Claudia Schiffer

Claudia Schiffer (born August 25, 1970) is a German supermodel and actress, who reached the height of her popularity during the 1990s. Schiffer is one of the world's most successful supermodels, appearing on over 500 magazine covers and is thought to be one of the wealthiest German women of her time, with Forbes estimating Schiffer to be worth £35 million.

Claudia Schiffer was born in Rheinberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, which is a small town just outside Düsseldorf. She was born to Gudrun Schiffer and her lawyer father Heinz Schiffer. She has two brothers, Stefan and Andreas, and one sister called Ann Carolin.

During her school life, Schiffer commented that she was quite popular but felt socially overshadowed by the other girls in her year, who all acted like stars and were very dominant. She has revealed that because she was so tall, she became very shy and didn't want to be noticed. She was also subjected to jealousy by others as she came from a wealthy family that were well-known locally in the area. Schiffer however, was very intelligent and remained at the top of her class in school, becoming fluent in French and English as well as her home language of German.

Schiffer originally wanted to become a lawyer and work in her father's law firm. She later dropped these aspirations when she was spotted in a nightclub in Düsseldorf by Michel Levaton in October 1987 at seventeen, the boss of Metropolitan Model Agency who signed her up to become a model.

After she was spotted as a potential model in a disco at the age of just seventeen, she completed her education by her mother's wishes and then began to work as a model. She flew out to Paris for a trial photo shoot and soon after she appeared in the cover of French ELLE after being well received in Paris. After several other magazine appearances she quickly achieved supermodel status when she was selected by Karl Lagerfeld to become the new face of Chanel. Schiffer continued to become a world-famous supermodel, becoming instantly recognizable with her blue eyes, blond hair and tall figure. She has earned an estimated £35 million.

In the early 1990s she starred in highly publicised Guess? jeans adverts in North America which created essential publicity for Schiffer. Soon after appearing in the campaigns, her name was launched worldwide, appearing on five magazine covers in the United States and seven covers around Europe. Her modelling career continued to grow and she was contracted to model for Revlon. She also became deeply involved in modelling for several catalogues and modelled on high profile catwalk shows. Schiffer has done catwalk modelling for Versace, Jil Sander, Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren and Valentino. Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, the New York Times and People all saw Schiffer as the first model to make their covers. She has also appeared many times on covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Time.

-- Wikipedia