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Christy Turlington

Christy Turlington

Born January 2, 1969 in Walnut Creek, California, USA · Height 178 cm · Updated June 2026

Christy Turlington has spent her life proving that a supermodel can be more than a face. One third of the original "Trinity" of the 1990s and the longest-serving face of Calvin Klein's Eternity, she reached the very top of fashion and then, at 25, did the one thing none of her peers did: she walked away to go to university. The decisions that followed — a degree in comparative religion, a near-fatal childbirth turned into a global movement for mothers — have made her the rare model who treats modeling as the first chapter of a much longer story. On her own bio, she lists "model" last, after mother, advocate, filmmaker, public-health student and yogi.

Discovered on horseback

Born in Walnut Creek, California, on 2 January 1969 to an American father and a Salvadoran mother, Turlington was spotted at 14 while horseback riding in Florida by the photographer Dennie Cody. She modeled after school through her teens, learning the business young — "I was 15 or 16," she has said, "it took time to learn how to advocate for myself." In the late 1980s she signed a then-record contract as the face of Calvin Klein's Eternity, whose enduring early campaigns were shot by Bruce Weber on Martha's Vineyard — the beginning of a relationship that has now lasted more than three decades.

The Trinity and the work

By the early 1990s she, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista were so inseparable on runways and magazine covers that the industry called them the "Trinity" — the defining trio of the supermodel era, alongside Claudia Schiffer and the rest of the "Big Six." Turlington became the face of Maybelline in 1992, walked for the major houses — among them Chanel, Versace and Calvin Klein — and fronted campaigns that made her, with Campbell and Evangelista, one of the most bookable models alive; in 1993 she posed for one of PETA's earliest "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" advertisements — an image later exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art. At her peak she was a muse to photographers including Steven Meisel and Arthur Elgort, one of the most reproduced faces in fashion, her clean, classical features as recognisable on a Vogue cover as in a cosmetics advertisement; she even appeared, lip-syncing alongside her fellow supermodels, in George Michael's 1990 "Freedom! '90" video, a three-minute monument to the era. Through it all she carried a quiet ambivalence about being valued for her appearance, and a curiosity that the schedule of a full-time model could not satisfy.

Walking away to learn

At the height of her commercial power she stepped back and enrolled at New York University's Gallatin School, graduating cum laude in 1999 with a degree concentrated in comparative religion and Eastern philosophy. "I wanted to explore so many other interests that I had and still do have," she explained, "and that was not possible as a full-time model." She has never regretted it: "I don't know if any of the careers I have had would have been as meaningful to me had I not gone back to school when I did." When her father died of lung cancer in 1997 — two years after she had quit smoking — she became a committed anti-tobacco campaigner, disclosing that her own years of smoking had already caused permanent lung damage.

Every Mother Counts

In 2003, a hemorrhage following the birth of her daughter set the course for her second act. She directed the 2010 documentary No Woman, No Cry and founded Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit devoted to safe and equitable pregnancy and childbirth worldwide. Its premise is blunt: "All women deserve access to care that can save their lives." To fund and publicise the work she became a long-distance runner, completing the New York, Boston and London marathons and even the Kilimanjaro Marathon — using the distance as a deliberate metaphor: "distance is a barrier for women to access healthcare." She later returned to graduate study in public health, folding the cause into the rest of her life rather than treating it as a side project.

The Private Side

Turlington married the actor and director Ed Burns (The Brothers McMullen, Saving Private Ryan) in 2003; the couple have two children, Grace and Finn, and are based in New York. The pair are so closely identified with one another that they have fronted Calvin Klein's Eternity together. A yoga devotee since the age of 18, she frames the practice as the tool that carried her through her studies and her father's death: "Everything from my studies to my father's death was eased by my practice of it." Spiritual but firmly anti-dogmatic, grounded and famously private, she has long been cast as the cerebral one of the supermodel generation — more at ease with anonymity than with celebrity, and impatient with anyone who treats parenthood or purpose as optional.

Earnings and net worth

Turlington's wealth is unusual among supermodels for how quietly it was built and how much of it now flows toward her cause. Wealth trackers such as Celebrity Net Worth have estimated her fortune in the tens of millions of dollars, anchored by one of the longest-running model–brand relationships in the industry — her decades as the face of Calvin Klein's Eternity — along with Maybelline and other campaigns, and shared with her husband, the filmmaker Ed Burns. No figure is officially confirmed, and Turlington has consistently redirected attention from her earnings to Every Mother Counts, the maternal-health nonprofit that has become the organising purpose of her public life.

Where she is now

More than thirty years after her first Eternity campaign, Turlington still fronts the fragrance — often alongside her husband — while leading Every Mother Counts and continuing her public-health studies. She remains the supermodel who reached the summit, looked around, and decided the view was only the beginning.

Frequently asked about Christy Turlington

Did Christy Turlington found a skincare company?

Yes - in 1999 she co-founded the Ayurvedic skincare brand Sundari with two partners; it was later sold, with India's Marico Industries taking a majority stake.

Does Christy Turlington have a public-health degree?

Beyond her NYU degree she went back to school and earned a Master of Public Health from Columbia University's Mailman School - a path set by a dangerous complication during her own 2003 childbirth.

Why is Christy Turlington called the 'Face of the 20th Century'?

In 1993 the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gave her the title, and her likeness was used to create roughly 120 mannequins for the museum - even men's and children's versions.

Did Christy Turlington write a book?

She is a published author: her 2002 book 'Living Yoga: Creating a Life Practice' carries a foreword by the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, Uma Thurman's father.

Did you know

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