Background

Tyra Banks was born on December 4, 1973, in Inglewood, California, the United States, to Carolyn London and Donald Banks. Her mother was a medical photographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and her father was a computer analyst. Banks was six when her parents got divorced and she has no sad memories of the event. She liked splitting her time between both of her parents because she got "double the presents and double the love."

Education

Banks attended John Burroughs Middle School and graduated from Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles in the year 1991. Around the time she was 11, she faced body shaming for being tall and skinny. Subsequently, she enrolled herself into Claremont McKenna College, and Loyola Marymount College. But, after she got the chance to go to Europe for modeling, she put her education on hold, when she was 16. In 2012, she earned a certificate from Harvard Business School after attending a nine-week Owner/President Management Program.

Career

Tyra started modeling at the age of 15 while she was still in high school. However, Banks didn’t have an easy time finding an agency willing to represent her. As many as four agencies rejected her, citing her "ethnic" looks as a reason. Banks’ big break was in 1990 though, when top modeling agency Elite Model Management offered her a contract. Later that year, she shot her first print piece for Seventeen magazine.

Banks decided to forego college when Elite offered to send her to Paris for high-fashion runway modeling. Banks rose swiftly through the ranks of fashion modeling to become one of the world's top supermodels. She booked 25 runway shows while in Paris in 1991, an unprecedented feat for a newcomer to the industry.

Naturally, such success meant Banks was modeling for the biggest and best designers. She walked on the runway for the likes of Chanel, Dior, Oscar de la Renta, and Ralph Lauren, among many others. Tyra also posed for all the top magazines, such as Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Banks started her own company to manage her career and thereafter patterned her career trajectory after that of her idol, supermodel Cindy Crawford, venturing into multiple industries. Banks was subsequently featured in a string of pop music videos including Michael Jackson’s Black or White (1991), Tina Turner’s Love Thing (1992), and George Michael’s Too Funky (1992).

In 1992 she returned from Paris, and in 1993 she was featured in a recurring role on several episodes of the television comedy series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996), a Will Smith vehicle. In the same year, she became a new face of CoverGirl, which catapulted her to the status of a supermodel - a top fashion model who appears simultaneously on the covers of the world’s leading fashion magazines and is globally recognized by first name only. In 1994 and again in 1996 she was named one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People. She made her movie debut in the dramatic film Higher Learning (1995).

But by the mid-1990s, Banks began to gain weight, a forbidden sin in the world of rail-thin clothing models. Unwilling to starve herself to achieve the desired physique for high-fashion models, Banks decided to return to the United States and switch to swimwear and lingerie modeling, where curvier models are more welcome.

In 1996, Banks became the first Black woman to appear on the cover of GQ. A year later, she became the first African American woman to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, as well as the first Black woman to be featured in Victoria's Secret lingerie catalog.

She signed lucrative contracts with Cover Girl and Victoria's Secret, becoming a staple of both companies' advertising campaigns and runway shows. Named to People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list numerous times, Banks received the prestigious Michael Award for Supermodel of the Year in 1997.

In 1998, she wrote Tyra's Beauty Inside & Out, a book aimed at inspiring young women. In the early 21st century Banks continued to expand her career, appearing in Coyote Ugly (2000), a rowdy coming-of-age feature film, and releasing a music single, Shake Ya Body (2004), which garnered little attention. Later TV work included appearances in Gossip Girl and Glee.

In 2003 Banks ventured into the world of reality TV when she created, produced, and hosted the UPN show America's Next Top Model. The show, which pits aspiring models against each other in a competition for the label of America's Next Top Model, was UPN's highest-rated show through its first six seasons. In 2006 Top Model was chosen to headline the newly created CW television network. The show, with more than 20 seasons under its belt, continues to draw enormous television audiences.

Banks expanded into daytime television with her own talk show, The Tyra Show, in 2005. She picked up a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on the show in 2008 - a feat she repeated the following year as well. In 2010 Banks said goodbye to her talk show after five years on the air.

Banks debuted a new talk show in September 2015 called FABLife, though she announced her departure just two months later. She later resurfaced to host the reality competition series America's Got Talent in 2017, as a replacement for Nick Cannon, and spent two seasons in the role. Banks took over hosting duties from Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews for the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars. She also served as executive producer.

In 2011 Banks published the best-selling novel Modelland, based on her life and experiences in the industry, and launched a style and beauty website. The model-turned-entertainment-mogul has since founded the TYRA Beauty cosmetics line. Banks returned to the front of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition in 2019, 23 years after she first graced its cover.

