Marisa Miller

Miller was born Marisa Lee Bertetta in Santa Cruz, California, to Krista (née Useldinger) and Marc Bertetta. She has two younger sisters. 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. During the 1990s, fashion modelling was going through a phase of the androgynous look, and Marisa thought herself too curvy and too short to fit that trend. Miller gained attention in 1997 when she appeared nude 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.In 2001 Miller moved from a start as an amateur magazine model to high-profile mainstream work, after being introduced to fashion photographer Mario Testino, leading to editorials for both the American and Italian editions of Vogue. By 2002 Miller was working for Victoria's Secret and appearing in the 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 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 appeared in advertisements for Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, Andrew Marc, Victoria's Secret, J.Crew, Guess?, Nordstrom, Bath & Body Works, and True Religion jeans. 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. In 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 occupy 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. Victoria's Secret put her to work in 2008, with a five-city tour to promote the 2008 Swim collection's release in stores; the April–May tour included stops in New York City, Miami, Chicago (where she threw the opening pitch at a Chicago Cubs baseball game), Boston, and Minneapolis. The relaunch of Victoria's Secret sports line, VSX, soon followed, along with her first official campaign as an Angel: promoting the company's fragrance Very Sexy Dare. For the 2009 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, Miller was chosen to wear the year's "Fantasy Bra", a harlequin design featuring 2,300 white, champagne, and cognac diamonds, and a 16-carat heart-shaped brown-yellow diamond pendant for a $3-million value and 150 total carats. In response to claims that Miller had parted with Victoria's Secret in January 2010, the Chief Marketing Officer for Limited Brands responded, saying the claims were "unfounded and untrue" while adding "we adore Marisa and we will continue to work with her in the future." In late 2010, Miller confirmed she had moved on to other projects.