Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She was the first dancer to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the US: the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, in the 1994 documentary The Dancer Revealed: "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable." Founded in 1926 (the same year as Graham's professional dance company), the Martha Graham School is the oldest school of dance in the United States. First located in a small studio within Carnegie Hall the school currently has two different studios in New York City. BiographyGraham was born in Allegheny City – later to become part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – in 1894. Her father, George Graham, practiced as what in the Victorian era was known as an "alienist", a practitioner of an early form of psychiatry. The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. Dr. Graham was a third-generation American of Irish descent. Her mother, Jane Beers, was a second-generation American. While her parents provided a comfortable environment in her youth, it was not one that encouraged dancing. The Graham family moved to Santa Barbara, California when Martha was fourteen years old. In 1911, she attended the first dance performance of her life, watching Ruth St. Denis perform at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles. In the mid-1910s, Martha Graham began her studies at the newly created Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, at which she would stay until 1923. When she left the Denishawn establishment in 1923, Graham did so with an urge to make dance an art form that was more grounded in the rawness of the human experience as opposed to just a mere form of entertainment. This motivated Graham to strip away the more decorative movements of ballet and of her training at the Denishawn school and focus more on the foundational aspects of movement. In 1926, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established, in a small studio on the Upper East Side of New York City. On April 18 of the same year Graham debuted her first independent concert, consisting of 18 short solos and trios that she had choreographed. This performance took place at the 48th Street Theatre in Manhattan. She would later say of the concert: "Everything I did was influenced by Denishawn." Later that year she entered an extended collaboration with Japanese-American pictorialist photographer Soichi Sunami, and over the next five years they together created some of the most iconic images of early modern dance. Graham's technique pioneered a principle known as "contraction and release" in modern dance, which was derived from a stylized conception of breathing. Each movement could separately be used to express either positive or negative, freeing or constricting emotions depending on the placement of the head. The contraction and release were both the basis for Graham's weighted and grounded style, which is in direct opposition to classical ballet techniques that typically aim to create an illusion of weightlessness. To counter the more percussive and staccato movements, Graham eventually added the spiral shape to the vocabulary of her technique to incorporate a sense of fluidity. Following her first concert made up of solos, Graham created Heretic (1929), the first group piece of many that showcased a clear diversion from her days with Denishawn, and served as an insight to her work that would follow in the future. Made up of constricted and sharp movement with the dancers clothed unglamorously, the piece centered around the theme of rejection—one that would reoccur in other Graham works down the line. As time went on Graham moved away from the more stark design aesthetic she initially embraced and began incorporating more elaborate sets and scenery to her work. To do this, she collaborated often with Isamu Noguchi—a Japanese American designer—whose eye for set design was a complementary match to Graham's choreography. Within the many themes which Graham incorporated into her work, there were two that she seemed to adhere to the most—Americana and Greek mythology. One of Graham's most known pieces that incorporates the American life theme is Appalachian Spring (1944). She collaborated with the composer Aaron Copland—who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the piece—and Noguchi, who created the nonliteral set. As she did often, Graham placed herself in her own piece as the bride of a newly married couple whose optimism for starting a new life together is countered by a grounded pioneer woman and a sermon-giving revivalist. Two of Graham's pieces--Cave of Heart (1946) and Night Journey (1947)—display her intrigue not only with Greek mythology but also with the psyche of a woman, as both pieces retell Greek myths from a woman's point of view. In 1936, Graham created Chronicle, which brought serious issues to the stage in a dramatic manner. Influenced by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Depression that followed, and the Spanish Civil War, the dance focused on depression and isolation, reflected in the dark nature of both the set and costumes. That same year, in conjunction with the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, the German government wanted to include dance in the Art Competitions that took place during the Olympics, an event that previously included architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature. Although Josef Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, was not appreciative of the modern dance art form and changed Germany's dance from more avant-garde to traditional, he and Adolf Hitler still agreed to invite Graham to represent the United States. ButMartha Graham refused the invitation by stating: I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time. So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible. In addition, some of my concert group would not be welcomed in Germany. Josef Goebbels himself wrote her a letter assuring her that her Jewish dancers would "receive complete immunity", however, it was not enough for Graham to accept such invitation. Stimulated by the occurrences of the 1936 Olympic Games, and the propaganda that she heard through the radio from the Axis Powers, Martha Graham creates American Document in 1938. The dance expresses American ideals and democracy as Graham realized that it could empower men and inspire them to fight fascist and Nazi ideologies. American Document ended up as a patriotic statement focusing on rights and injustices of the time, representing the American people including its Native-American heritage and slavery. For Graham, a dance needed to "reveal certain national characteristics because without these characteristics the dance would have no validity, no roots, no direct relation to life". The beginning of American Document marks modern concepts of performance art joining dance, theater and literature and clearly defining the roles of the spectator and the actors/dancers. The narrator/actor starts with "establishing an awareness of the present place and time, which serves not only as a bridge between past and present, but also between individual and collective, particular and general". Together with her unique technique, this sociological and philosophical innovation sets dance as a clear expression of current ideas and places Graham as a pillar of the modern dance revolution. 