

Did they, also, receive nothing? Nothing that would help feed their mother, who surely only needed some iceberg lettuce and a few Tic-Tacs to survive?

It's a good warning to people getting married to take precautions.

When an older guy wants to marry a younger woman it's because the woman is naive. They want someone to control.

R4 and never let another person manage the finances without your involvement.

I don't understand how this could possibly be true. She made millions of dollars in her own right, what she calls "hobby money" to them while they were married. Where is it? Also, wasn't he evil to her because she had moved on and was dating someone else?

She is dumb if she considered $6 million per year "hobby money" and never put any of that $6+ million aside for a rainy day.

Ah well, too old for Trump.

SHE didn't consider it hobby money, read the fucking article! Ocasek did, and it bothered her.

Oh, god. I hope she doesn't have lose one of her many houses.

WTH did she DO with her $6M per annum?!

No pity for her!

My heart goes out to this woman as I know how it feels not to have groceries.

The payee on the $6 million check was "Paulina Porizkova." She could have saved some of it.

We used to be able to have decent discussions about topics like this, but now no one reads the article, everyone just has an agenda.

Even if I pointed out that she blames herself 100% -- read the last paragraph in R1 and see for yourself -- people would get bitchy and double down and claim she still wants everyone to feel sorry for her and give her cash.

If she really let him spend all of her money and then cut her off from their joint accounts in his will, he was a total sociopathic asshole and she's...well, dumb.

Sally Kirkland should have got her sum powdered milk

She was separated from Ocasek for a couple years, actively dating another guy, and it didn't occur to her to get her money in order? There's stupid and really stupid.

Good to see she's back on track and getting fresh plastic surgery.

She seems a little daffy and out of it. Is she on anyone’s 2021 death watch list?

Not buying this. Unless she is a drug addict, htf is this possible?

She says it was nobody's fault but her own and she was dumb. Even though the houses are mortgaged, she can probably get something out of them; I don't know what the value of the pension she refers to is, but I'm sure she will have enough to live on. And you can always put groceries on your credit card.

It's a very tone-deaf story considering what many people are going through right now.

She's just dumb and vain. Most people will never see $6 million in their life, she blew it all by the time she was 55. She got pampered by a rock star. Cry me a fucking river.

Seriously some Eastern European women are children mentally. There is something to be said for a no cradle-to-grave society even though our own brute Capitalism is not quite ok at all.

This is good PR for UBS Wealth Management to use her as a cautionary tale for the 1% to not have a trusted wealth advisor.

Did Ric give her a cash allowance every week before he died? How could she not have access to any cash? Doesn’t add up.

McDonald's is hiring.

At least she is admitting that it was entirely her fault for having been stupid and careless and not blaming circumstances or her dead husband. So many people stay in victim mode permanently, refuse to take any responsibility for their situation and keep blaming everything and everyone else.

Maybe she’s as dumb as a rock!

Agreed, R27. I'm just kind of shocked if it went down the way she says it did. But she had a very rough and strange childhood in Czechoslovakia, separated from her parents. Then she became a model at like 15 so I'm sure she just trusted the adults around her to do right by her and she met Rick at age 19. I guess she just stayed in permanent child mode and is only now beginning to think like an adult.

I kind of don't want to believe that Rick Ocasek wasn't as bad as it seems, but absolutely nobody who knew him is defending him or claiming that Pauline is a liar, including his grown kids (two of whom he also disinherited). That speaks volumes.

She isn't as dumb as a rock because her English is flawless, both written and spoken. That takes brains. But she apparently was mind-bogglingly childlike and naive.

Oh well Eastern European women are fucked up like gay men a lot. After 2 years in Romania I saw how even women who are surgeons are considered "worthless" unless they latch on to a man and keep up their good looks. The pressure is something I relate to. I mean, being told you are "abnormal" if you don't look a certain way, act a certain way, marry and have kids by a certain age. These women can be mechanical engineers and the surrounding forces are powerful...you know you will be stoned of you don't comply. I think she saw him as a Western man, a "civilized Anglo" and she was probably a bit silly and got carried away.

One thing I don't trust is men who kind of pray on much younger women and those from other cultures where the man is "king". Total hetero power trip.

The husband was old and wore a huge wig. He was disgusting. Jesus, she was a model! Didn’t she EVER crave good cock?

IIRC, once Paulina married Ric, she no longer had her own bank account and retirement accounts. When she married, Paulina's millions were put into a joint account. Wrong move. That was money she earned before their marriage.

A woman who makes that kind of money should never put all her earnings into a joint account. Right there she made a huge mistake, In fact, no one who earns millions should be doing that, that applies to straight or gay couples.

