Gisele Bundchen

Gisele was born in the Brazilian town of Três de Maio in Horizontina, Rio Grande do Sul, to Vânia Nonnenmacher Bündchen, a bank clerk pensioner and Valdir Reinoldo Bündchen, a university teacher and writer. She has five sisters — Raquel, Graziela, Gabriela, Rafaela and her fraternal twin Patrícia (Gisele's junior by five minutes). Gisele's debut on the cover the July 1999 edition of Vogue magazine, and the accompanying editorial entitled, "The Return of the Curve" is widely viewed as marking the end of the fashion's "heroin chic" era. She graced the cover again in November and December on her way to winning the VH1/Vogue Model of the Year for 1999, and a January 2000 cover shot gave her the rare honor of three consecutive Vogue covers. In 2000 she was the fourth model in history to grace the cover of Rolling Stone, when she was named "the most beautiful girl in the world". Since her debut, she has been the face of a variety of advertising campaigns including several seasons of Christian Dior, Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni, Versace, Céline, Givenchy, Bvlgari, Lanvin, Guerlain, Valentino, Ralph Lauren, Earl Jean, Zara, Chloé, Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton, and Victoria's Secret. Bündchen is also the face of several Brazilian brands like Vivo, Brazil's leading mobile company, Multiplan, Colcci and Credicard. After C&A Brazil hired her and started their television commercials, sales increased by 30%.

In May 2006, Bündchen signed another multi-million dollar deal, this time with American giant Apple Computer. She starred in an advertising campaign to promote the new Macintosh line through the Get a Mac advertisements. She has her own line of sandals with shoes company Grendene, called Ipanema Gisele Bündchen. Forbes puts her 53rd on their list of the most powerful celebrities of 2007 due to the success of her popular shoe line, Ipanema. Custom Ipanema flip-flops sell for as much as $230 a pair. She is also the owner of a hotel in the south of Brazil, the Palladium Executive. Bündchen consistently works with photographers, like Nino Munoz, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, Nick Knight, Mert and Marcus, Rankin, Annie Leibovitz, Karl Lagerfeld, Peter Lindbergh, Mario Sorrenti and Patrick Demarchelier, among others, and directors like Jean Baptiste Mondino and Bruno Aveillan. Bündchen has also been on the covers of most of the main fashion magazines around the globe like, W, Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, Allure and many international editions of Vogue, as well as style and lifestyle publications like i-D, The Face, Arena, Citizen K, Flair, GQ, Esquire and Marie Claire. She has also been featured in broader market publications such as Time, Vanity Fair, Forbes, Newsweek, Veja. On May 1, 2007 it was announced that Bündchen had ended her contract with Victoria's Secret. The New York Post's Page Six reported that Bundchen had left Victoria's Secret because it wouldn't raise her $5 million-a-year salary. In July 2007, earning an estimated total of $33 million in the past 12 months, Forbes magazine named her the world's top-earning model in the list of the World's 15 Top-Earning Supermodels. According to Claudia Schiffer: "Supermodels, like we once were, don't exist any more." and reckons that Gisele Bundchen is the only one who comes close to earning the supermodel title. Regarding a film career, Bündchen has said "I think it would be interesting," but counters "I'm young and I like what I do for now and I understand that everything in life happens for the moment." She made her movie debut in the 2004 comedy Taxi, alongside Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon. She also made a high-profile appearance in the 2006 comedy The Devil Wears Prada. Also in 2006, she appeared in one of Apple Incs new "Get a Mac" advertisements.

In it, she is the personification of a home movie created using an Apple Mac Computer. When she is not working or traveling the world, Bündchen enjoys spending time with her family, friends and her dog Vida (meaning "life" in Portuguese), a Yorkshire Terrier. Her first boyfriend in the United States was model Scott Barnhill, but they dated for only six months. After Scott she was also linked with hotel tycoon Vikram Chatwal and Josh Hartnett, but she never confirmed the rumors about these two. Bündchen's rise to fame has not come without controversy. Like Heidi Klum and several other models, she moved from her original agency Elite Model Management to IMG. John Casablancas, head of Elite, accused Bündchen of being a stoner who slept her way to the top, though he has now stated that he was misquoted. Casablancas also filed a $15 million lawsuit against her. "I'm the biggest animal lover in the world," she said backstage after the show. "I was just doing my job as a model. I don't even wear fur. They just want attention." Supermodel Gisele Bundchen added fire to an already heated debate when she said families, not the fashion industry, were to blame for anorexic models. Her comments attracted a swift response from eating disorder experts, who've dismissed the claim as outdated and ill-informed and say there's no scientific evidence that families cause anorexia .