Christie Brinkley
Fadil Berisha
Christie Brinkley is one of the most successful supermodels of all time, having appeared on over 500 magazine covers, including an unprecedented three consecutive covers of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues. She had a 25-year contract with Cover Girl, the longest running cosmetics contract for a model to date. And that’s not even mentioning her personal life, including her marriage to ex-husband Billy Joel, whose song Brinkley’s new memoir, Uptown Girl, pays homage to in its title.
All of this—and Brinkley still wondered if anyone would care. (Spoiler alert: we do.) “You get really, really nervous,” she tells me on the phone a week before Uptown Girl hits shelves on April 29. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, that was very presumptuous of me to thank anybody would want to read my autobiography. What was I thinking?’”
Christie Brinkley attends the American Humane Hero Dog Awards at The Breakers on November 10, 2023 … More in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Mireya Acierto/Getty Images)
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The book opens with a power punch: Brinkley’s near fatal helicopter crash on April 1, 1994, which she tells me made her look at life with “gratitude on steroids”: “It was just really almost a sense of euphoria to wake up and see the sunlight,” she says of the moments after the crash. “Everything seemed intensified, right? More sparkling than it was before. More beautiful, more everything.”
“All in all, it definitely gave me a sense of how every day is a gift,” Brinkley continues. “And it also made me want to always be sure that everybody that I love knows how much I love them. There’s just no time in life for nonsense. You’ve got to make sure that people know you like ‘em. Love is what it all boils down to.”
Brinkley—known for her all-American exuberance and her enthusiasm for life—decided to put her life story on the page because of, when it all boils down to it, her father, various drivers she’s had over the years—and Nancy Meyers.
“First and foremost, my dad always said to me, ‘Honey, if you just do one thing, if you just write about Paris’—Paris, my life in Paris could be just a single book, right?” Brinkley says, adding that her father told her “If you don’t do anything else, write about Paris.” (She did, indeed, write about Paris in her memoir.)
“So I said, ‘Okay, dad, I will,’” she adds. Brinkley has kept journals for 60 years—for context, she’s 71 years old—and after coming across her journals, she realized, “This is good stuff in here.” Her zest for life jumps off the pages of them. Mix that in with different drivers she’s had over the years in and out of New York City, who she’s told her stories to over the years and who unfailingly say, “You need to write a book.”
The cover of Christie Brinkley’s memoir ‘Uptown Girl’
Harper Influence
“But then also, once you get away from a divorce and you look back, you go, ‘That would make a really great Nancy Meyers movie,’” she tells me, laughing. “So I actually went to the publisher saying, ‘I don’t know what I want to write—a book or a movie.’” A book was the decision after a “magnificent letter” from Lisa Sharkey at HarperCollins. (We’re manifesting a Nancy Meyers movie for Brinkley down the line: “One can dream,” she tells me.)
“And then there’s my age,” Brinkley adds as to her why for writing a memoir. “If not now, when?”
Uptown Girl is wide-ranging but can’t help but mention Brinkley’s accomplishments in business, which are numerous. Not the least of which? Her Cover Girl contract, which had so much longevity that, as she puts it, “It was funny, because when I went back the last time that they hired me, it was a whole brand new team of young people, and I was the authority on Cover Girl. I was like, ‘I love it. No, no, no. This is the way we did it back then.’ Which was kind of a funny position to be in.”
Christie Brinkley attends the Men’s Fashion Association of America’s 1982 American Image Awards, … More held at the Sheraton Centre in New York City on October 25, 1982. (Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)
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The secret formula to Brinkley’s success with Cover Girl? Her “alive and expressive” expression in photos, which are genuine emotions, she says: “When I smile for an ad, it’s not a fake smile,” she tells me. “People that stand next to me, they always get a kick, because I actually giggle and I’m making noise. It’s real laughter and smiles, because I’m just thinking about different things and really actually enjoying myself.”
Just like she wondered whether anyone would read her memoir, when she was modeling or on contract with a brand like Cover Girl, “another thing that I felt throughout my career [was] that every single job I did, I thought, ‘Well, this is probably going to be my last job,’” she says. “I better enjoy it. And when you think like that, you really give it your all. And I think maybe that had something to do with my longevity as well.”
Another signpost of Brinkley’s success in business is her three back-to-back-to-back Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue covers from 1979, 1980 and 1981. Her relationship with the brand continued when she was featured exclusively in the first Sports Illustrated Calendar, which led her to create her own calendar.
Christie Brinkley
Courtesy of Harper Influence
“It was the first time that they ever did a calendar, and I was the whole calendar,” she says. “The next year, I thought, ‘I know it’s great to do Sports Illustrated, but maybe I should do my own calendar?’” She did calendars for the next few years and a poster. She also wrote a book in 1983 on health and beauty, Christie Brinkley’s Outdoor Beauty and Fitness book, which topped the New York Times bestseller list. One reason it did so was serendipitous: she did a commercial for Diet Coke, and in that commercial she can be seen reading her book before “the book drops down, and then it’s me, talking to the camera,” she says. “I hit the New York Times bestseller list with my book being in a TV commercial.”
