Elle Macpherson

Biography of Elle Macpherson

Elle Macpherson was born on March 29, 1964 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

She is the eldest of four siblings from a wealthy Sydney family. Her parents divorced when she was fourteen.

She was christened Eleanor Gow, although she adopted the surname Macpherson when her mother married Neil Macpherson.

Elle Macpherson studied law at the University of Sydney.

She was discovered while she was vacationing in Aspen, Colorado. She was signed by the Click modeling agency. Her first modeling job was for television in Australia in 1982.

She appeared on the cover of major magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, gracing the cover of Elle magazine for six consecutive years. Her slender and very tall figure earned her the nickname "The Body".

She married the director of the publication, Gilles Bensimon, twenty years older than her, who was then twenty-one.

She appeared for three consecutive years on the covers of Sports Illustrated advertising swimsuits and also produced a series of aerobics videos for the magazine.

Woody Allen made her debut on camera in a scene from Alice.

In 1994, she acted in the movie Sirens, along with Hugh Grant and Sam Neill, to star in this role, she put on about nine kilos of weight. Her best roles were offered by Franco Zeffirelli for Jane Eyre (1996) and the romantic comedy If Lucy Fell in which she starred alongside Ben Stiller. She also appeared alongside Jeff Bridges and Barbra Streisand in The Mirros has Two Faces.

In 1997, she starred in Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin and Lee Tamahori's The Edge.

The Australian lingerie firm Victoria's Secret added the "Elle Macpherson Intimate" label to her garments and also gave its name to the Montgomery Ward youth and sportswear firm.

She founded the Fashion Cafe restaurant, which she co-owned with other top models like Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell.

Elle Macpherson speaks perfect French and can converse in Spanish and Italian.

She was married to Gilles Bensimon from 1985 to 1989. She became engaged to Swiss banker Arpad Busson, in 2002. They were the parents of two children: Arpad Flynn and Aurelius Cy Andre. They separated in July 2005 without ever getting married.

She began dating billionaire Jeffrey Soffer in early 2009. They separated in March 2012, though they reconciled after his injury in a helicopter crash in November 2012. They became engaged in March 2013, and married in July 2013 in Fiji. In 2017, Macpherson and Soffer announced that they were divorcing.