Actresses say offers dry up after you hit age but certain a we’re changing that ...we’re a generation right that’s and been eating exercising
The description “65- year- old pensioner” hardly springs to mind when you look at Christie Brinkley …nevertheless, on paper, she is. But the supermodel, who has graced more than 500 magazine covers, says thanks to clean living the years mean little to her or many women of her generation.
Christie first rose to fame in the 70s as a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover girl.
Four decades on she is playing Roxie Hart in a US tour of Chicago – a role Renee Zellweger played when she was 33 years old in the Oscar-winning movie version.
And Christie proclaims proudly she has the stamina to keep up with all the “razzle dazzle” that the dancing demands.
Christie reckons exercise and good diet, as well as relishing life and learning, are her secret. Plus a certain bubbly beverage…
She says: “I hear actresses constantly talking about how you hit a certain age and offers don’t come in anymore.
“We’re changing that a lot, and that is because, frankly, we’re healthier today. We’re a generation that has been exercising, has been eating right and so we feel good.
“But so many women despite that still get influenced. There’s so many things that influence us to feel we should be thinking
about slipping away and winding things down.”
She says of keeping young: “It’s to be able to be out there active, doing things, learning new things. Being curious about the world, taking on challenges and constantly growing and learning, that’s the fountain of youth… And a Prosecco,” she adds, laughing. “Those things are the things that keep you invigorated.”
Christie doesn’t have theatrical training, so admits she’s pulling from her life experience to fill Roxie’s shoes.
A near-death helicopter crash 25 years ago still plays on her mind, urging her to live life to the full.
She and friends were on a ski trip in Telluride, Colorado, when their helicopter, at 12,000ft, plummeted. Christie fell out onto the snow, hurting her wrist. No one was killed.
She says: “Not a day goes by that I have not counted my blessing for being alive. I know tomorrow is not a guarantee and each day is a gift and an opportunity to make sure everybody we love knows it!”
The love life of the daughter
Not a day goes by I have not counted my blessing for being alive CHRISTIE BRINKLEY ON MOTIVATION TO LIVE LIFE
of a TV writer from Los Angeles has been as colourful as a soap opera plot.
Her first marriage, to artist Jean-Francois Allaux, ended as he deemed her too young for a long-term relationship.
She flung herself into an affair with playboy Olivier Chandon de Brailles, a scion of the Moet champagne family. They were deeply in love, but he was killed in 1983 in a motor-racing crash.
The man who helped her heal turned out to be pop star Billy Joel.
“I felt like I was undeserving – it was extraordinary that I got her. But, suddenly, this beautiful supermodel dug me – it was great,” he said. “We had strong feelings for each other.”
But their 1985 wedding was followed by long periods of time apart as Joel fought off money woes by touring and making music.
By the end of 1993, they quietly separated but have remained friends and are parents to a daughter, Alexa Ray.
Christie said: “Of course as you’re going through it, you know, you can get a little bit raw, but you cannot find him saying a bad word about me or me saying a bad word about him, no matter what happens.”
She started seeing real estate developer Ricky Taubman and a year later they were engaged. They married the following year, but by the time their son Jack was born in 1995 they were already on the rocks.
Architect Peter Cook was her fourth husband and, in 1998, she had her third child, Sailor, with him. They lived, with her three children, in Long Island, and it seemed picture-perfect.
She said: “I finally have what I always wanted – a husband who is so involved in the family, who cares about it with every ounce of his being, who is there for us.”
divorce But in they had spent thousands of 2008 Cook testified in their dollars on online porn.
However, it also emerged he had used online porn sites with a webcam. “It was
not a voyeur site. It was a meeting site,” an emotional Christie told the divorce hearing. “It was more than I could bear.”
Cook also confirmed a fling with teenager Diana Bianchi. He ended up paying her £200,000 for her silence. Christie found out at the local high school where she had given a speech on global warming.
Policeman Brian Platt tapped her on the shoulder and said: “That husband of yours won’t knock it off. He’s having an affair with my teenage daughter.”
Reflecting on her life, Christie says she has been able to find the positives,
especially in terms of her new acting career. “I realise that none of this would be happening if some of the worst things that have happened to me hadn’t happened.
“I realised whatever you’re going through, good or bad or whatever, it’s all going to make you who you are and help you in many ways. I don’t think I would have been here, doing this at all, if it hadn’t been for some of the worst moments in my life that made me say, ‘I can do it.’”
She played Roxie before, infrequently in a Broadway run as guest star a decade ago, but was shocked to hear about the new job.
“This took me by surprise,” she says. “I opened up my cellphone and there was a text from my favourite producer, Barry Weissler and it said, ‘ How would you like to come back and play Roxie Hart again?’
“My first thought was, you know how sometimes you get in a old mailbox or something? And I thought, ‘Let me just check the date on this,’” she laughs.
“Then I thought, ‘OK, before I answer, let me run to the gym. Let me just go for a run. Let me feel like if I can still do it and have the stamina.’”
Turns out she has and probably will for years to come – if she sticks to the bubbles.