Tyra Banks Biography

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (October 2008)

Tyra Banks
Tyra Banks at Cannes, 2000
Born	December 4, 1973 (1973-12-04) (age 34) Inglewood, California, United States
Occupation	Talk show host, television personality and Supermodel
Salary	$23 million (2008)[1]
Height	5 ft 11 in (1.80 m)[2]
Website TyraBanks.com

Tyra Lynne Banks (born December 4, 1973) is an American television personality, Emmy Award-winning talk show host, actress, supermodel, former teen idol, and businessperson.^[3][4][5] She became famous first as a model in Paris, Milan, London, Tokyo, and New York, but television appearances were her commercial breakthrough. She is known best as the creator and host of the reality television show America's Next Top Model since its 2003 debut. She current hosts her own Emmy- winning talk show, The Tyra Banks Show. Banks is one of four African Americans and seven women to have repeatedly ranked among the world's most influential people by Time magazine.

Early life

Banks was born in Inglewood, California, the daughter of Carolyn (née London), a fashion manager and NASA photographer and Donald Banks, a computer consultant.^[3][6] The couple divorced in 1990, when Tyra was sixteen, although the relationship of her parents and especially her brother Devin Banks (born 1968) stayed friendly.^{citation needed} Later, Carolyn married Clifford Johnson; she now goes by Carolyn London-Johnson. Banks grew up in Inglewood, later attended John Burroughs Middle School and graduated in 1991 from Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles. She began modeling in the 11th grade.^[7]

Career

Modeling

Within Banks' first week in Paris, other designers were so entranced by her presence on the runway that she was booked for an unprecedented 25 shows; a record in the business for a newcomer. She has done extensive print and/or runway work for fashion/advertising giants such as Anna Sui, Coors Light, CoverGirl, Badgley Mischka, Bill Blass, Cynthia Rowley, Chanel, Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Gemma Kahng, H&M, Isaac Mizrahi, Maria Snyder, McDonald's, Aislinn Dubois Modeling Agency Michael Kors, Milk, Nicole Miller, Nike, Inc., Oscar de la Renta, Pepsi, Perry Ellis, Randy Kemper, Richard Tyler, Rifat Ozbek, Swatch, Todd Oldham, Tommy Hilfiger, Victoria's Secret, and Yves Saint Laurent. She has appeared on the covers of high fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Elle.

Banks was the first African American woman on the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.^[8] In 1997, she received the VH1 Award for Supermodel of the Year. Also in 1997, she was chosen for the cover of the Victoria's Secret catalog, making her the first African American to be so.

Banks retired from modeling in May 2005 to concentrate on her television show. She walked the runway for the final time at the 2005 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Banks is listed as one the models featured in a Playboy May 1997 pictorial on Supermodels with Claudia Schiffer on the cover, and included Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Jennifer Driver, Eva Herzigova, Iman, Elle Macpherson, Kate Moss, Shana Phipps, Claudia Schiffer, Stephanie Seymour and Amber Smith.

Move into television and film

Banks' television career began on the fourth season of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in which she played lead character Will's old friend Jackie Ames, and made seven appearances throughout the series. Other screen credits include Felicity, MADtv, Nick Cannon's Wild 'N Out (in which she was featured as special guest host and team captain), Coyote Ugly and The Price Is Right (guest-starring as a Barker's Beauty). She also appeared as a guest in the animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast in an episode titled "Chinatown."

Currently, Banks can be seen on television as the hostess, judge, and executive producer of the CW television show America's Next Top Model. In addition, she hosts The Tyra Banks Show, a daytime talkshow aimed at younger women, which premiered on September 12, 2005 and recently began its third season, drawing over 1.9 million viewers an episode.^{citation needed} The show features stories about everyday people mixed in with celebrity interviews, much like the early format of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Under the slogan "Every woman has a story...and it happened to Tyra too.", Banks promotes her show using emotional flashbacks to her own childhood and adolescence. Many of the episodes deal with issues facing women today. Tyra and other experts give women advice on fashion, relationships, and more. The first two seasons of the show were recorded in Banks' hometown of Los Angeles, but beginning with the fall 2007 season, the show moved to New York City. In 2008, Tyra Banks won the Daytime Emmy Award for her work and production on the Tyra Banks Show.

In late January 2008, Banks got the go ahead from ANTM network, CW, to start work on a new reality television series based on fashion magazines called Stylista.

Her first big screen role came in 1994 when she co-starred in the drama Higher Learning. She went on to co-star with Lindsay Lohan in the Disney film Life-Size, playing a doll named Eve who comes to life and has to learn how to live in the real world. Other notable roles include Love Stinks (1999), Coyote Ugly (2000), and Halloween: Resurrection (2002).

Books

In 1998, Banks authored a book entitled Tyra's Beauty, Inside and Out. The book was advertised as a resource for helping women to make the most out of their natural beauty. ^[9]

Music

Banks has appeared in several music videos including Michael Jackson's "Black or White," Tina Turner's "Love Thing," Mobb Deep's "Trife Life" and George Michael's "Too Funky" (with fellow supermodel Linda Evangelista). In 2004, she recorded her first single, "Shake Ya Body", which had a music video featuring the final 6 America's Next Top Model, Cycle 2 contestants.(Music Video) The video's world premiere was on UPN, but the single was a failure for Banks. She stated on Cycle of Top Model that "Singing has been a passion of mine for a long, long time...6 years on the down low - been ducking in and out of studios cutting tracks," but on her talk show she stated, "I can't believe I wasted 6 years of doing something that I didn't finish...I was almost able to release my album 'T.Y.R.A' but since my music career hit rock bottom I quit."^{cite this quote}

Though "Shake Ya Body" was a failure, record producer Darkchild told JET in 2004 that Banks "has what it takes to pull it off...she had a hungriness to want to be in the studio all the time. Some people want to be divas in the studio and work for three or four hours. You had to tell Tyra to stop or she will keep you going".^[10] As for her voice, Jerkins stated, '"People will be shocked. She can really sing, she's like between soprano and high alto. I challenged her vocally. I pushed her, but not too far. I pushed her where vocally it fit the track."^[10]

Banks released a single with NBA star Kobe Bryant, titled "K.O.B.E.", which was performed on NBA TV, and had a single/soundtrack from the Disney movie Life-Size called "Be A Star". She is also credited with performing the theme song to America's Next Top Model.^{citation needed}

Filmography

TV series and shows

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Tyra Banks

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Tyra Banks

• Tyra Banks in the Fashion Model Directory
• Tyra Banks at the Internet Movie Database
• Tyra Banks at Allmovie
• Tyra Banks at People.com
• Tyra Banks and Books
• Tyra Banks Photos at Maxim Online
• Tyra Banks Show website
• Official website
• Tyra Banks Myspace Page
• Tyra Banks Fan Page
• New York Times profile/interview