Janice Dickinson is a model, but she is definitely not the everyday model you know or imagine. When you talk about supermodels today, everyone thinks of Naomi Campbell, but no, Campbell couldn’t hold a candle to Dickinson in her glory days.
The supermodel is also a talent agent, a fashion photographer, and an author, although she started out as a model. She claims to be the first model to be called a “supermodel”, and even if this claim can be argued, it still carries a lot of weight. Born in New York and raised in Florida, she suffered rejections from model agencies before becoming one of the most successful models in the 70s and 80s.
Her affairs and relationships with men and women are a long chain. Already fascinated? Read on to find out who her daughter’s father is, how she overcame the US modeling industry after being found unworthy, how her transition to television went, and how she fared.
Janice Dickinson Bio
Janice Dickinson’s journey to Mother Earth began on February 16, 1955, when she was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is the second daughter of a mother of Polish descent, Jennie Marie Pietrzykowski, and her father, Ray Dickinson, also of Irish and Scottish descent. The New Yorker has two siblings – an older sister, Alexis, and a younger sister, Debbie – who grew up and raised in Hollywood, Florida. Alexis Dickinson is a real estate agent, while Debbie Dickinson has followed Janice’s path and is also a model.
There is very scarce information about her educational history. It is known that Dickinson attended South Broward High School in the Royal Poinciana district of Hollywood, Florida, but her college history is not known and it is possible that she skipped college to pursue a career as a model.
ALSO READ: CM Punk Bio, Wiki, Net Worth, Wife – AJ Lee, Age, Height, and Other Facts
Modeling Career
Janice Dickinson’s modeling career began in the 1970s when she left Florida and moved to her home state of New York. On the back of the national pageant she had just won – “Miss High Fashion Model” – Dickinson envisioned her chances in the modeling industry. Her first hurdle came in the form of the trend at the time. New York City at that time had a preference for models with blue eyes, and coming as an American with brown eyes did not seem to fit into the modeling culture. This led to her being rejected by numerous agencies, some of which categorically told her that she would never be hired.
It was a stroke of luck that she got her first modeling assignment. She got her first agent – Wilhelmina Cooper – after Jacques Silberstein, a fashion photographer approached her. Her friend’s comments on Dickinson’s character were enough for him to make the approach. Encouraged by her contact with Silberstein, she decided to shake things up a bit and move to Europe, hoping that the modeling industry there would not just be concerned with “blue eyes”.
Dickinson landed in France, and after practicing her modeling skills for a few years, she returned to New York in 1978, and then no one could deny her elegance. She got a modeling job that paid her four times the regular fee (she earned $2,000 a day), and after four years of working in that job, she signed a big contract with Ford Models (who had previously turned her down) and publicized the advertising campaign for the newly launched JVC camera.
She later dumped Ford Models (in revenge) and moved on to Elite Model Management, run by John Casablanca as one of the twenty Ford Models models who left the company. She claimed to be the first model to be called a “supermodel” and was in demand by several fashion labels and brands she worked with. Some of them are Valentino Garavani, Calvin Klein, Gianni Versace, Pino Lancetti, Bill Blass, etc. She reported 37 times on Vogue magazine and appeared seven times in a row in Elle magazine. Other magazines in which she has appeared are Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, etc.
In later years, as her modeling magic began to wane, Janice Dickinson transformed herself into a fashion photographer to remain relevant. In 2008 she also launched a jewelry line and tried to enter the music industry in 2009 when she recorded a single called “Crazy”.
TV Career
Dickinson’s first television appearance was on the reality TV show “America’s Next Top Model” (ANTM) after she was hired by the show’s producer, Tyra Banks, to guide the intended models and give them advice on how to avoid the pitfalls of the industry. It turned out to be an unfortunate decision as Dickinson, who was quite blunt in her judgments, had always argued with other jury members, especially Nolé Marin and Kimora Lee Simmons.
She was eventually dismissed from the show as a judge but continued to work in other minor capacities for the next three cycles. In 2005 she was part of the cast for the fifth season of the television series The Surreal Life, and after it ended in a fiasco with her feud with Omarosa Manigault, she started her own show in 2006.
The show, entitled The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, ran four seasons and was broadcast on the cable television channel Oxygen. Her next television appearance was to be in Beauty & The Beast with the British model Abigail Clancy. She was also in the reality series I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! (the British and American versions in 2007 and 2009).
Janice Dickinson was a guest judge in the Finnish version of the top model franchise in 2009. The following year, she took part in the celebrity edition of the British dinner party competition Come Dine With Me. In 2015, she also took part in the British Celebrity Big Brother Show (season 16) and was distributed just two days before the finals.
Personal Life – Husband, Daughter
Janice Dickinson walked down this narrow church path four times in white, flowing robes. She is currently married to Robert Gerner, a psychiatrist, to whom she was married in December 2016. The other three marriages were in 1977 with Ron Levy, Simon Fields (ten years after the first – 1987), and the third with Albert Gersten (1995-1996). Her marriage to Fields produced her first child, a son named Nathan, born on 5 May 1987.
She also had a plethora of affairs with several men. Dickinson was with Mike Reinhardt from 1975 to 1979, and then it was Sylvester Stallone from 1993 to 1994, before she met producer Michael Birnbaum. Her fling with him led to her becoming a mother for the second time when she gave birth to a daughter conceived by the producer on February 23, 1994. Her daughter’s name is Savannah Dickinson. In 2004 she had another brief affair with Jon Lovitz and from 2007 to 2009 it was Joe Kaplan.
Other men associated with the actress and model are Bruce Willis, Warren Beatty, Liam Neeson, and Tommy Fry.
ALSO READ: Rita Ora’s Complete Dating History – Who Has Rita Ora Dated?
Net Worth
Janice Dickinson is a multi-talented personality, and so she is involved in many things that have contributed to her net worth over the years. Apart from being a model, actress, and television personality, Dickinson is also a writer. She has published several books, including No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel (2002), Everything About Me is Fake…And I’m Perfect (2004), and Check Please! Dating, mating, and release (2006). Her net worth is currently estimated at around $500,000.
Other Facts About Janice Dickinson
The sexual orientation of Janice Dickinson is a mystery as she revealed that she had sexual relations with both the male and female sex.
She came out as one of the women who had been abused by Bill Cosby in November 2014. She said the comedian had abused her in 1982 and he had been pressured by his lawyers to keep quiet about it.
The model has a body that corresponds to her trade, with a height of 24-36-34 centimeters. Her height is 5 feet 10 inches, while her weight is 59 kilograms. She also has a shoe size 8.5 and has brown eyes and dark brown hair.
She has had plastic surgery and has also struggled with alcoholism and anorexia.
In March 2016 Dickinson was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She accused her father of being an “angry pedophile” who sexually abused her sister while he physically and emotionally abused her because she refused to give in to his pedophilic appetite.