Christy Turlington

As a model Christy has reached the highest levels of fame - consistently featured everywhere from American Vogue to Time Magazine. With a face that recalls classic sculpture, she is undoubtedly beautiful but it is her activism and intelligence that have made her a global icon.

The American model, charity-founder and campaigner, and filmmaker was born the middle of three daughters. Her father was a pilot and her mother a flight attendant from El Salvador who raised them in the Roman Catholic faith.

She was discovered by a local photographer while riding a horse at age 14. 

Beside her career she learned a lot. She graduated cum laude in 1999 from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study of New York University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a concentration in Comparative Religion and Eastern Philosophy and after that at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She was everywhere. Above these she can be seen in a Duran Duran music video and she is one of the "big five" supermodels who appeared in the 1990 music video "Freedom! '90 by George Michael. 

Christy was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014.  She founded Every Mother Counts, a non-profit organization devoted to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother. In 2002 she made an interview with H.H. Dalai Lama at his home in India to NBC’s Today Show and works for other charity organizations.

Christy began smoking at 13 and was smoking a pack a day by age 16. At age 26, she quit smoking when her father died of lung cancer, and became an anti-smoking activist.

She is a practitioner of yoga and has run four marathons during her life. 

She is married to actor, director, and writer Edward Burns and they have two children. Her sister Kelly is married to Edward's brother Brian Burns.