Show Business: The English Dream

In his 32 years, Nigel John Davies has been a builder's laborer, a bodyguard, a fairgrounds boxer, an assistant at a beauty parlor, a bet taker at a London bookmaking shop, a salesman of nudie films, a shorthand typist, a paint stripper, a bric-a-brac salesman at the Chelsea antique market, and an interior decorator. He has also been unemployed. But all that was before he met a pencil-thin 15-year-old named Lesley Hornby and said: "You're like a twig. I'll call you Twiggy."

Davies, who renamed himself Justin de Villeneuve when he was an interior...