If an older less attractive man man wants a trophy wife, he needs to treat her like a queen, even if she's worth millions. Paulina must have ben awfully naive.

Ric's second wife Suzanne was also attractive. That man was not good looking. He was a bag of bones with an odd face. Did he have a big dick?! Ric was married three times.

Here's Suzanne, I assume that's one of the sons she had with Ric. Ric had six children. Ric's eldest son is 56.

I don't know much about Ric's marriages, I think he left his first two wives for other women. He left Suzanne for Paulina.

Ric O was making more than $6 million a year??? Doing what?

Ric's oldest son Chris was very bitter, Ric abandoned him and his sibling.

From Page Six, November 10, 2020: Ric Ocasek’s oldest son, Chris, has branded his late father a “narcissist” who was “never present.”

"On 15 September, on the one-year anniversary of the singer’s death, Chris Otcasek, who uses the original spelling of the family name, went to Instagram He posted a photo of him with Ric and brother Adam. He captioned the photo: “You don’t exist. Neither did we. “ The 56-year-old also used hashtags, pointing to broken relationships, such as #throwawaykids, #faillegacy and #lieafterlie.

The 56-year-old video game lead artist is the product of the rock star’s first marriage to Constance Campbell. In 1971, Ric divorced Campbell while she was six months pregnant with their second child and in the same year married second wife Suzanne. They went on to have two sons, Eron and Derek.

While filming the music video for The Cars’ song “Drive” in 1984, the 40-year-old singer met 18-year old Czech-born supermodel Paulina Porizkova. Ric ditched his second wife, Suzanne, in 1988 and the following year wed Porizkova. They welcomed two sons, Jonathan and Oliver.

Chris, who had a record deal with Capitol Records in the late ’80s, told Page Six he didn’t hear from his father for most of his childhood — that is until The Cars started charting with hits like “Shake It Up” and “You Might Think.”

“There may have been a touch of guilt, but I also think he wanted to say he was becoming famous and I think that gets into one of the more universal things in that he was just simply a narcissist,” Chris told us. "He didn’t have the sort of conscience to keep him grounded so he just kept going and always went for the next thing even if that meant abandoning or neglecting children. That was fine with him. I don’t think he thought much about it.”

While Chris admitted he felt their relationship was “shallow,” only seeing each other once a year or so, he added that the pair did stay in touch via phone. But still, Chris claimed that “my father, in essence, died the day I was born. He was never present, he was never there. Even when he was, he was never there and that’s the abandonment that I’m referring to.”

Chris told us he used to live in New York but moved to Los Angeles to “get as far away geographically from him as I could. I was living a few blocks from him for a year or two and saw him once maybe and I just decided I had to get as far away as possible as I could.”

He also struggled with how closely he resembled the late rocker, something he grappled with as a teen when The Cars were mainstays on MTV. “There were a lot of preconceived notions. In retrospect I wish I’d been a bit more protected from that,” he shared. “I didn’t want to be reminded every 15 seconds that I didn’t have my dad in my life. It was hard.”

Chris isn’t the only person in Ric’s inner circle who felt burned by the singer-songwriter. After his death, Porizkova discovered that he had written her out of his will, claiming that she had abandoned him. Chris and his brother Adam were the only sons to be left out of their father’s will.

Paulina confessed on Instagram that she was “clearly delusional” regarding their relationship. “I believed I knew him. I believed we had the same definition of ‘love.’ Grieving him is an equal amount of heartbreak and rage,” she wrote of the man she had been married to from 1989 until 2018.

Despite all the frustrations and shattered hope regarding his father, Chris seems at peace. “I think I’ve done OK in spite of all that but it was an issue,” he said.

R15, Yeah, yeah. You're gullible. If she didn't want sympathy and money, she would have kept her mouth shut.

[quote] Did they, also, receive nothing? Nothing that would help feed their mother, who surely only needed some iceberg lettuce and a few Tic-Tacs to survive?

I mean, she was a super model, surely that should be enough

Join the club!

A model who can’t afford groceries? How much is a week worth of tic tacs?

[quote] I literally went through a year of asking my friends to buy us groceries.

Us? I assume her two grown ass sons don't have jobs.

I met her once in her hay day. She smilingly looked me over and said " You're a tall one". Bellissima.

If you google her net worth in 2020, she's worth $10 million dollars. What's she crying about?

As for the disparity in their attractiveness, I remember reading an interview with her years ago in which she talked about his looks as really attractive to her. She described him climbing up and crouching on the mantel piece, all folded up like a giant stick insect, as if it were a very hot thing. I guess he was the lid to her pot! For a long time, at least.

I remember she always worked...didn't she have a fucking bank account of her own?

