Cindy Crawford (Supermodel)

About Cindy Crawford (Supermodel)

Cynthia Ann Crawford was born on February 20, 1966, in DeKalb, Illinois, to Daniel Kenneth Crawford and Jennifer Sue Crawford-Moluf. She grew up with two sisters, Chris and Danielle, and a brother, Jeffery, who died of leukemia at age three. A high school valedictorian, she briefly attended Northwestern University on a chemical engineering scholarship but left to pursue modeling. Crawford is of French ancestry, and, as discovered on Who Do You Think You Are? in 2013, her ancestry includes European nobility, including Charlemagne.

At 16, she was discovered by a photographer while detasseling corn and entered Elite Model Management's "Look of the Year" contest, finishing as a runner-up. Early in her career she was nicknamed "Baby Gia" due to her resemblance to model Gia Carangi. After working with Chicago photographer Victor Skrebneski and with Elite Chicago, she signed with Elite New York in 1986. That year, Vogue chose not to airbrush out the mole above her lip. She was part of a group of 1990s supermodels known as "The Big 10", which also included Elle MacPherson, Linda Evangelista, Stephanie Seymour, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, Helena Christensen, Claudia Schiffer and Kate Moss. She appeared on over 1,000 magazine covers, including Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Allure, and her editorial work also includes W, People and George, where she appeared as George Washington. She walked runways for Chanel, Versace, Christian Dior and others, and appeared in campaigns for Revlon, Pepsi and Omega. In 1990 she appeared on a British Vogue cover with Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Tatjana Patitz, and in George Michael's Freedom! '90 video. She posed for Playboy in 1988 and 1998. Forbes named her the highest-paid model in 1995. She was featured in the 2009 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition The Model as Muse. She retired from full-time modeling in 2000 but occasionally appears in shoots, such as Vogue Paris with her daughter Kaia Gerber in 2016, and took part in the 2017 Versace show honoring Gianni Versace.

Crawford hosted MTV's House of Style from 1989 to 1995. Her acting roles include the 1995 film Fair Game and appearances in 54 (1998), Frasier (1997), 3rd Rock from the Sun (1998), According to Jim (2002) and Cougar Town (2009). She appeared in music videos including Jon Bon Jovi's Please Come Home for Christmas (1994), Duran Duran's Girl Panic! (2011) and Taylor Swift's Bad Blood (2015), as Headmistress, and in the 2023 docuseries The Super Models. In the late 1990s, she appeared as a guest assistant in David Copperfield's stage shows, standing in for Claudia Schiffer in illusions such as being sawn in half, levitated and beheaded by a guillotine, and sometimes performing a sawing illusion together with Schiffer. She released fitness videos including Cindy Crawford: Shape Your Body, The Next Challenge and A New Dimension, and founded the businesses Meaningful Beauty (launched 2005) and Cindy Crawford Home Collection. She supports charitable causes, including childhood leukemia research.

Crawford married actor Richard Gere in 1991; they divorced in 1995. She married entrepreneur Rande Gerber in 1998, and they have two children, Presley (born 1999) and Kaia (born 2001), both models. The family lives in Malibu, California.