Background

Christy Nicole Turlington was born on January 2, 1969, in Oakland, California, United States, to Dwain Turlington, a pilot, and María Elizabeth Turlington, a flight attendant.

Born second among her parents' three children, Christy has two sisters named Erin and Kelly. Because of her father's job, she lived in various cities in her childhood.

Education

Christy Turlington was first spotted by a local photographer named Dennie Cody in Miami in 1983. The photos he took somehow landed in a modeling agency and very soon, she became a part-time model.

Possibly in 1985, her family moved to Danville, California, where she was enrolled at Monte Vista High School. Concurrently, she continued modeling during her summer holidays.

Sometime in the 1990s, she graduated from school and enrolled in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study of New York University to study comparative religion and eastern philosophy. She earned a Bachelor of arts degree in 1999. Later, she acquired a Master's degree in public health from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Career

Christy Turlington was signed by the Ford Modelling Agency in 1985. She appeared in the outdoor scenes of the pop-rock band Duran Duran's music video Notorious in 1986. Not long after that, she established herself as a successful model, appearing on the cover of the January 1987 edition of Vogue Germany.

In 1987 Turlington moved to New York City to become a full-time model. Within two years, she signed a seven-figure contract as the new face of Calvin Klein, remaining with the brand until 2007. Turlington became the face of Calvin Klein in 1988 for the brand's signature fragrance, Eternity. Her name eventually became synonymous with the company particularly after working alongside Mark Vanderloo for the 1995 campaign. Turlington went on to return as the face of the brand in May 2014, this time alongside husband Ed Burns. The campaign was shot by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matatin for the brand's 25th Anniversary Edition bottles. Calvin Klein supported Turlington's charity Every Mother Counts through the campaign as 100% of the proceeds from United States sales of the perfumes were donated for one week.

In January 1990, Christy featured on the cover of British Vogue along with supermodels Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Tatjana Patitz. Their pairing caught the eye of the pop singer George Michael, who hired all of them to appear in his music video Freedom! 90.

In 1991, the five models were hired to walk the runway at Gianni Versace's 1991 couture show. Very soon, all five of them began to be known as supermodels, gaining global recognition individually. Christy signed a contract with Maybelline in 1992 as their new face. In the following year, she was christened "Face of the 20th Century" by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also created a line of mannequins in her likeness.

In 1993, Turlington was immortalized as the model for 120 mannequins commissioned from Pucci by the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Christy ventured into business in 1995, co-founding and promoting a restaurant chain called Fashion Café with Campbell, Elle Macpherson, and Schiffer. In the same year, she also appeared in the fashion documentaries Unzipped and Catwalk. She was also part of a documentary called Pret-a-Porter, released in 1994.

Following the loss of her father to lung cancer in 1997, she set up the award-winning campaign smokingisugly.com, a website designed to raise awareness of lung cancer.

The year 1999 saw her found her own company Turly Inc. She eventually branched out into skincare, producing an ayurvedic skincare line called Sundari. In the 2000s she partnered with Puma to launch two clothing lines for active women. Concurrently, she continued modeling, participating in many major campaigns all through the 2000s and the 2010s.

Turlington turned her hand to writing, with her first book, Living Yoga: Creating a Life Practice. Speaking of her dedication to yoga, she told Vogue "nothing makes me feel as centered as this mental, spiritual and physical practice."

In January 2014, Turlington became the global ambassador for Imedeen's beauty supplements.

Currently, Christy serves as a spokesperson for the cosmetics brand Maybelline, and she is also a brand ambassador for Imedeen beauty supplements. She is still an active model who continues to appear in different fashion magazines and fashion shows.

Achievements

• Christy Turlington is an American fashion model best known as a face of the cosmetics company Maybelline and the Calvin Klein fashion house. Turlington appeared on more than 500 magazine covers and walked the runways for the world’s top fashion houses, including Chanel and Valentino.
  
  Turlington was also a noted activist. In 2010 she launched Turly Pictures, LLC, and founded Every Mother Counts, an organization dedicated to improving maternal health and reducing maternal mortality. Turlington made her directorial debut with the maternal health documentary No Woman, No Cry (2010). She also directed the short film Every Mile, Every Mother (2014), in which members of Every Mother Counts competed in a lengthy overnight race; the documentary was meant to highlight the fact that many pregnant women are far from maternity care.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Living Yoga: Creating a Life Practice

    (Christy Turlington discovered yoga at the age of 18 and h...)

    2002

• movie

  • No Woman No Cry

    (For too many women, pregnancy is a death sentence. One th...)

    2010

Religion

Christy Turlington grew up Catholic but she is attracted to Buddhism.

Views

Christy Turlington had been smoking ever since she was a teenager. She quit it in 1995 but became an anti-smoking campaigner only in 1997 when her father died of lung cancer. Since then, she has appeared in a number of health awareness TV adverts. In 2000, she underwent a lung scan to raise awareness about regular health checkups and was diagnosed with early-stage emphysema at the age of 31.

Christy faced complications during childbirth in 2003 and learned that over 50,000 women die from such conditions each year, but 90% of these deaths are preventable. This information inspired her to earn a master's degree in public health. In 2005, she started working with CARE, visiting different countries for the organization.

In 2010, Turlington founded the non-profit organization, Every Mother Counts (EMC). The charity aims to help stop preventable deaths which occur worldwide due to pregnancy problems. The following year, she ran the New York Marathon to raise money for the organization.

Turlington directed and narrated the documentary No Woman, No Cry in April 2010, which previewed at the Tribeca Festival. The film documented maternal health issues within Guatemala, Bangladesh, Tanzania, and the United States.

Membership

• Founder

  Every Mother Counts

  2010 - present

Personality

Turlington has always been calm and responsible.

Physical Characteristics: Height: 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m)

Hair color: Brown

Eye color: Green

Interests

• Reading

• Writers

  The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• Sport & Clubs

  Yoga, running

• Music & Bands

  Pop music

Connections

Christy Turlington married actor-producer Edward Fitzgerald Burns in San Francisco on June 7, 2003. They first met each other at a party in 2000; and by the end of the year, they were engaged.

They broke up briefly in 2002 but reunited later. At the time of their wedding, Christy was 25 weeks pregnant with their daughter Grace. Their second child, a son named Finn, was born in 2006.

Father:

Dwain Turlington

Mother:

María Elizabeth Turlington

Spouse:

Edward Fitzgerald Burns

Daughter:

Grace Burns

Son:

Finn Burns

Sister:

Erin Turlington

Sister:

Kelly Turlington

colleague:

Naomi Campbell

colleague:

Linda Evangelista

References

• Christy Turlington Burns on Instagram