How much is Gisele worth?
| Net Worth: | $450 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Model |
| Date of Birth: | July 20, 1980 |
| Country: | Brazil |
| Height: | 1.8 m |
About Gisele Bundchen
You’ve seen this angel stomping the Victoria’s Secret catwalk as one of the highest paid models in the world. But do you know that she was a lanky teen growing up in Brazil and how she became Victoria’s Secret angel and highest-paid model? Gisele has carved out the kind of modeling career girls only dream of. Not to mention, wedded one of the NFL’s hottest hunks. The world was saddened when this year it was announced that they were dissolving their marriage.
She redefined “sexy,” built an empire, snagged a coveted sports idol and made models “super” again. and then is married American football quarterback, Tom Brady.
Gisele Bundchen was born and raised in Horizontina, which is a small town in southeast Brazil which only had a few thousand occupants at the time. She grew up in a family of six girls (one of which is her fraternal twin) and they are of German and Brazilian descent. She was teased in her youth, her classmates nicknamed her “Oli” after Popeye’s pixel-thin girlfriend, Olive Oyl. “I was taller and skinnier than everyone else,” she said.
Fortunately, even early on Bundchen used her height to her advantage. In sports, she trained from an early age to be a volleyball player. At 13, she attended Dilson Stein’s Mannequin course at the insistence of her mother. It was a class for posture and runway walking and something that would likewise serve her well in her career to come. Then when her school class took a trip to São Paulo, Bundchen was discovered! She was a shopping mall, of all places, and she is probably the only model alive to be discovered as a world-class beauty while eating at a food court McDonalds.
She hit the ground running (or walking) after her debut, Gisele’s momentum was unstoppable. She was second in a Brazilian national modeling contest, made Elite Look of the Year, and placed fourth in an international contest held in Ibiza, Spain. Suddenly she was moving to New York, it was 1996, and she already had what it took to pursue a serious modeling career. Nevertheless, it was a decision she says was hard, especially coming from a poor family in a poor country, but then again, that’s why the opportunity was also impossible to pass.
Within a year she was all that, she caught the eye of acclaimed photographer Mario Testino—“I was mesmerized by her,” he told People magazine.
He was the one who convinced fashion designers to take a chance on a girl who hadn’t yet seen her 18th birthday.
She was first released on the May 1998 cover of Allure magazine, and soon after the cover of Vogue three times in 1999, the same year she was named the VH1/Vogue Model of the Year. She was credited as single-handedly ending the heroin-chic, deathly pallor era of American modeling. Ushering in thin is beautiful but health is crucial.
Rolling Stone called her “the most beautiful woman in the world,” by 2000, she had been head hunted by Victoria Secret and became the face of the brand. For seven years her face (and body) boosted sales of the lingerie giant as far away as Malaysia.
In addition to her long list of endorsements and fashion contracts, Gisele started a flip-flop line called Ipanema. Her brand went on to become the highest selling sandal in Brazil and even owns a hotel, The Palladium Executive. Then, just when we all wanted to know what she would do next, she appeared in two films in supporting roles Taxi and The Devil Wears Prada.
While reticent to speak of her personal life, she did have a long-term relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio that was eventually splashed all over the tabloids in the mid-2000s. A trend that has continued for the actor, but Gisele did find lasting love in 2006 when she began dating NFL quarterback Tom Brady. The two married in February 2009, and in December of that year, Gisele gave birth to a son, Benjamin, and daughter Vivian Lake Brady, in 2012.
With more than 2000 magazine covers around the world and still going strong, Bundchen is the indisputably supermodel. While Claudia Schiffer decried the end of the age of supermodels, with the exception of Gisele, Naomi Campbell has also spoken on the term in 2008, saying that “supermodel” is thrown around too loosely. “Kate Moss was obviously a supermodel,” Campbell said, “but after Gisele, I don’t think there’s been one.”
“For me to be a model–I had to leave my family. Do you think I liked that? No! There are sacrifices. Life is meant to be a challenge, because challenges are what make you grow. How boring it would be if we knew what was going to happen tomorrow.”
