Who

Danish-born Christensen was one of the top supermodels of the 1990s. Now semi-retired, she's branched out into photography, design, and activism.

Backstory

Half-Danish, half-Peruvian Christensen started modeling in her hometown of Copenhagen at the age of nine. She hit the big time at 18 when she won the title of Miss Denmark and represented her country in the Miss Universe pageant. She then began modeling in Paris, with spreads in French Elle and British Vogue quickly catapulting her to supermodel status. Christensen was almost impossible to miss in the 1990s, gaining widespread exposure as a Victoria's Secret model and memorably romping topless in the surf in Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" video (which was later selected as MTV's "Sexiest Video of All Time"). In 1999, she scaled back her modeling, but still does the occasional shoot, and recently appeared in a sultry Karl Lagerfeld-designed ad campaign for Dom Perignon.

Of note

Since her semi-retirement in 1999, Christensen has focused on other pursuits: exhibiting her photography, serving as creative director for pop-culture/fashion magazine Nylon, and creating a clothing line and opening a West Village boutique (called, appropriately, Butik) with close friend Leif Sigersen. Not that she's been immune to the temptation to add an "/actress" to her resume. She appeared in the 1998 Matthew Barney movie March of the Anal Sadistic Warrior, and in 2005 she starred in the Danish film Allegro. But by most accounts, she's surprisingly well-adjusted for a supermodel: She never managed to gain a reputation as an egomaniac (a la Naomi Campbell) or a party animal (a la Kate Moss).

Pet cause

She has been active in charity work in recent years, focusing especially on animal rights, fair trade, and support for victims of the Chernobyl disaster. She's bristled at being labeled just another celebrity dabbling in activism, though, and once wrote an expletive-laden letter to the Times of London after she felt that the paper trivialized her work to save the orangutan.

Personal

Christensen was married for several years to actor/model Norman Reedus; the marriage produced a son, Mingus, but ended in 2003. She had a long-term relationship with the late INXS singer Michael Hutchence (he dumped her for Paula Yates), and has been linked at various times to notorious modelizer Leonardo DiCaprio, writer/photographer Peter Makebisch, musician Rasmus Walther-Hansen, singer Billy Corgan, actor Josh Hartnett, and most recently Paul Banks of hot-in-2003 band Interpol. (She was also reportedly one of several women Heath Ledger was seeing when he died.) New York is her base—she lives on Hudson Street in the West Village—but she also owns a home in Monaco and an apartment in Copenhagen.