Transcript
PAULINA PORIZKOVA
Modelinia, I am on you every day like a leech.
Pronounced Porizkva in English. Porizkova in Czech. I'm a former supermodel. I was really big in the '80s. I'm from a farming family in the middle of this little Czech Republic. I started modeling in 1980, and I was 15. I just turned 15. I got into modeling by an accident because it was really my best girlfriend that was really into fashion. She's the one who sent my pictures to some agent, and I was in Paris about four weeks later. The first cover I had was Vendome. I think I did that cover maybe two weeks after I arrived. And I thought everybody did covers when they first started modeling. I didn't think there was anything amazing about it. But when that cover first came out and I first saw my face in that newsstand, I was just, [demonstrates] but when I would pass a newsstand in 1985, '86, and there were four covers of me, I'd go, damn, I look tired on Glamour. And that would be pretty much it because I had a period of time when I would go to the magazine stand and every cover was me.
To set the record straight, I was really fabulous at one point in the '80s. I was. It's really hard to say that non-ironically. You can say it for me, though. That's totally fine with me.
My old booker insisted I should go through this audition because it was, you know, a band that she loved, The Cars. I was 19 years old. I had just had my first cover of Sports Illustrated when I got called in for the video. I was just scared to be, you know, eye candy. And I was just going nuts 'cause I was so tired and I was falling madly in love with this man who was the singer of this band. And we were together from the day we met. The old, you know, rock star-model thing, except in our case, it actually worked out.
I'm probably not the best person to be asking about the glory of the '80s. I didn't love my work. I don't really like fashion all that much. But I felt that I was getting paid a huge amount of money and I am nothing but professional. Once you are a hooker, it's just a matter of price. I probably shouldn't have said that out loud.
Do I miss it? I wouldn't be entirely truthful if I said no. Once you get used to that sort of excitement, it becomes addictive. And then when you're no longer in the center of all that excitement, you feel like something has been taken away from you. Overall, I don't miss it. I would never want to go back, but good times.