Brinkley’s success seems an amalgamation of grit, tenacity, hard work and sometimes, pure luck: “Boy, I did not know just how lucky I was,” she tells me of the crossover between her projects.
Posing for Sports Illustrated was also a strategic move that paid dividends: “Back in the day, back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, most of the art directors, most of the people in the advertising industry were men,” she says. “And being on the cover of Sports Illustrated put my name to my face and introduced me to all those men who may not have been seeing me on Glamour magazine or any of the other women’s magazines. So then they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I could use her for that account.’”
Christie Brinkley on the cover of ‘Glamour’ in 1976. (Photo by David McCabe/Condé Nast via … More Getty Images)
Conde Nast via Getty Images
Eventually, as Brinkley found her voice, she not only was a spokesmodel for companies, she started creating them. “In the beginning, I used to model whatever they handed me,” she says. “I would just put it on and pose. And then one day I realized, ‘No, I don’t believe in wearing fur, so I don’t want to pose in it.’ And that was a big move for me to say no. I just felt like it was the right thing to say, the right thing to do. At that point, people knew my name. I wasn’t a clothes hanger. I was a person.”
“It took a while, though,” she admits. “I just think it didn’t dawn on me before. I thought that my job was to do what I was told.”
Brinkley is, in addition to being a supermodel, an entrepreneur at her core: she’s had her own companies ranging from a line of hair extensions (Hair2Wear), a line of beauty products (Christie Brinkley Authentic Skin Care), an organic sparkling wine label (Bellissima Prosecco), a clothing line (TWRHLL) and an eyeglasses company (Christie Brinkley Eyewear). She’s also had a swimsuit line, a jewelry collection and a signature fragrance over the years. But when I ask her what her proudest accomplishment in business is, her answer surprises me.
Christie Brinkley in 1982. (Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)
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“My proudest moment, I think, was taking on Chicago,” Brinkley says of her 2011 stage debut as Roxie Hart, which included a stint on Broadway and a tour that totaled 182 performances on stage. (She reprised the role in 2019 at the Venetian Las Vegas.)
“We were one of the shows that was selling out every night, and there was kind of a revival happening at that moment of Broadway, and it was exciting to be there,” she says. “But for me, on a personal level, it was amazing to have that outlet. My life was pretty much falling apart, but I was able to go into that theater and channel everything that I had into that character. And I went into it not knowing how to sing, dance or act and I just let them fill me up with all of their information. And I worked hard, hard, hard and got out there and did it, and I loved it to pieces.”
Christie Brinkley as Roxie Hart performing in the musical ‘Chicago’ at The Venetian Las Vegas on … More April 10, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
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Brinkley’s daughter, Sailor, modeled like her mother did before her, but is now taking a more entrepreneurial track—also like her mother did before her. Of the modeling industry today, Brinkley says “it’s very, very different,” because models today “are in control from the get go.” It boils down to models—and anyone, really—being able to create their own brand on Instagram.
Models today “really are capable of carving out very lucrative, great careers,” Brinkley says. “And I’m just glad that I stayed around long enough to learn some of that for myself and have been able to have so many great opportunities.”
Christie Brinkley and Sailor Brinkley Cook are seen arriving at the Michael Kors Collection … More Spring/Summer 2023 Fashion Show during New York Fashion Week on September 14, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images)
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It hasn’t all been perfect, Brinkley admits to me and in Uptown Girl—“I think my biggest mistake in life [is] I think I’m too trusting,” she tells me—but Brinkley hopes that she’s been an inspiration to women who’ve come behind her. When I ask her what she specifically wants burgeoning female entrepreneurs to know, she says that “they should know that anything men can do, we can do better.”
Much like when she took to the stage for Chicago, becoming a memoirist is a new challenge. When she finally did decide to write the book—thanks to her dad, some drivers and yes, Nancy Meyers—she wanted to make sure her book has what she calls “take home value.” Would readers get something out of Uptown Girl and be able to take it back to their lives? She weighed out doing the book or not with the same motto she leans into when deciding who she wants to work with in business: “I always go, ‘Is it going to make somebody’s life better, happier, easier? Will the woman feel more confident? Happier?’”
Christie Brinkley attends The 2024 Fragrance Foundation Awards at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln … More Center on June 5, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
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“And then I thought about my book,” she tells me. Addressing any women—or men—who might read her book, Brinkley adds, “If she feels like going out there and writing her own script and filling her pages with joy and laughter, I will have done something good.”
