I love acting. I do it as a hobby. If I was able to have that as a career… Hopefully the fashion thing is a stepping-stone. I was so worried when I started modeling that it would hinder my chances of acting.
I’m an ambassador for World of Children and St Jude’s, it always been very important for me to use modeling as a platform to give back or raise awareness for causes that are important.
As part of modeling, I have acted in the advertisement films of popular brands. Then I got some offers from films.
No matter what color you are, if you mentor some little boy or girl, you make a huge difference in their lives because they then model behavior that leads to success versus modeling behavior that doesn’t.
The fashion industry is completely different from the acting industry, but definitely the same as well, because there’s cattiness and competition just like in the modeling world.
I was labelled a jinx. No one wanted to work with me. I was home for about six to eight months without any films. I did modeling. In fact, at one point, I contemplated quitting films. That’s when director Ameer called me for ‘Paruthiveeran’ and I cannot thank him enough for it.
I hated modeling.
There are many role models I’ve been around, and kind of the biggest one – there’s a show called ‘Push Girls,’ with all women in wheelchairs, and they’re all really good friends of mine. And one, Angela Rockwood, is still modeling, in a wheelchair. After a car accident.
After doing modeling and films, I was always keen on doing TV. It was in my to-do-list. So when ‘Kuch Rang Pyar Ke Aise Bhi’ happened, I was more than happy.
If I am able to carry on modeling, I’ll be very happy to, but my passion is definitely in music and acting. I would love to do what Meryl Streep is doing. Her or Judi Dench, or maybe Charlize Theron as well.
Tax rates aren’t everything with regard to incentives to work. I would probably work at a 100% tax rate next to a nude modeling studio. I’m joking, but you know what I’m saying. There’s a lot more to it than just tax rates. It’s economics that I do; I don’t do nude modeling studio economics. People do respond to taxes.
Modeling is just one of those things that goes along with acting. When it’s offered, it’s hard to say no, because it’s fun.
There are consequences with age, so you have to evolve. I’ve loved becoming a filmmaker. But I would love to continue modeling, and there isn’t really any job for me. It’s being marginalized – that’s the sad part.
Though I was into modeling and extracurricular activities in my school days at C.G. High School in Mumbai, I never thought of making it big someday in a film-industry.
I like coffee in the morning and decaf green tea throughout the day… When I was younger and modeling, to kick-start a diet I would do a juice cleanse.
When I went to L.A., I started modeling, hoping to travel and learn from photographers. It led to auditions to do commercials.
I did a bit of baby modeling. I loved it.
Obviously, modeling and acting are very different. With acting, there’s just so much more to explore on an intellectual, emotional, and physical level, especially with ‘Ma.’
I’m not winning any modeling awards, I’m not a Rhodes Scholar, but I genuinely feel that if you’re taking time out of your day and your energy to comment on my art, then I got your attention.
The whole time I was modeling, I had a place in Paris, and a place in New York, and I was really single.
In between acting, I’m still going to be doing modeling and different ventures.
When I was a kid, probably 16 or 17, I got spotted by a model scout that wanted to represent me, and they sent me one modeling job, for Wall’s ice cream. I did one job for them, and then a catwalk shoot for Kangol caps, and decided modeling was not for me.
I was in a modeling contest when I was 16. People don’t think it’s different, modeling versus beauty pageants, but it is. As a model, you’re still an individual. When you are crowned a Miss, you are representative of a lot.
My first modeling job was Gap, and my first time in front of the camera was for a Soda Pop Girls commercial – it’s one of those Bratz dolls, Barbie dolls… one of those.
I could count my modeling jobs on my hands and toes. When I graduated from college, I moved to New York specifically to study acting, and I needed to pay the bills, and it’s better to make a couple thousand dollars in one day than to wait tables six days a week.
When I started out modeling, there weren’t casting directors and there weren’t stylists, so you just dealt directly with the designer. We were all much closer back then.
The entire time I was modeling, I was trying and failing at businesses. In fact, we would have started our business much sooner had I been more successful.
I signed with an acting agent first; I wasn’t really interested in signing with a modeling agent. But that same day, they said, ‘You should go over to Ford.’
When I started modeling, I didn’t know anything about fashion, but I’d watched the Victoria’s Secret show.
Modeling was so fleeting it doesn’t count in my life scheme.
My doctor felt that the main contributing factor was so many years of malnutrition, especially during my formative years, even before I got into modeling.
When you’re modeling you’re actually acting for the camera and the photographer. It’s more fun, too because there are no lines to memorize.
In 1974, the modeling world changed. Jerry Ford and my lawyer negotiated the deal for the first exclusive contract in modeling history.
Modeling stuff is cool – obviously you get to travel and wear cool clothes, take cool pictures, meet cool people – but for me, acting is a lot more creatively fulfilling, so I’ve always put it first.
In the small amount of modeling work I’ve done, I’m always told that I never smile.
Luckily, I’m doing other things besides just modeling, because frankly, I’m a little bored with it.
I’ll tell you what I probably would prefer to happen less and less: actors that I know and respect in shampoo ads. Or modeling.
To make money in New York, you have to add gigs when starting out, so while I was acting quite a bit, I would do modeling.
Modeling was never anything that was a career choice. I did catalog work in Toronto to make money so that I could go to school.
In ten years of modeling, I’ve trained myself to relax and be able to use my upper body.
I went to the U.S. to start my modeling career at a very young age. So, venturing into films and handling the pressure isn’t a big task.
I’m having fun playing with clothes now. I didn’t used to appreciate the clothes as much when I was modeling. It was a job.
I like dressing like a guy. I love it. When I was modeling I used to do pictures where I would dress up like my little brother. No makeup, and I looked like a boy.
I actually started modeling in Ethiopia, because that’s where I grew up, and I started out by just doing little fashion shows for school, and I liked it so much that I started pursuing it.
There are tons of black girls modeling, and each one is special.
People are making a lot more noise about representation and diversity. But I think modeling is one of the professions where people can be kind of racist.
Modeling, for me, isn’t about being beautiful but creating something interesting for people to look at and think about.
Even after they had stopped modeling for Playboy and had settled down with other men to raise families of their own, Hugh Hefner still considered them his women, and in the bound volumes of his magazine he would always possess them.
I was in Paris, Milan and London from ’89 until ’91, and I did mostly runway modeling. I know there’s so many people out there looking for pictures, but this was way before the age of the Internet, sorry!
I have a tough skin and enough confidence not to worry too much about being underestimated because of my last name, my relative youth, or my modeling background. It comes with the territory.
Since I was 8 months old, till I was 12, I did commercials and ads and cute little stuff for kids. Then I had braces on my teeth. They took them off when I was 16, and then I started modeling more seriously and doing more fashion.
I’ve always thought of modeling as a performance, so I don’t mind kind of pretending. I kind of pretend in a lot of my poses that I am a ballerina or a hip-hop dancer or a grunge performer.
Anorexia was there for me before I got into modeling, but because of the arena and the demands, the disease really got out of control for me. It’s like being an alcoholic and going and being a bartender.
If I wasn’t modeling, I’d be studying economics or international politics.
When I first started in modeling, I went back to England, and it was really hard, because I would go around to the agencies and they would be like, ‘We already have one mixed-race black girl.’
There was really no friendship in modeling, though a certain amount of warmth comes from running into models you know on shoots, because you end up in so many unfamiliar places, from Alaska to Africa.
I was a bit of a tomboy when I started modeling. And I’ve always felt athletic and strong.
I’ve been lucky enough to have been given a platform through modeling, so now I can use it as an activist.
