Naomi Campbell Biography

British model and actress Naomi Campbell was born in 1970 in South London. Long before Campbell rose to become one of the era’s most recognizable “supermodels,” she grew up in London and Rome, often traveling with her mother, who was a dancer. Naomi originally had aspirations similar to her mothers, attending performing arts schools to study ballet. But while studying at the Italia Conti Academy of Theater Arts, Naomi was discovered by the head of the Synchro modeling agency. By her sixteenth birthday, she’d made her first cover appearance on Britain’s Elle magazine.

By the mid 1990’s, Naomi Campbell had become one of the world’s most recognizable faces, gracing the runways for such designers as Isaac Mizrahi and Gianni Versace. Hers was a familiar face to find on the cover of Vogue, and she became the first black model to appear on the cover of Time magazine in 1991. She also began to appear in films, starting with Cool as Ice in 1991 and including the movies: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1994), Girl 6 (1996), The Call (2006), and Karma, Confessions and Holi (2009.)

In addition to her work as a model and actress, Naomi Campbell also released an album in 1994. The debut, babywoman, was commercially successful overseas but did not garner much acclaim in the United States. Naomi has also written three books: Swan (1994), Top Model (1994), and Naomi (1996), and she has distributed multiple fragrance lines over the years.

Over the last few decades, Naomi Campbell has become equally as well known for her charitable work as she has for her modeling appearances. Campbell supports a number of significant charities, including: the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, and Diversity Coalition, an organization which also includes contributions from fellow black models Bethann Hardison and Iman. Most recently, Naomi Campbell can be seen as the face of the Burberry spring/summer collection for 2015.