Janice Dickinson

Dickinson has married thrice - Ron Levy, Simon Fields and Albert Gertson are her ex-husbands. She got engaged to be married to a psychiatrist called Dr. Robert Gerner in 2012. She has a son From Simon Fields, Nathan Ray Michael Fields and a daughter Savannah Rodin Dickinson from her boyfriend Michael Birnbaum.

In her books, Dickinson has revealed that she had many lovers from the Fashion industry and Hollywood, like Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicolson, Liam Neeson, Bruce Willis, John Cusack, Sir Mick Jagger, warren Beatty, Ronnie Wood, Kelly LeBrock, Roman Polanski, Grace Jones, Frank Zappa, David O’Hara, Jon Lovitz, Prince Albert II, etc.

Janice was born on 15 February 1955 in the Brooklyn borough, New York to Jennie Marie, her mother of the Polish descent and Ray Dickinson, her father of the Scottish decent. She has two more siblings, Alexis and Debbie. Alexis is a real estate agent and Debbie is a model.

She had a tough childhood and teenage years as her father used to physically and emotionally abuse her. He also used to sexually abuse one of her sisters. She has mentioned publically that she did not consent to have sex with her father; therefore he used to verbally and physically abuse her and told her that she looked like a boy.

During 1970s, Dickinson moved to New York. She wanted to pursue modeling, an ambition triggered after she won the national competition ‘Miss High Fashion Model’. But the modeling scene was grim in New York because only blue-eyed blondes, conventionally beautiful women were considered for modeling.

She faced numerous failures and was turned down by the ace modeling agents from New York like Eileen Ford, because everyone thought that her looks were too ethnic for modeling in America. Fashion photographer Jacques Silberstein’s discovered her after his girlfriend and actress Lorraine Bracco liked Dickinson’s looks.

From there on, Dickinson started seeing hope for herself and Wihelmina became her first ever modeling agent. Thereafter she decided to move to Paris as she thought her exotic looks would be considered as an edge in the European fashion industry, unlike in America where it was considered as a hindrance to her modeling success.

In 1978, Dickinson came back to New York after her modeling expedition in France. She worked as a model in New York for years and earned a steady salary of 2000 US dollars every day, which was four times what a standard model was getting in those days.

During late 70s and early 80s, Dickinson was signed with Ford Models to model for the ad campaign for their newly launched JVC camera. She was one of the 20 Ford models to join up John Casablanca’s Elite Model Management.

This supermodel was first rejected by Ford to be cast as one of their models.

Dickinson is the owner of a jewelry line on HSN.

She has proclaimed herself to be the first ‘supermodel’ ever, which has been disputed by many models and magazines over the years.

She was fired from 'America’s Top Model' by Tyra Banks because of her being doubtful about plus-size models and it became a bone of contention between her and Banks. She was known for her wit and straightforward criticism as a judge on the show.

In the ‘Finnish version’ she got into much talked about controversy when she mixed her sleeping pill with champagne and fell down a flight of stairs and shouted at the models in the show. She had to apologize later to the models.