Women Pict

Considered one of the world's most beautiful women, supermodel Cindy Crawford has appeared just about everywhere that advertisements are allowed. Over her unprecedentedly long career, she has hawked everything from haute couture and perfume to soda pop and dairy products, and has made a fortune with her beauty and fitness videos and swimsuit calendars.

Crawford also owns a piece of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain. In 1995, Forbes magazine ranked her as the most highly paid model in the world. Crawford is the first supermodel to pose for Playboy and later risked her career by posing suggestively on the cover of Vanity Fair beside lesbian singer k.d. Lang.

In addition to appearing in television commercials, Crawford spent six years hosting the MTV cable network's House of Style. She is an intelligent, witty woman and a popular talk show guest. As an actress, Crawford occasionally guest stars on television series, as she did in a special 1998 episode of the NBC sitcom Third Rock From the Sun.

In 1995, Crawford made a rather inauspicious film debut in the action thriller Fair Game. Despite the film's lack of box-office success, Crawford is still interested in pursuing an acting career.

Crawford is a native of De Kalb, IL, and was discovered as a teenager when a local news photographer took a picture of her while she was detasselling corn. Already an impressive beauty, she left her country job to become a model for the summer. She continued modelling for the next two summers, through the Chicago division of the Elite modelling agency and then decided to go to college.

Helped by an academic scholarship (she'd been a straight-A student in high school), Crawford studied chemical engineering at Northwestern University, but shrewdly decided that she'd make more money as a model.

For a while, Crawford worked in Chicago, but didn't hit the big time until she moved to New York City in 1986.

Christina began performing when she was 6 years old, in school talent shows, and at eight she appeared on the nationally syndicated "Star Search".

At the age of ten, she sang the National Anthem for the Pittsburgh Steelers. In 12 years old, she joined the star cast of "The New Mickey Mouse Club", appearing on the Orlando based show.

Two years later, the show ended and Christina took the opportunity to travel overseas, to follow her singing career, and recorded a duet with Japanese pop star Keizo Nakanishi.

When she heard that Disney was looking for a singer to record a song for the animated film Mulan, Aguilera cut a one take presentation using the boom box in her living room.

The presentation was Fed Exed to Disney after 48 hours later she was in a Los Angeles studio recording "Reflection" for Mulan. Within the week, RCA signed her to a major label record contract.