Brazilian model, activist, and businesswoman, Gisele Caroline Bündchen was born on 20 July 1980 and is 40 years old.
She has been one of the highest-paid models in the world since 2001. In 2012, she also earned the top spot on Forbes’s top-earning models’ list.
She also reached 16th in the list of the richest women in the entertainment industry in 2007.
According to Forbes, she was entered as the 89th Most Powerful Women in the World in 2014.
From 1999 until 2006, she was a Victoria’s Secret Angel and in 1999, she was credited with ending the ‘heroin chic’ era of modeling by Vogue.
She is also called ‘The Explorer’ and is credited with popularizing the horse walk (a movement created by models where they lift their knees high and kick their feet on the top step).
She has also been called the only remaining supermodel by Claudia Schiffer in 2007.
She has appeared on the magazine covers more than 1,200 times.
For her supporting role in Taxi (2004) she was nominated for Choice Movie Villain at the Teen Choice Awards in 2005.
From 2010 to 2011, Bündchen was the executive producer of an educational environmental cartoon, Gisele & the Green Team; she had a supporting role in The Devil Wears Prada(2006).
She appeared in the episode “Fueling the Fire” of the Emmy award-winning documentary series ‘Years of Living Dangerously’.
Bündchen is 5 ft 11 in tall and she weighs 55 kgs.
Family and early life
Bündchen was born in Horizontina, a city in Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil to Vânia (a bank clerk pensioner) and Valdir Bündchen (a writer).
Walter Bündchen, her grandfather, once served as mayor of Horizontina.
She has five sisters (Raquel, Graziela, Gabriela, Rafaela, and Patrícia) and her family was Roman Catholic.
Bündchen learned German in school, although her parents speak German.
She speaks Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish and French, and no longer speaks the language, German.
Her mother got her and sisters Patrícia and Gabriela recruited in a modeling course to teach them confidence and better posture; though she aspired to be a volleyball player in 1993.
After the course ended, they were rewarded with a trip to Curitiba, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Here, the girls were discovered by Elite Model Management at a shopping mall.
Bündchen was placed second in a national contest by Look of the Year (now known as Elite Model Look).
She launched her modeling career after she moved to São Paulo in 1995. In 1996, she debuted at one of four major fashion weeks in the world known as the New York Fashion Week.
Career
In 1998, she was cast in an Alexander McQueen runway show after being rejected 42 times in London.
Her first cover of British Vogue was when she appeared on the cover of Vogue Paris.
She was featured on the cover of i-D, a British magazine by Vice media, profiling “A Girl Called Gisele”.
In 1999, the first of three Vogue covers for her was with U.S Vogue, where she was announced as “the return of the sexy model”.
In the same year, in December, she appeared again in a solo U.S. Vogue cover.
Just a month ago, in November, she appeared in a group Vogue cover with twelve other models.
In 1999, she won the VH1/Vogue Model of the Year and during the following year, she was named “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine (became the fourth model to have appeared).
In the same year, she was called “The Brazilian Bombshell” by Vogue’s online encyclopedia of models.
In 2012, Bündchen appeared on Forbes’s list of Most Powerful Celebrities with a rank of 61.
In May 2012, she was ranked fourth on the World’s Most Powerful Latino Celebrity list by Forbes.
Bündchen signed a contract with ‘Under Armour’ that is reportedly at par with the advertisement compensations of various athletes.
Kevin Plank, Under Armour’s CEO, said that the association with Bündchen is good for the company’s women’s brand’s sales and gave her the credit for the increase in sales in 2016.
Bündchen returned to her hometown of Horizontina and most of her time by launching a Clean Water Project (Projeto Água Limpa).
This is known to be a sustainable environmental management project to assist in reforestation which was good news for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
This management also promotes the micro basins of the region and the recovery of riparian vegetation.
Bündchen also led to the plantation of more than one million trees.
Personal life
Bündchen was in a relationship with the famous Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio from 2000 to 2005.
They both also made it to People’s Most Beautiful Couples List in 2004.
She mentioned in her memoir, ‘Lessons’ that she felt their lifestyles no longer complemented and she was becoming more and more aware of things that she had chosen not to look at.
She decided to end her relationship with DiCaprio.
Tom Brady, the NFL quarterback, was known to be her new partner after a mutual friend introduced them on a blind date in December 2006.
Bündchen and Tom got married in a small ceremony at St. Monica Catholic Church in Santa Monica, California on 26 February 2009.
They have two children together, Benjamin Rein, their son who was born in 2007, and Vivian Lake, their daughter who was born in 2012.
Developed by their personal chef Allen Campbell, Bündchen and her whole family adhere to a primarily plant-based diet.
Bündchen and Brady also bought a home in Indian Creek, Florida in December 2020.
Controversy
In December 2013, she posted a picture of herself, breastfeeding Vivian, her daughter, on Instagram.
After this post, some mothers blasted the Brazilian Beauty for such action while some came to her defense.
| Name | Gisele Caroline Bündchen |
| Born | 20 July 1980 |
| Age | 40 |
| Height | 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) |
| Weight | 55 kgs |
| Eye Color | Blue |
| Hair Color | Light brown |
| Children | 2 |
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