Tyra Banks

Tyra Banks

Tyra Lynne Banks (born December 4, 1973), also known as BanX, is an American television personality, producer, businesswoman, actress, author, model, and occasional singer. Born in Inglewood, California, she began her career as a model at the age of 15, and was the first woman of African-American descent to be featured on the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, on which she appeared thrice. She was a Victoria's Secret Angel from 1997 to 2005. By the early 2000s, Banks was one of the world's top-earning models. Banks began acting on television in 1993 on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and made her film debut in Higher Learning in 1995. In 2000 she had 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 (2000) and horror film Halloween: Resurrection (2002), and 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. She 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 twenty-fourth cycle. Banks was 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 Informative. She co-hosted the talk show FABLife for two months. In 2017, Banks replaced Nick Cannon as host of America's Got Talent for its 12th season. In 2010, she published a young adult novel titled Modelland, based on her life as a model. It topped The New York Times Best Seller list in 2011. Banks is one of four African Americans and seven women to have repeatedly been ranked among the world's most influential people by Time magazine. She is also one of only seventeen models to be ranked as a Legendary Supermodel by MODELS.com.

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