What should have been a celebratory moment turned into a traumatic turn of events for Paulina Porizkova when she lost almost all of her possessions immediately after achieving a career high.
The 57-year old supermodel recently opened up to Deadspin about how in 1984 she found out that she was going to be on the cover of the “Sports Illustrated” swimsuit issue and “that night, or the night right after that, my house burned down to the ground and I lost everything I owned.”
Porizkova continued, detailing that she “only had an overcoat, dog and a cat, and a passport. I don’t recall even having underwear.”
Though most people would likely take some time off to figure out their next moves, Porizkova said that “from there I had to go on to ‘Johnny Carson’ and all of these talk shows and be like ‘Yay! Hi, I’m this ‘Sports Illustrated’ vixen.’”
Now a few decades removed from the upsetting incident, Porizkova summed it up as an “interesting balance” of highs and lows.
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She also said in the interview that she felt like “overnight I had turned from that model with the unpronounceable name to Paulina Porizkova” and that because she “started modeling as a 15-year old,” she “smoked and drank” until well into her 20s.
“Life was pretty easy at that point, that’s the privilege of youth... you can do that kind of stuff and get away with it,” she mused before noting that she “can’t get away with it anymore. To still be in shape, to still be slim and all that takes a lot of freaking work!”
Porizkova shared that she maintains her looks by “exercising a lot, not eating very much, taking care of my skin, using a lot of SPF, vitamins. Basically, the older you get the more it takes to maintain. So, I spend more time maintaining my outer self than I’m actually happy with. But at the same time, I kind of have to because it’s still who I am, it’s still my job, it’s still what I identify as, so it’s a required amount of work for me to be able to do what I do.”
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