Monica Lewinsky was brought up in Beverly Hills, in an atmosphere of privilege. Her father, oncologist Bernard Lewinsky, and her mother, Marcia Lewis, separated in 1987. At the time of the divorce, Monica was 13 or 14, an awkward young teenager struggling with her weight. When she was in high school, she gravitated toward the drama department. Laraine Dave, mother of a boy who whom she dated, told The Washington Post that Lewinsky didn’t possess the “body type” for the leading roles she sought. “She had the face. She had the talent. She had everything,” Dave recalled. “Her weight was an obstacle.”
That Washington Post profile, in fact, painted Lewinsky as a lifelong outsider, someone who didn’t fit in at school, nor at college, nor when she nabbed a Washington, D.C. internship. While her fellow interns were immersed in politics, looking to establish a foothold for an eventual career in D.C., Lewinsky showed little interest in the subject. “Monica was never a political person. She never discussed politics,” a friend explained to the Post.
As Dave recalled, Lewinsky seemed to get along with people older than her far better than she did with her peers. While interning in the Pentagon, she began dating an older man. That tendency, to better relate to her elders rather than those her own age, would later be seen in her friendship with Linda Tripp, and her affair with Bill Clinton.
