Carol Alt biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Actress. Born Carol Alt on December 1, 1960, in College Point, New York. Alt's father, Anthony, was a New York City fire chief. Her mother, Muriel, was an airline employee and former model. Despite her precocious good looks and early exposure to modeling, Alt says, "I was totally not interested in fashion as a child. I was a tomboy. I was more interested in passing the football and getting on the hockey team."

After graduating from high school, Alt enrolled at Hofstra University in 1979 on an Army ROTC scholarship. In addition to attending classes and participating in military drills, Alt waited tables at a local steak house. One day a photographer walked into the restaurant and told her she should be a model. He took Alt to the Elite Modeling Agency, where fashion mogul John Casablancas took one look at the leggy beauty and offered her a contract on the spot. Shortly after their first meeting, Alt dropped out of college to pursue a modeling career full time. Alt's decision to quit college infuriated her parents. "The one tip I gave her was, don't do it," her mother recalls.

Success As a Model

Alt enjoyed immediate success as a model. In 1980, only a few months after leaving Hofstra, she appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. Two years later, Alt landed on the cover of the 1982 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, one of the most coveted covers in all of fashion. Propelled by this early success, Alt went on to become one of the most ubiquitous faces of the 1980s. She graced the covers of more than 700 magazines including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle and Playboy. Life magazine called Alt "the next million dollar face" and Playboy proclaimed her "the most beautiful woman in the world."

In addition to her photo shoots, Alt worked as a runway model for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Her long list of lucrative advertising campaigns included Lancôme, Cover Girl, Pepsi and General Motors. Expanding the traditional boundaries of the modeling industry, in the early 1980s Alt posed for a series of five posters. When Elite rejected the project, Alt self-produced the posters and they became huge bestsellers, sparking a new trend in the modeling business. "From then on it's been, if you're a supermodel you have a poster," Alt says. Through her omnipresence at newsstands and her forays into posters and calendars, Alt charted a course for a new kind of model, the supermodel. John Casablancas has called Alt "the model that started the supermodel trend."

Acting Career

Despite her enormous success as a model, Alt decided to switch the direction of her career in 1986 and try her hand at acting.