Tyra Banks

Tyra Lynne Banks (born December 4, 1973) is an American model, television personality, producer, businesswoman, actress, author, and occasional singer. Born in Inglewood, California, she began her career as a model at age 15, and was the first African American woman to be featured on the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, on which she appeared twice. She was a Victoria's Secret Angel from 1997 to 2005. By the early 2000s, Banks was one of the top-earning models in the world. Banks began acting on television in 1993 on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and made her film debut in Higher Learning in 1995. She went on to have major roles such as Eve in Disney Channel's Life-Size and Zoe in the box office hit Coyote Ugly. She had small roles in the romantic film Love & Basketball and horror film Halloween: Resurrection, and also appeared in television series Gossip Girl and Glee. In 2003, Banks created and began presenting the long-running reality television series America's Next Top Model, which she executive produced and presented for the first twenty-two seasons until the series' cancellation in October 2015. Banks remained executive producer for the revival of the series, and enlisted Rita Ora as host for the twenty-third cycle before reassuming the duties herself for the upcoming twenty-fourth cycle. Banks was also the co-creator of True Beauty, and had her own talk show, The Tyra Banks Show, which aired on The CW for five seasons and won two Daytime Emmy awards for Outstanding Talk Show Informativ