Achievements

• 

  Tyra Banks had been ranked multiple times by TIME magazine in their Most Influential People List. She has become one of the four African-Americans to have received this status. Tyra Banks also won the Teen Choice Award under the Choice TV: Personality category twice in 2007 and 2008. Her talk show won two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Talk Show/Informative in 2008 and 2009.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Perfect Is Boring: 10 Things My Crazy, Fierce Mama Taught Me About Beauty, Booty, and Being a Boss

    (Supermodel and super CEO of our time Tyra Banks and her m...)

    2018
  • Tyra's Beauty Inside & Out

    (Some of you may look at me and think, That girl's never h...)

    1998
  • Modelland

    (No one gets in without being asked. And with her untamabl...)

    2011

• movie

  • Halloween: Resurrection

    (The reality programmers at Danger Tainment (Rhymes, Banks...)

    2002
  • Life-Size

    (This dazzling comic fantasy stars popular Lindsay Lohan a...)

    2000
  • Higher Learning

    (A modern university campus is the melting pot for student...)

    1995
  • Love Stinks

    (Seth Winnick has it all: a successful career in televisio...)

    1999
  • Love and Basketball

    (A young African-American couple navigates the tricky path...)

    2000
  • Coyote Ugly

    (A small town girl lands a job at the hottest bar in NYC.)

    2000
  • Life-Size 2: A Christmas Eve

    (Eve magically awakes to help get Grace back on track.)

    2018

• TV series

  • Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Complete Series

    (Will moves from the tough streets of West Philly to posh ...)

    1993

• TV show

  • America's Next Top Model

    (America's Next Top Model follows young women for weeks as...)

  • Tyra Banks Show

    (The Tyra Banks Show, also known as and shortened to Tyra ...)

    2005

Religion

Tyra Banks is a Christian.

Politics

Banks is a liberal Democrat. She’s a giant Obama supporter. When he got the Democratic nomination in 2008, she said: "I just started bawling. I started calling all these people, and everybody was talking to me like I was crazy. They’re like, ‘Well, he hasn’t won yet,’ but I’m like, ‘Yes, he has because he’s gotten this far." In 2016 she was encouraging people to vote for Hillary Clinton. She also endorsed Joe Biden's campaign for President of the United States in the 2020 United States presidential election.

Views

Banks is active in a number of social and charitable causes. Banks believes that all young girls should have the opportunities she herself enjoyed. In 1994, just a few years after graduating from Immaculate Heart, an all-girls’ Catholic high school in Los Angeles, Banks set up a scholarship fund titled The Tyra Banks Scholarship. The award gives other African American girls a chance to study at Banks’ alma mater.

Tyra Banks is vocal about body-positivity, and the importance of self-esteem in young girls. To further this and to provide girls from ages 8-23 with the opportunity to learn leadership and life skills, she started a program called the TZONE. The idea is to engage girls from the Lower East Side in activities that will empower them and equip them to navigate through their lives successfully.

Quotations: "Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It's about accepting all of yourself. You've got to learn to accept the fool in you as well as the part that's got it goin' on."

"Black women have always been these vixens, these animalistic, erotic women. Why can't we be the sexy All-American girl next door?"

"I'm a perfectionist. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it's OK if there are flaws here and there."

Personality

Banks was very particular about her image and portrayal as a model. She had no business doing shoots that exposed her frontal nudity. Tyra does not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. She also stays away from drugs.

Interests

• Rollerblading

• Politicians

  Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama

• Writers

  A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee

• Sport & Clubs

  Skiing, basketball, tennis, boxing

• Athletes

  Isiah Thomas

• Music & Bands

  Prince, Beyoncé, DJ Khaled

Connections

Banks, who rarely discusses her romantic life in public, has been involved with several celebrities over the years, including director John Singleton and basketball player Chris Webber. In January 2016, Banks and her long-time boyfriend, Norwegian photographer Erik Asla, welcomed a baby boy, York Banks Asla. Banks had previously revealed her trouble with infertility and their son was delivered via a surrogate mother. In 2017, Banks and Asla called off their five-year relationship on amicable terms.

Father:

Donald Banks

Mother:

Carolyn London

Tyra Banks has credited her mom as being her mentor, role model, and one of the biggest influences in her life. In fact, she taught her so many life lessons that Tyra and her mother literally wrote a whole book about them. The book is called Perfect is Boring, Tyra and Her Mama: 10 Things my Crazy, Fierce Mama Taught Me about Beauty, Booty, and Being a Boss.

ex-boyfriend:

John Singleton

ex-boyfriend:

Chris Webber

ex-boyfriend:

Erik Asla

Son:

York Banks Asla

Friend:

Jamie Curtis

Friend:

Will Smith

colleague:

Lindsay Lohan

References

• Tyra Banks on Instagram