Marisa Miller

Marisa Lee Miller (née Bertetta; born August 6, 1978) is an American model best known for her appearances in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues and her work for lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret. After a stint shooting with photographer Mario Testino for fashion magazines like Vogue, Miller began working for both companies in 2002. In 2007, she became a Victoria's Secret Angel, and graced the cover of the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue to record-setting numbers. Her accomplishments have led to her being dubbed the "return of the great American supermodel.
 

She is also known for contracts with companies like Harley-Davidson, for whom she is the first spokesperson in the history of the company. Miller is considered a sex symbol; she ranked #1 on Maxim magazine's 2008 "Hot 100" list and in FHM's global 2010 "Sexiest Women in the World" poll. Aside from modeling, she is an ambassador for both the American Cancer Society and the USO. Born Marisa Lee Bertetta in Santa Cruz, California, to parents Krista (Useldinger) and Marc Bertetta, Miller attended high school at Aptos High and Monte Vista Christian School. She considered herself a tomboy growing up, with mostly male friends and little awareness of anything girly. Out of shyness, she often wore large t-shirts to hide her body and would get fully dressed just to go to the trash-can while at the beach.
 

Miller was first "discovered" at age sixteen walking through a San Francisco café by two Italian modeling agents. After talking to her mother, she was on a plane to Italy with her mother a few months later, despite her "shy and conservative" personality. Miller gained attention in 1997 when she appeared in the first issue of Perfect 10 magazine. Although she came in third behind Ashley Degenford and Monica Hansen in Perfect 10 magazine's first annual model search, she was repeatedly showcased in following issues, including the covers of the Winter 1998 and August/September 1999 editions, as well as a reprint for the Fall 2004 edition cover.

Career
Miller moved from a start as an amateur magazine model to high profile mainstream work after an acquaintance showed a picture of her to famed fashion photographer Mario Testino in 2001. Testino asked to meet Miller, who was running a surf school at the time, and was invited to Manhattan Beach, California, where she would be surfing.
 

Noticing her, Testino snapped pictures of her and approached her with a job offer. It turned out to be editorials for both the American and Italian editions of Vogue. Within six months, Miller was working for Victoria's Secret and the coveted Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, in which she appeared in every issue from 2002 to 2008. In particular, she famously posed wearing only an iPod in the 2007 issue. She has also appeared in a diverse range of magazines, many of them international editions, such as GQ, Maxim, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, and Vanity Fair. She has featured in advertisements for Nordstrom, J.Crew, Guess?, Tommy Hilfiger, Bath & Body Works, and True Religion jeans. Miller in a bikini, the top a striped design with a variety of different brown patterns. Miller backstage at the Fashion for Relief show, a charity event in aid of victims of Hurricane Katrina.

It was not until 2007 that she filmed her first television commercial for Victoria's Secret, appearing alongside Heidi Klum for the It bra. On December 4, 2007, Miller made her debut in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show,   and opened a segment in the following year's edition. Other runway work include 2007's Fashion for Relief show, benefiting victims of Hurricane Katrina, as well as MTV's Fashionably Loud, Imitation of Christ, Inca, and Amir Slama's Rosa Cha, for which she was one of the most anticipated models.On the February 12, 2008 episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, it was revealed via a three-story billboard in New York City that Miller would grace the cover of that year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. The tandem online launch of the issue drew record page views to the SI website: 228 million, a 41% increase over 2007. In September 2008, Sports Illustrated released a "Best of Marisa Miller" swimsuit calendar for the 2009 year.

Article Source : Wikipedia