Christie Brinkley says that alcoholism of Billy Joel caused their divorce

Making a fashion model is one thing; Damn in such an intense competitive field, as Christie Brinkley did, is another. This means having to live constant for fear that your work will be torn off by a younger person, or thinner, or whatever the Zeitgeist to hunt at some point. If the new Memoirs of Brinkley, “Uptown Girl”, have a lesson to transmit to its readers, it is because nobody, not even the beauty icon, crosses life for free.

Brinkley, who grew up in Canoga Park and Malibu, was discovered in 1973 by photographer Errol Sawyer at 19 while waiting for a salary phone in a corner of rue de Paris. Things Whoosh! And she signed with legendary agent John Casablancas, then decamped to New York, where she worked for Vogue,, Harper's Bazaar and practically all other fashion magazines in newsstands. In 1974, Brinkley reserved his first job for Sports Illustrated, a collaboration that continues today. (Last year, Brinkley appeared, with Tyra Banks, Martha Stewart and other celebrities, on a blanket if celebrating the 60th anniversary of the swimsuit problem.)

Life was great for Brinkley. She remembers a lunch in the early 1970s with agent Nina Blanchard at the Old Brown Derby in Hollywood, when she reserved her first three television advertisements before the coffee was served, just by sitting there. Francesco Scavullo, Patrick Demablelier and Helmut Newton formed their lenses on her and the rest was in history. She bought her first apartment in a pre-war building in the Upper West Side soon after.

Brinkley deplores the current colonization of the fashion space by the digital media. “There was a kind of dance between photographer and model,” says Brinkley via Zoom from a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. “You had the impression that it was a joint creation, but it was lost. Digital photos can be retouched in any path, so what is happening on a set becomes a reflection afterwards. And there is also the fact of holding a magazine in your hands without being interrupted by pop-up advertisements.”

In January 1983, when he was on site in St. Barts for a photo shoot, she met Billy Joel in a diving bar on the motel. The two were in shock from their previous relationships; Joel had recently divorced his first wife, Elizabeth Weber. Joel played “The Girl From Ipanema” on the piano of the bar while Brinkley sang. Brinkley did not know anything about Joel, and even less that he was a world Megastar Pop.

Two months later, she knew only too well, because Joel courted Brinkley in fashion great rock-star. There were thousands of roses, presidential suites in incredibly picturesque hotels, a white horse as a Christmas gift. At his 30th anniversary, Joel chartered a Gulfstream III plane to sweep Brinkley from Long Island to his concert in South Bend, in Ind., Where a grotal cake was rolled on stage and 16,000 fans sang “Happy Birthday”. The couple got married on March 23, 1985 in the shade of the statue of freedom.

What happened next was like a Nora Ephron script rewritten by John Cassavetes. In the summer of 1986, the couple and their 4 -year -old daughter, Alexa Ray, stayed in a rented chalet in Montauk while Gate Lodge, the Domaine de Joel on the northern bank of Long Island, was being renovated. A rainy night, Brinkley woke up early in the morning to discover that her husband had disappeared. Shortly before dawn, he returned home, stumbling in a taxi, drunk and Ornery. It was the first in a series of scary scenes for Brinkley, whose feelings for Joel hesitated between veneration, unconditional love and abject fear.

“I loved it and wanted to make it work,” she says. “Drinking is a disease. And I knew there must be a way to help him, and not always at this point where this person you love is suddenly a stranger for you. ” Given the very public nature of their marriage, Brinkley was unable to cultivate support for fear that tabloids discover the dependence of Joel. “I was 100% dedicated to Billy, but I did not tell anyone about our problems, not even my friends,” she said. “It was very difficult that way, but we had a child together and I was trying to protect the family.”

Then Joel's problems started to shade psychosis. Brinkley in his book describes a ugly scene when Joel, deeply in his cups, ate a bunch of spaghetti directly in a large saucepan on the stove, then expelled everyone from the house for eating his pasta. “I hesitated to put this scene in the book,” she says. “But at the same time, it shows what I was preparing for.”

Christie Brinkley has maintained a vigorous career as a model and entrepreneur.

(HarperCollins)

Despite the rotation storms that she sailed in her private life, the public personality of Brinkley extended beyond the golden framework of fashion in the dominant American current. In the early 1980s, she had become synonymous with the massively popular sports swimsuit issue, appearing on the coverage of three years in a row. Then there was the 1983 clip for Joel's tube “Uptown Girl”, in which Brinkley, wearing a black and white dress without suspenders, is the inaccessible object of the desire for pop star, which plays against the type of car mechanic in the working class.

“Suddenly, I had a theme song,” she says. “It was definitely a gift that Billy gave me.”

Brinkley hacked him for 11 years with Joel, until a final craft crescendo and a series of well -published cases prompted him to file divorce documents in 1994. He turned out, it was only a simple prelude for a much more traumatic incident in his life. The same year, a helicopter accident on a mountain in Telluride, Colorado, almost killed Brinkley and his five traveling companions. She married Crash Survivor Richard Taubman, a real estate developer, following. The couple had a son and divorced in 1995.

Despite the vicissitudes of his life, Brinkley has maintained a vigorous career as a model and entrepreneur, enduring much longer than his contemporaries, adjusting his approach to the market, finding the niche that escapes everyone. “In the years following the accident to copy, I maintained a feeling of extraordinary gratitude to steroids,” she said. “We all have the chance to spend every day, especially now.”

In other words, no one is running for free.