1938 became a big year for Graham; the Roosevelts invited Graham to dance at the White House, making her the first dancer to perform there. Also, in 1938, Erick Hawkins became the first man to dance with her company. He officially joined her troupe the following year, dancing male lead in a number of Graham's works. They were married in July 1948 after the New York premiere of Night Journey. He left her troupe in 1951 and they divorced in 1954. On April 1, 1958, the Martha Graham Dance Company premiered the ballet, Clytemnestra, based on the ancient Greek legend Clytemnestra and it became a huge success and great accomplishment for Graham. With a score by Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh, this ballet was a large scale work and the only full-length work in Graham's career. Graham choreographed and danced the title role, spending almost the entire duration of the performance on the stage. The ballet was based on the Greek mythology of the same title and tells the story of Queen Clytemnestra who is married to King Agamemnon. Agamemnon sacrifices their daughter, Iphigenia, on a pyre, as an offering to the gods to assure fair winds to Troy, where the Trojan War rages. Upon Agamemnon's return after 10 years, Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon to avenge the murder of Iphigenia. Clytemnestra is then murdered by her son, Orestes, and the audience experiences Clytemnestra in the afterworld. This ballet was deemed a masterpiece of 20th-century American modernism and was so successful it had a limited engagement showing on Broadway. Graham collaborated with many composers for her dances, including Aaron Copland on Appalachian Spring, Louis Horst, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, Carlos Surinach, Norman Dello Joio, and Gian Carlo Menotti. When Louis Horst, her oldest friend and musical collaborator died in 1964. She said of him: “His sympathy and understanding, but primarily his faith, gave me a landscape to move in. Without it, I should certainly have been lost.” Graham resisted requests for her dances to be recorded because she believed that live performances should only exist on stage as they are experienced. There were a few notable exceptions. For example, in addition to her collaboration with Sunami in the 1920s, she also worked on a limited basis with still photographers Imogen Cunningham in the 1930s, and Barbara Morgan in the 1940s. Graham considered Philippe Halsman's photographs of Dark Meadow the most complete photographic record of any of her dances. Halsman also photographed in the 1940s Letter to the World, Cave of the Heart, Night Journey and Every Soul is a Circus. In later years her thinking on the matter evolved and others convinced her to let them recreate some of what was lost. In 1952 Graham allowed taping of her meeting and cultural exchange with famed deafblind author, activist and lecturer Helen Keller, who, after a visit to one of Graham's company rehearsals became a close friend and supporter. Graham was inspired by Keller's joy from and interpretation of dance, utilizing her body to feel the vibration of drums and of feet and movement moving the air around her. In 1957, Graham was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In her 1991 autobiography, Blood Memory, Graham lists her final performance as her 1970 appearance in Cortege of Eagles when she was 76 years old. Graham's choreographies span 181 compositions. It wasn't until years after I had relinquished a ballet that I could bear to watch someone else dance it. I believe in never looking back, never indulging in nostalgia, or reminiscing. Yet how can you avoid it when you look on stage and see a dancer made up to look as you did thirty years ago, dancing a ballet you created with someone you were then deeply in love with, your husband? I think that is a circle of hell Dante omitted. In the years that followed her departure from the stage, Graham sank into a deep depression fueled by views from the wings of young dancers performing many of the dances she had choreographed for herself and her former husband. Graham's health declined precipitously as she abused alcohol to numb her pain. Graham not only survived her hospital stay, but she rallied. In 1972, she quit drinking, returned to her studio, reorganized her company, and went on to choreograph ten new ballets and many revivals. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others." She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 by President Gerald Ford (the First Lady Betty Ford had danced with Graham in her youth). Ford declared her "a national treasure". In 1984 Graham was awarded the highest French order of merit, the Legion of Honour by then Minister of culture Jack Lang. Graham was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1990 the Council of Fashion Designers of America awarded Graham with the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. Her last completed ballet was 1990's Maple Leaf Rag. Graham choreographed until her death in New York City from pneumonia in 1991, aged 96. Just before she became sick with pneumonia, she finished the final draft of her autobiography, Blood Memory, which was published posthumously in the fall of 1991. She was cremated, and her ashes were spread over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. Graham has been sometimes termed the "Picasso of Dance" in that her importance and influence to modern dance can be considered equivalent to what Pablo Picasso was to modern visual arts. Her impact has been also compared to the influence of Stravinsky on music and Frank Lloyd Wright on architecture.
To celebrate what would have been her 117th birthday on May 11, 2011, Google's logo for one day was turned into one dedicated to Graham's life and legacy. Graham has been said to be the one that brought dance into the 20th century. The Martha Graham Dance Company is the oldest dance company in America. It has helped develop many famous dancers and choreographers of the 20th and 21st centuries since its foundation in 1926. Due to the work of her assistants, much of Graham's work and technique have been preserved.
