Heidi Klum

Heidi Klum Introduction

Along with pretzels, BMWs and Kraftwerk, Heidi is one of our favorite German exports. And of the four, she’s the one we’d most like to spend a long weekend with. Or at least she’s right behind Kraftwerk. Voted #25 in the AskMen.com's Top 99 Women 2008 Edition.

Heidi Klum Life Story

Raised by her parents Gunther and Erna in Bergisch Gladbach, a small city outside Cologne, Heidi entered a modeling contest at age 18, and out of 25,000 contestants, she was voted the winner, which was announced on the German talk show Gottschalk Late Night, a German comedy show in which no laughter is allowed. Buoyed by a modeling contract worth $300,000, Heidi decided to ditch her fashion-design-school dreams and start out on the road to supermodel-dom.

Good decision. The long-legged brunette has been on the cover of nearly every fashion magazine, including Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and GQ, she has modeled truckloads of bras and panties for Victoria’s Secret, she has posed in super-skimpy bikinis for numerous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues, and she has endorsed brands like Braun, Liz Claiborne, Jordache and McDonald’s—because if you want a body like Heidi’s, definitely eat a lot of McDonald’s.

Although she has appeared in a few movies and TV shows over the years, including The Devil Wears Prada (Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Gisele Bundchen), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Charlize Theron) and Perfect Stranger (Halle Berry), Heidi has had far more success—and created far more schadenfreude-laced fun—as the host and judge of Bravo’s fashion-design-based reality show Project Runway. She’s also the host of the Germany television reality show, Germany’s Next Topmodel, a contest so intense that they don’t have time to separate the words “top” and “model.”

Looking ahead, we don’t see any reason to believe Heidi won’t be hosting Project Runway well into her 90s, and she’ll continue to devote herself to her three children, two of whom are from her current marriage with musician Seal. Bad line that we can’t help but use right now: She definitely gets our seal of approval.

Heidi married musician Seal Samuel and on May 10, 2005. She legally changed her surname to Samuel on November 20, 2009 but still uses Klum as her professional name.