I’m Leeza Bridget Cooper.

I was born in Sydney in 1968 and I’m an Australian novelist, poet, model, actress, interior designer, personal fitness trainer, counsellor, volunteer and advocate against domestic violence. I’m half-Irish and half-Dutch. Losing my mother at 16 and with my family overseas, I was sadly forced to leave school to support my six year old sister, and I ventured into dresswear manufacture. I worked with Sydney's top designers and fashion houses landing many in-house and catwalk modelling positions. I loved the glamour, and it taught me hard work. But being deprived through necessity of higher education, now that I’m an adult, I’ve enrolled at University, where I study Creative Writing and Poetry.

While I was a young girl in the fashion industry, one day, I was spotted by a media photographer, and I became the leading Pg. 3 glamour-girl during the next decade. I love fast cars, and soon became the main promotional girl for racing driver, Peter Brock.

TV commercials soon followed, and I was chosen for the Peroni Azzuri lager adverts. Oh, and I also trained in ballet following the Royal Academy of Dance curriculum.

Stints in the Australian soap production, Home & Away, followed in 2016, and I landed an acting/dancing role in the film The Chosen.

The famous photographer David Oliver chose me for his muse and model and I regularly appeared in Vogue magazine along with my family, my ex-husband and our four children.

I made a promise to all battered women that I would not only survive to tell my story, but I would dedicate the rest of my life to helping eradicate domestic violence against women and children in any and every way I could.
I set about researching intimate relations between men and women around the globe. I interviewed hundreds of couples, researching their intimate relationships, and writing about their extra-marital affairs. It gave me an understanding of how modern-day couples interact with themselves and their societies, especially during times of stress and trauma such as the recent Covid epidemic. This enabled me to write my confronting book, “How to Have an Affair and Save Your Marriage”.

I was especially interested in why they were cheating on each other, and how widespread it was, and how they reacted to being found out. When my book came out it became an instant best-seller, which justified my concept that adultery is the norm, rather than the exception. It defined why traditional counselling, psychology and especially the approach of religious authorities, is so out-of-date, and why my new approach was so well accepted.

I also educated myself in everything to do with health and fitness, refreshed my spiritual teachings, and later, when my family was settled and secure in a home, I left my two working eldest at home to guard the fort and took off across the world to America for three months to interview, honor public speaking engagements, travel, explore and home-school my youngest two children. At the time, they were 16 and 14. This worldly experience was exactly what my children needed in so many ways.

My eldest son, then 21, followed my lead a year later and lived in America for three months.
I went on to spend summer after summer, living in both countries for the past three years.
As a child and young adult I was fortunate enough to live in Australia and other countries such as England and Ireland. I write more about this fabulous nomadic lifestyle and my adulterous and abusive marriage in my autobiography "My Shotgun Wedding and a Horny Goat”

And I wanted my own children to experience other cultures, to trust themselves, their decisions, be brave and go for things without fear of failure and the ideals of others to tell them what’s normal.

As you’ll see from these pages, there’s nothing normal about me, my teachings, my mothering or as an individual and I am very proud of that. Being a spiritualist, artist, passionate and wild at heart is what saved my life and delivered me and my children into a beautiful future together.
We are still altogether under the same roof which speaks volumes; my eldest two are in their early- and mid-twenties, and I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to have such a beautiful little family who wakes up together each morning and loves each other unconditionally and by choice. 

These model shots at an Australian beach were taken when I was just a teenager. But I wasn’t naive. I knew what was going on. The modelling world, especially for young women - well, little more than children - is full of predators, users, and utterly distasteful people. I avoided most of the awful situations which most young women find themselves in, except on one occasion, which I write about openly and fearlessly in my autobiography.