Heidi Klum is a German supermodel turned television personality known for her appearances on popular TV shows like ‘Project Runway’ and ‘America’s Got Talent.’
Profile on Heidi Klum
| Name | Heidi Klum |
| Age | June 1, 1973 (49 years) |
| Career | Supermodel |
| Gender | Female |
| Nationality | English, New York |
| Relationship Status | Divorced, Dating |
| Net Worth | $160 million |
Who is Heidi Klum
German-born supermodel Heidi Klum started her modeling career at the age of 18. She landed work with Victoria’s Secret after moving to New York, en route to achieving supermodel status with her appearance on the cover of the 1998 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Klum has since expanded her brand as a media personality, thanks to her stints as the host and one of the judges of Project Runway and as a judge on America’s Got Talent.
Early Life of Heidi Klum
Heidi Klum was born in Bergisch Gladbach, a small city near Cologne, Germany.
Klum was born on June 1, 1973, in Bergisch-Gladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She started her modeling career at the age of 18 after winning a contest in her native Germany. Before this win, Klum had planned on becoming a designer.
In 1992, while living near Cologne with her father, a cosmetics company executive, and mother, a hairdresser, 18-year-old Klum entered the “Model 92” German beauty contest. Out of 25,000 contestants, Klum won the top prize—a $300,000 contract with New York City’s Metropolitan Models. After a brief sojourn in South Beach, Florida, Klum moved to New York City, where she launched her modeling career in 1993. Her breakthrough came when in 1994 she appeared on the cover of Mirabella magazine. In the mid-1990s Klum achieved increased visibility as a cover model for Vogue, ELLE, and Marie Claire magazines, but her most important appearance was on the February 20, 1998, swimsuit cover of the widely read Sports Illustrated. In 1999 she achieved global recognition as one of the original “Angels,” a troupe of Victoria’s Secret lingerie models who appeared in annual televised runway shows and at other promotional events. Klum continued to model for Victoria’s Secret and also designed an eponymous lingerie and cosmetics collection for the retailer.
After later moving to New York, Klum eventually landed work with the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret, which helped raise her profile in the modeling world. Soon she appeared on the cover of the 1998 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, an honor coveted by many models. While her hourglass shape was not a fit for the runways, Klum became a fashion favorite, appearing in such magazines as Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar.
Her career as a top fashion model and swimsuit star began almost by accident when, on a lark, she submitted photos to a model competition hosted by Petra, a young woman’s magazine. Klum won the competition, and signed with Metropolitan, the German modeling agency.
Career Life of Heidi Klum
Heidi Klum is a German-American model, television host, producer, and businesswoman. She appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1998 and was the first German model to become a Victoria’s Secret Angel.
Klum has also achieved her early dreams of becoming a designer with her own jewelry line, lingerie line and a series of shoes she created for Birkenstock. Additionally, she has helped with a clothing line for Jordache Jeans and has served as a spokesmodel for the company.
Following a successful modeling career, Klum became the host and a judge of Germany’s Next Topmodel and the reality show Project Runway, which earned her an Emmy nomination in 2008 and a win in 2013 for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program (shared with co-host Tim Gunn). Klum has been nominated for six Emmy Awards. She has worked as a spokesmodel for Dannon and H&M and has appeared in numerous commercials for McDonald’s, Volkswagen and others. In 2009, Klum became Barbie’s official ambassador on Barbie’s 50th anniversary. As an occasional actress, she had supporting roles in movies including Blow Dry (2001), Ella Enchanted (2004), and made cameo appearances in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Perfect Stranger (2007) and Ocean’s 8 (2018). She has also made guest appearances on TV shows including Sex and the City, How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives and Parks and Recreation. From 2013, with the exception of 2019, Klum has been a judge on NBC reality show America’s Got Talent.
Heidi Klum’s Net Worth
In May 2011, Forbes magazine estimated Klum’s total earnings for that year as US$20 million. She was ranked second on Forbes‘ list of the “World’s Top-Earning Models”. Forbes noted that since ending her 13-year run as a Victoria’s Secret Angel, Klum has become more of a businesswoman than a model. In 2008, she became an American citizen while maintaining her native German citizenship.
Klum has been featured on the cover of French, German, Portuguese and Spanish Vogue magazines, as well as Elle, InStyle, Marie Claire, Glamour and Russian Harper’s Bazaar magazines. She became widely known after appearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and for her work with Victoria’s Secret as an “Angel”. Klum hosted the 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows. On 1 October 2010, the New York Post reported in its “Page Six” gossip column that Klum would be leaving Victoria’s Secret, which was later confirmed by Klum.
In addition to working with well-known photographers on her first husband’s Sports Illustrated shoots, she was the object and subject of Joanne Gair body painting works in several editions from 1997 to 2010. She wrote the foreword to Gair’s book of body paint work, Body Painting, Masterpieces. Other magazine’s covers include GQ, Cosmopolitan, Photo, Glamour, Stuff, Joy, Esquire, Max, Men’s Journal, Time and Shape.
