Cynthia Ann "Cindy" Crawford (born February 20, 1966) is an American model and actress.
Crawford was born in DeKalb, Illinois, the daughter of Jennifer Sue (née Walker) and John Crawford. Crawford's trademark is a visible mole (or "beauty mark") on her upper lip. She is so closely associated with this physical feature that she appeared in an advertising campaign for chocolates featuring commercials wherein she "licked off" her own mole. During the beginning of her career, the mole was removed from many of her earlier modeling pictures, including her first Vogue cover.
She was discovered by chance by a newspaper photographer, who noticed then-16-year-old Cindy at work during her summer job of detasseling corn and took a picture of her. The photo and the positive feedback she received were enough to convince her to take up modeling. She entered the John Casablancas Look of the Year contest and was the runner up.
Crawford graduated from DeKalb High School in 1984, as valedictorian [2] with a 4.0 GPA.[citation needed] She won an academic scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University, which she attended for only one quarter. She dropped out in order to pursue a full-time modeling career. After working for photographer Victor Skrebneski in Chicago, Cindy moved to Manhattan in 1986.
Her brother died at a young age from leukemia, and Crawford has made childhood leukemia a focal point of her charity work, donating proceeds of her calendars to medical research.[1] She is also an honorary board member of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.[2]