Actress Frida Farrell plays a character based on herself in Selling Isobel. Photo / Getty
A new award-winning film stars a woman who was kidnapped and turned into a sex slave - a role she says she knows all too well.
She is the real life inspiration for it.
Frida Farrell stars in the disturbing movie Selling Isobel and she says even her own dad didn't know she was playing herself until the film's premiere.
According to a recent interview with The Times of London, only the film director knew during shooting.
In London, 2002, Farrell was lured into the hands of a bad man who promised her a modelling job for the motorbike company, Harley Davidson.
The movie features the pivotal scene where she entered the fifth-floor apartment for the 'supposed' photo shoot where all her modelling dreams turned into a nightmare.
Frida was forced to pose for pornographic photos and have sex with random men.
"Sometimes I lie in bed and I think, 'Why, why, why were you so stupid?" Farrell says.
"I still blame myself because I still had a choice there."
She met the man, 'Peter' (who only gave his first name) on the street in London, where he told her he was casting for an upcoming modelling gig and that she fit the bill.
Farrell says she didn't find it very surprising: "It happened to me in Paris, in Milan, in New York. It happened everywhere."
She did some research on 'Peters' businesscard and even asked her boyfriend if he thought it was all legitimate.
Frida thought she had checked everything out so she went to the apartment for a sample shoot.
"There was a backdrop. There was fruit. There was coffee, tea and snacks. There was even an assistant, a girl who was helping out with lights," she remembers.
She got a call back, saying the client loved her shots and they wanted some more.
But the second time she went to the apartment 'Peter' locked her inside and threatened her with a knife.
"[It was] almost as if to say, 'Don't do anything or I will use it,'" she said.
She spent three days in and out of consciousness. She was drugged and forced to wear used underwear, pose for porn, perform oral sex on her captor and have sex with five random men.
In her film Selling Isobel, Frida says it flashes back to her horrific memories:
"There's a lot of rapes, unfortunately."
She finally was able to escape from when Peter forgot to lock the door and she ran away.
"I didn't stop," Farrell says.
She ran all the way to a friend's house who cared for her and didn't ask too many questions.
Selling Isobel has won the Raindance Film Festival's Indie Award.
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