Dubbed ‘The Face of 66’ for her gamine beauty when she was discovered at 16, has seen her transformed from Cockney shampoo girl to Dame.

Her doll-like look, with bobbed hair, enormous blue eyes, framed with false lashes and rimmed with kohl - combined with her boyish physique - took the by storm.

Loved by the camera, she launched the ‘mod look’ that epitomised the decade.

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Of , daughter of a factory worker mum and carpenter dad, to Twiggy, Vogue explained in 1967: “Twiggy is called Twiggy because she looks as though a strong gale would snap her in two and dash her to the ground.”

Now 75, her eternal appeal is being celebrated in a documentary about her incredible career, Twiggy, directed by her friend, the actress Sadie Frost.

Twiggy said: “Making it has been a happy experience. She’s (Sadie’s) done a great job."

The film, which releases in cinemas on March 7, also features Joanna Lumley, Dustin Hoffman, Paul and Stella McCartney and Pattie Boyd. They take viewers on a priceless romp through the Swinging Sixties - when Beatlemania was at its peak, mods and rockers were at war on Brighton beach, and every teenage girl lusted after a Mary Quant mini.

Central to the Sixties experience was Twiggy, the high school girl from Neasden, north west London, who grew her hair long to look like her idol, Jean Shrimpton.

Aged 15, at her Saturday job in a London hairdressers, she’d flick through the fashion mags - in awe of the models and never daring to imagine she would join their ranks.

Turning 16 in 1966, she bunked off school to have her hair cut short by celebrity hairdresser Leonard Lewis, who was looking for models to try out his new crop cut.

Photographer Barry Lategan took some headshots, which Leonard hung in his salon and fashion journalist Deirdre McSharry spotted them.

Within weeks of Deirdre asking to meet the young model, an article appeared in the Daily Express, declaring Lesley as “The Face of ‘66,” calling her “the Cockney kid with a face to launch a thousand shapes... and she's only 16”.

Persuaded to rebrand herself Twiggy by her hairdresser boyfriend Nigel Davies - based on her tiny frame and her childhood nickname, Twigs, he then became her manager.

Changing his own name to Justin de Villeneuve, he oversaw her finances as she began commanding modelling fees of £80 an hour and landed her first Vogue shoot.

She had made it!

Vogue noted her attributes as “a Cockney accent, a lack of sophistication and of conceit, a limited vocabulary, and a very sweet nature”.

At just 5ft 6in, Twiggy was short for a model, while her 6st 5lb frame was considered shockingly thin.

But her straight up and down body suited the new catwalk designs, the rising hemlines, A-line dresses and unisex patterns.

Her androgynous look prompted a bumper sticker campaign saying, “Forget Oxfam: Feed Twiggy”. She was also accused of promoting eating disorders among teenage girls.

But she has since said: "I always got blamed for inventing anorexia, but I ate like a horse. I just couldn't put on weight. I didn't change until my 30s, after I had my daughter, Carly. Then I started to get curves."

Now a gran to Carly’s two children, in her modelling heyday, she couldn’t believe the fuss her figure caused. "I hated what I looked like," she has said, "so I thought everyone had gone stark raving mad."

She was an overnight phenomenon and, when she flew to New York in 1967, photographers followed her through the Big Apple as if she was royalty.

American shops were piled high with Twiggy memorabilia - lunch boxes, pens, books, a magazine dedicated to her world, and even a Twiggy Barbie doll, complete with false lashes and a ‘twist n’ turn waist’. The New Yorker ran to nearly 100 pages of Twiggy coverage, while US Vogue put her on its cover three times that same year.

International stardom saw her flying to France, Japan and America to model.

She was photographed with Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson, Bert Stern and Richard Avedon. “The working-class girl with money in her pocket can be as chic as the deb,” remarked Cecil of his subject. “That’s what Twiggy is all about.”

But the jetset lifestyle took its toll and she ‘retired’ in 1970, saying: "You can't be a clothes hanger for your entire life!"

She split from de Villeneuve, who was a decade her senior, and a burgeoning friendship with filmmaker Ken Russell saw her relaunch as an actress - in 1971 starring in his romantic musical The Boyfriend and winning two Golden Globes.

She’d already had success as a singer, with a debut single Beautiful Dreams in 1967, and for the rest of the '70s she sang, danced and acted her way through a range of stage and screen roles.

She appeared on in 1973, after he referred to her as ‘Twig the wonder kid’ in his Aladdin Sane lyric.

Her love life was fast-paced, too.

Twiggy met American actor Michael Witney in 1974 while co-starring in the thriller W, and they married in 1977.

Carly was born the following year, but Twiggy was devastated in 1983 when Michael, an alcoholic, died from a sudden heart attack while she was on stage performing her Tony-nominated Broadway musical My One And Only.

They had separated a few months previously and Michael was having dinner with four-year-old Carly at a Manhattan restaurant, when he collapsed and couldn’t be revived. "I can't say anything about that apart from the fact that it was a dreadful thing for Carly to go through and it was a long time ago,” she said in 2012.

But in 1984 Twiggy met Leigh Lawson. "When I first met him I thought he was very attractive, but then I thought 'Actor? No way. Bad news,’” she said. “But we kept seeing each other and slowly, slowly I began to trust him.”

And in 1988 they married - he has a son, Ace, who now has three children - and they have been together ever since.

"I'm a chancer," she once said. "I think you should take all the opportunities offered to you but I also like the fact that Leigh looks after me. That's what I like. I really do."

Twiggy had another rebirth when, between 2005 and 2007, she was a judge on America’s Next Top Model, hosted by Tyra Banks.

And in 2019, her services to fashion, charity and the arts were honoured when she was made a dame.

“I was proud about being made a dame in 2019 because I love my country. I’m a very proud Brit and a very proud Londoner,” she said recently.

But, when the letter telling her about the honour landed, she said: “I got this official letter and thought, 'Oh my God, it’s a tax letter!”

Thinking she was being given a CBE, she continued: "I called the phone number on the bottom of the letter and spoke to a really nice lady. I asked her if it was true I was being offered a CBE. She said, ‘No, they are offering you a damehood!’”

The years have clearly done nothing to dampen that inimitable, unpretentious Twiggy charm.

And, with her 60th year in the limelight approaching, she has no intention of retiring again.

“I think the worst thing anyone can do is to stop,” she said - proving to us all that ‘there ain’t nothing like a dame’.

* Twiggy is out in cinemas on March 7.