I ran into her in the village, even back then, she had lots and lots of deep wrinkles on her face and lots of make up on (which made the wrinkles even more obvious).

[quote] Ric O was making more than $6 million a year??? Doing what?

He probably wasn't making more than $6 mil per year. He probably told Paulina he was making more than that and that her income was "hobby" or play money. In order to be more casual about spending her income. Paulina, being dumb, went along with it.

She didn’t have stuff to hock?

On the other hand, I’m sure within her circle she’s shown plenty of largesse over time (she seems down to earth), so they’re like, “Here! Allow me!”

R41, that must have been after she sold one of the properties . Basically she was cash poor because her money was tied up in two properties.

One thing’s for sure; she won’t be calling Tyrant.

R5 and the young woman wants a sugar daddy who will die and leave her millions. It goes both ways.

He sounds like a nightmare.

ITT people don't understand liquidity

If you actually read the article, she says she had no money while she was waiting to sell her house. Once she sold it, she had money to live on. She was seriously naive, but she married young and had no education. Not the first woman to get screwed over in a marriage.

I think it was less a play for pity than a warning to other people in unequal partnerships.

I guess he was not just what she needed.

With no money for an Uber or Lyft, who's gonna drive her home tonight?

Um... they have these things called credit cards now.

Didn't she write an article about Kate Hudson's tits a few years ago?

[quote]I think it was less a play for pity than a warning to other people in unequal partnerships.

Was there really disparity in their incomes? Wasn't Paulina considered a 'super. model'? Paulina was signed to Estee Lauder and other major high-end beauty brands. For many years Paulina was a the face of EL. In addition to her regular modeling gigs, she was all over the place shilling for makeup and other brands.

Here you go: "During the height of her success, Paulina modeled for a number of big-name brands, including Chanel, Versace, Revlon, and Calvin Klein, while also becoming the second woman to appear on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover for two years in a row - an honor that had only previously been achieved by Christie Brinkley."

I posted upthread about Paulina merging her millions with Ric's money, that was her major mistake. Paulina earned millions, apparently, once she married Ric, he talked her into putting her money into joint accounts, he must have done some major finagling for her to lose her millions.

Apparently she didn't have her own bank account, which means, Ric technically robbed her.

Ric seemed like such a douchebag. The multiple wives, the various ignored children, the narcissism and cold demeanor. Besides being creepy looking, he was actually a creep.

She was "only" 19. Jesus fuck, anything under 50 is a pedophile. LOL.

Ocasek was hideously ugly and a terrible person, too. How in the hell do guys like this get the beautiful women? Ok....money, I get it. He seemed to be a pos.

Most models are as dumb as most DLers. Why she'd marry such a fugly creep, yikes.

Why does a model need groceries?

It’s funny how image does not always reflect reality. I remember seeing pictures of them in the papers and magazines back in the 80s, thinking wow look at them, so in love and together. I thought the same of Mia and Woody.

Poor Paulina is still suffering from PTSD after working with the batshit crazy Sally Kirkland in Anna.

I feel bad when I first began hearing these stories. But when you stop to actually think about it, so much doesn't add up. She made millions on her own. Plus she has grown children. And I thought it was her who had broken up with him and was seeing someone else.

He was fucking OLD. The Cars didn’t make it until the mid 80’s. What did I asked do to support all the kids and wives etc until the mid 80’s? I don’t think he made as much as he said. I think most musicians don’t make as much as you think. I believe he may have just been a creep deluxe who took her money and invested it. He sounds like a complete awful person . I know that he was obsessed with going to female street walkers. Real low level.

*what did he do to support

That is a gorgeous pic of her, r56. She had nearly perfect features and a sports illustrated swimsuit body...

Wait, really? Ocasek was fucking common streetwalkers while married to Paulina?

Apparently it was too much to go out and suck a few dicks for cash. Le sigh...

I want to like them both because she was so beautiful and I like the Cars. But everyone always says how smart she is and I think she's just smart for a model. I've read some of her essays and they're not interesting at all. Just nothing. Maybe they are written correctly and that is something because I can't even speak another language, but she's no amazing writer.

she wasted her youth on this ugly guy and now she's left with nothing...

R64, tell us what you know about the whores. I've never heard that before.

She shouldn't discuss personal details in public about her husband who is dead and can't defend himself.

she want sympathy and some rich asshole to save her...she even posted a naked pic of herself. she's so desperate!

Hold on folks - that was $6 million in ONE YEAR. She made tens of millions during her peak modeling years.

None of this makes any sense. How do you blow through millions of her money and his money?

I think she has a screw loose.

With the right lawyers, she could probably sue the estate, mostly because much of it was from her own income, regardless of what the will says.