Janice Dickinson – Bio, Daughter, Net Worth, Modeling Career, Other Facts

Quick Facts

Janice Dickinson is a model but she is definitely not the everyday model you know or have imagined her to be. When you talk of supermodels today, everyone thinks of Naomi Campbell but no, Campbell stood no match to Dickinson in her glory days.

The supermodel is also a talent agent, a fashion photographer, and an author even though she began as a model. She claims to be the first model to be referred to as a “supermodel” and even though the claim can be argued, it still holds a lot of weight. Born in New York and raised in Florida, she suffered rejections by modeling agencies before she turned out to become one of the most successful models in the 70s’ and 80’s.

Her affairs and relationship with men and women alike is a long chain. Already intrigued? Read on to find out who the father of her daughter is, how she subdued the US modeling industry after being thought unworthy, her transition to television and how she fared.

Janice Dickinson’s Bio 

Janice Dickinson’s journey on mother earth began on February 16, 1955, when she was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is the second daughter of a mother with Polish descent, Jennie Marie Pietrzykowski and father, Ray Dickinson of Irish and Scottish descent as well. The New Yorker has two siblings – an older sister, Alexis and a younger sister, Debbie – and they grew up and were raised in Hollywood, Florida. Alexis Dickinson is a realtor while Debbie Dickinson followed Janice’s path and is also a model.

There is very scanty information as regarding her education history. Dickinson is known to have attended South Broward High School in the Royal Poinciana neighborhood of Hollywood, Florida but her college history is not known and it is possible she skipped college to pursue a career in modeling.

Modeling Career

Janice Dickinson’s modeling career began in the 1970s when she left Florida and moved to her home state, New York. Riding on the back of the national pageant she just won – “Miss High Fashion Model” – Dickinson fancied her chances in the modeling industry. Her first hurdle came in form of the trend at the time. New York City at that time had a thing for blue-eyed models and coming as an American with brown eyes didn’t seem to fit into the modeling culture. This led to her been rejected by numerous agencies, with some of them telling her categorically that she would never be hired.

It took a stroke of luck for her to land her first modeling gig. She got her first agent – Wilhelmina Cooper – after she was approached by Jacques Silberstein, a fashion photographer whose girlfriend’s comments on Dickinson’s figure was enough for him to make the approach. Spurred by her contact with Silberstein, she decided to shake things up a little and move to Europe, in the hope that the modeling industry there did not just care about “blue eyes.”

Dickinson landed in France and after horning her modeling skills for a couple of years, she returned to New York in 1978, and then no one could refuse her elegance. She got a modeling job which paid her four times over the regular fee (she earned $2000 daily) and after working the job for four years, she signed a major deal with Ford Models (who had turned her down her earlier on) and headlined the ad campaign for the newly launched JVC camera.

She would later dump Ford Models (in revenge) and move over to Elite Model Management, ran by John Casablanca as one of the twenty models from Ford Models to quit the company. She lays claim to being the first model to be referred to as a “supermodel” and was sought after by several fashion labels and brands whom she worked with. Some of them include Valentino Garavani, Calvin Klein, Gianni Versace, Pino Lancetti, Bill Blass, etc. She covered Vogue magazine 37 times and appeared consecutively on Elle magazine seven times. Other magazines she has appeared in are Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, etc.

At her later years, and as her modeling magic began to wane, Janice Dickinson transitioned into a fashion photographer as a way of staying relevant. She also floated a jewelry line in 2008 and tried to go into music in 2009 as she recorded a single titled “Crazy.”

TV Career

Dickinson’s first television appearance was on the reality TV show, America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) after she was hired by the show’s producer, Tyra Banks to guide the intending models and offer them advice on how to avoid the pitfalls in the industry. It turned out to be an unfortunate decision as Dickinson, who was rather blunt in her assessments, would always fall out with other judges on the panel, especially Nolé Marin and Kimora Lee Simmons.

She was eventually fired as a judge from the show but she continued working in other smaller capacities in the subsequent three cycles. In 2005, she was part of the cast for the fifth season of the TV series The Surreal Life and after it ended in a fiasco with her feud with Omarosa Manigault, she started her own show in 2006.

The show titled The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, which ran for four seasons, was aired on the Oxygen cable-television channel. Her next TV appearance would be on Beauty & The Best with the British model, Abigail Clancy. She was also on the reality series I’m a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here! (the British and American version in 2007 and 2009 respectively).

Janice Dickinson was on the Finnish version of the Top Model franchise as a guest judge in 2009. The next year, she was on the celebrity edition of British dinner-party contest titled Come Dine With Me. In 2015, she also participated in Britain’s Celebrity Big Brother show (season 16) and was evicted just two days to the finale.

Net Worth

Janice Dickinson is a multi-talented personality and so she is involved in many things which have contributed to her net worth over the years. Apart from being a model, actress, and television personality, Dickinson is also an author. She has released a couple books including No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel (2002), Everything About Me is Fake…And I’m Perfect (2004), and Check Please! Dating, Mating, and Extricating (2006). Currently, her net worth is estimated at about $500,000.

Personal Life – Husband, Daughter

Janice Dickinson has walked down that narrow church path in white flowing gown four times. At present, she is married to Robert Gerner, who is a psychiatrist who she got married to in December 2016. Her other three marriages had been to Ron Levy in 1977, Simon Fields (ten years after the first – 1987) and the third, Albert Gersten (1995-1996). Her marriage to Fields produced her first child, a son named Nathan, born May 5, 1987.

She has also had a plethora of affairs with several men. Dickinson dated Mike Reinhardt from 1975 to 1979, and then it was from 1993 to 1994 before she met producer, Michael Birnbaum. Her fling him resulted in her becoming a mother the second time as she gave birth to a daughter fathered by the producer on February 23, 1994. Her daughter’s name is Savannah Dickinson. In 2004, she had another brief affair with Jon Lovitz and from 2007 to 2009 it was Joe Kaplan.

Other men who have been linked to the actress and model include Bruce Willis, Warren Beatty,  and Tommy Fry.

Other Facts About Janice Dickinson

Janice Dickinson’s sexual orientation is a puzzle as she has revealed that she has had sexual relations with both the male and the female gender.

She came out as one of the women that had been abused by Bill Cosby in November 2014. She said the comedian violated her in 1982, and he had been under pressure by his attorneys to keep quiet about it.

The model has a body befitting her trade with her body figure measured at 24-36-34 inches. Her height is 5 feet 10 inches while her weight is 59 kg. Also, her shoe size is 8.5 and she has brown eyes and dark brown hair.

She has had plastic surgery and also struggled with alcoholism and anorexia.

Dickinson was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2016.

She has accused her father of being a “rageoholic pedophile” who sexually abused her sister while abusing her physically and emotionally because she refused to give in to his pedophilia appetite.

Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.