KEY POINTS:
Tyra Banks is going where no other supermodel has gone before. With two hit TV shows to her credit - America's Next Top Model (now in production on its 11th cycle in the US) and her daytime talk show The Tyra Banks Show (on TV2, weekdays at 11am)
- the supermodel-turned-TV mogul is raking in the dough.
Though she earned respectable model bucks when she first started stomping down runways at age 15, the really good money arrived when she graced the covers of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue and GQ - the first black woman to do either and was contracted to represent Victoria's Secret lingerie. Even now that she's 34 and officially retired from modelling in 2005, she is reportedly as highly paid as she was at her peak, earning US$50,000 a day.
Banks earned at least US$18 million last year, far more than most supermodels and was ranked number 61 on the 2007 Forbes Celebrity 100 money list. (Oprah Winfrey made $260 million, putting her one spot ahead of pro golfer Tiger Woods). She also owns 25 per cent of America's Next Top Model (through her company Bankable Productions) which is syndicated to more than 100 countries around the globe.
Although Winfrey, with a net worth of some $1.4 billion, has been the unchallenged queen of daytime talk for two decades, Banks (who actually served as a "youth correspondent" on Oprah between 1999 and 2000) is making inroads. Advertisers have flocked to her daytime show, which draws a highly coveted youth audience. Some 36 per cent of the Tyra audience is under 35, double that of Oprah viewers (almost 60 per cent of the Oprah audience is 50 or older.)
A "fierce" work attitude and a determination to escape poverty - she grew up with her mother and younger brother in a one-bedroom apartment in gritty Inglewood, Los Angeles - has reportedly made Banks frugal, and fearful of losing everything. Although she won't reveal her net worth, in an interview last year with Vanity Fair magazine, she did say of her success: "Sometimes I feel guilty for how much money I have."
- HERALD ON SUNDAY