Klum’s modeling work includes advertising campaigns for brands like Pringle of Scotland, Liz Claiborne and – alongside fellow German supermodels Nadja Auermann, Veruschka von Lehndorff and Tatjana Patitz – for the New York jersey label Kathleen Madden. Beauty campaigns include makeup brands Bobbi Brown and Astor, as well as Givenchy’s Amarige fragrance. She also appeared in special ad campaigns by designers like Marc Jacobs (Protect The Skin You′e In to raise awareness for skin cancer) and Jean-Paul Gaultier (summer tote in collaboration with and to benefit amfAR). Her runway appearances include numerous Victoria’s Secret Annual Fashion Shows, walking for various designers and brands of New York Fashion Week like Zac Posen (2004), Escada, Vera Wang, Structure, Victor Alfaro, Imitation Of Christ as well as working the catwalk for Philip Treacy at Brown Thomas International Fashion Show in Dublin.
As a photo model she worked for retail clothing brands such as H & M, Ann Taylor and Peek & Cloppenburg and since 2007, she has been a celebrity spokesmodel for Jordache.[20] International tech, food and internet brands up to the automotive industry asked for Klum as their celebrity spokesperson and produced ad campaigns and TV commercials for Braun epilizer, McDonald’s salad, Dannon, Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s (Jim Beam Bourbon Burger), the Wix website building program and, together with then-husband Seal for the Volkswagen SUV Tiguan. In addition to modeling, she has appeared in several TV shows, including Spin City, Sex and the City, Yes, Dear, and How I Met Your Mother. She had a role as an ill-tempered hair model in the movie Blow Dry, played a giantess in the movie Ella Enchanted and was cast as Ursula Andress in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. She had cameo appearances in the films The Devil Wears Prada and Perfect Stranger.
Her other projects include dance and video games. She is featured in the 2003 video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, where she plays the villain Dr. Katya Nadanova. She has appeared in several music videos, including Jamiroquai’s video “Love Foolosophy” from their album A Funk Odyssey, Kelis’s “Young, Fresh n’ New”, off her second 2001 album Wanderland and, most recently, the second video for her then husband Seal’s song “Secret” off his 2010 album Seal 6: Commitment. The latter video depicts the married couple sharing intimate moments while naked in bed; the concept was Klum’s idea. In July 2007, having earned US$8 million in the previous 16 months, Klum was named by Forbes as third on the list of the World’s 15 Top-Earning Supermodels.
In 2008, Forbes estimated her income at US$16 million, putting Klum in first place. For 2007, Forbes estimated her income at US$14 million. Klum is signed to IMG Models in New York City. In 2008, Klum was a featured guest on an American Volkswagen commercial, where she was interviewed by a black Beetle. When she commented that German engineering is so sexy, she caused the Beetle to blush and turn red. She has been a part of several commercials for Volkswagen and McDonald’s on German television. In November 2008, Klum appeared in two versions of a Guitar Hero World Tour commercial, wherein she did a take on Tom Cruise’s iconic underwear dancing scene in Risky Business. In both versions, she lip-synced to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” while dancing around the living room with the wireless guitar controller.
It was reported in May 2011 that Klum ranked second with estimated earnings of US$20 million on Forbes‘ list of the World’s Top-Earning Models (2010–2011). Forbes noted that since ending her 13-year run as a Victoria’s Secret Angel, Klum has become more of a businesswoman than a model. She partnered with New Balance and Amazon.com to launch a clothing line and signed a 20-episode deal to host a new show on Lifetime, called Seriously Funny Kids. In fact, some noted fashion designers have long been commenting on Klum’s limited role as a fashion model. Karl Lagerfeld, for example, in 2009 agreed with German designer Wolfgang Joop, who called Klum after she had posed naked on the cover of the German edition of GQ magazine, “no runway model. She is simply too heavy and has too big a bust”. Lagerfeld observed that neither he nor Claudia Schiffer knew Klum, as she has never worked in Paris and was insignificant in the world of fashion, being “more bling bling and glamorous than current fashion.”
As at 2022, her net worth was estimated to be $160 million.
Relationship Life Of Heidi Klum
In 1997, Klum married famed hairstylist Ric Pipino, but the couple divorced in 2002. In 2003, Klum became pregnant with her first child by boyfriend Flavio Briatore, an Italian racecar team manager. But the couple split up shortly before the baby was born, and Klum became involved with British singer Seal. On May 4, 2004, she gave birth to her daughter Leni.
Shortly after the launch of Project Runway in 2004, Klum’s life took another interesting turn. Her boyfriend Seal proposed to her on top of a glacier in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. They married in May 2005 and welcomed son Henry Gunther Ademola Dashtu Samuel on September 12. Klum stunned many by returning to modeling in less than two months after her son’s arrival, looking fabulous as part of the nationally televised Victoria’s Secret fashion show.
Klum and Seal expanded their family with one more son, Johan, on November 26, 2006, and their first daughter, Lou, born on October 9, 2009. It was announced in January 2012 that Seal and Klum were separating after nearly seven years of marriage. Klum officially filed for divorce from Seal in April 2012 (it was finalized in 2014) and not long after, she began dating her bodyguard Martin Kristen. She and Kristen ended their relationship in 2014.
Klum dated Vito Schnabel from 2014 to 2017 and began dating Tokio Hotel guitarist Tom Kaulitz in 2018. Klum and Kaulitz got engaged in December 2018 and were married in Capri, Italy, in August 2019.