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Michelle Marie Pfeiffer (born April 29, 1958) is an American actress. Known for pursuing eclectic roles from a wide variety of film genres, she has frequently received acclaim for her versatile performances, and is recognized as one of the most prolific actresses of the 1980s and 1990s. Pfeiffer has received numerous accolades throughout her career, including a Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards and one Primetime Emmy Award. Pfeiffer began her career in 1978 with minor television appearances before attaining her first leading role in Grease 2 (1982). Disillusioned with being typecast in nondescript roles as attractive women, she actively sought more serious material until earning her breakout role as gangster moll Elvira Hancock in Scarface (1983). She achieved further success with roles in The Witches of Eastwick (1987) and Married to the Mob (1988), for which she was nominated for her first of six consecutive Golden Globe Awards. Her performances in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) earned her two consecutive Academy Award nominations, for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress respectively, winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for the latter. Continuing to establish herself as a leading lady with high-profile roles in The Russia House (1990) and Frankie and Johnny (1991), Pfeiffer became one of the decade's highest-paid actresses. In 1992, Pfeiffer starred in Batman Returns as Selina Kyle / Catwoman, one of the most admired portrayals of the comic book character. She continued to draw praise for performances in The Age of Innocence (1993), Wolf (1994), What Lies Beneath (2000) and White Oleander (2002), while producing and starring in several successful films under her production company Via Rosa Productions, including Dangerous Minds (1995) and One Fine Day (1996). In 2007, Pfeiffer returned from a five-year hiatus with acclaimed performances in the blockbusters Hairspray and Stardust. Following another hiatus, in 2017 she earned rave reviews for her performance in Where Is Kyra? before returning to prominence with supporting roles in on the Orient Express, and in 2020 she earned her eighth Golden Globe Award nomination for French Exit. Awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Pfeiffer has remained one of Hollywood's most bankable actresses for four decades. Labeled a sex symbol, she has been cited among the world's most beautiful women by several publications, with her physical appearance being scrutinized by the media since the beginning of her career. Notoriously private about her personal life, she has been married twice: to actor Peter Horton from 1981 to 1988, and television producer David E. Kelley since 1993. BiographyMichelle Marie Pfeiffer was born on April 29, 1958, in Santa Ana, California, the second of four children of Richard Pfeiffer (1933–1998), an air-conditioning contractor, and Donna Jean (1932–2018), a housewife. She has an older brother and two younger sisters, one of them also actress. Her paternal grandfather was of German ancestry and her paternal grandmother was of English, Welsh, French, Irish, and Dutch descent, while her maternal grandfather was of Swiss-German descent and her maternal grandmother of Swedish ancestry. The family moved to Midway City, another Orange County community around seven miles (11km) away, where Pfeiffer spent her early years. Pfeiffer attended Fountain Valley High School, graduating in 1976, and attended Golden West College where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. She won the Miss Orange County beauty pageant in 1978, and participated in the Miss California contest the same year, finishing in sixth place. Following her participation in these pageants, she acquired an acting agent and began to audition for television and films. Michelle Pfeiffer made her acting debut in 1978, in a one-episode appearance of Fantasy Island. Her TV movie debut was in "The Solitary Man" (1979) for CBS. Pfeiffer transitioned to film with the comedy The Hollywood Knights (1980), with Tony Danza, appearing as high school sweethearts. She appeared in a television commercial for Lux soap, and took acting lessons at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, before appearing in three 1981 television movies – Callie and Son, The Children Nobody Wanted and Splendor in the Grass. Pfeiffer obtained her first major film role as the female lead in Grease 2 (1982), the sequel to the smash-hit musical film Grease (1978). With only a few television roles and small film appearances, the 23-year-old Pfeiffer was an unknown actress when she attended the casting call audition for the role, but according to director Patricia Birch, she won the part because she "has a quirky quality you don't expect". The film was a critical and commercial failure, but The New York Times praised her performance. Director Brian De Palma, having seen Grease 2, refused to audition Pfeiffer for Scarface (1983), but relented at the insistence of Martin Bregman, the film's producer. She was cast as cocaine-addicted trophy wife Elvira Hancock. The film was considered excessively violent by most critics, but became a commercial hit and gained a large cult following in subsequent years. She scored a major box-office hit as Sukie Ridgemont in the 1987 adaptation of John Updike's novel The Witches of Eastwick, with Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Susan Sarandon. The film grossed over $63.7 million domestically, equivalent to $145 million in 2020 dollars, becoming one of her earliest critical and commercial successes. For her role in the mafia comedy Married to the Mob (1988) Pfeiffer received her first Golden Globe Award nomination as Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, beginning a six-year streak of consecutive Best Actress nominations at the Golden Globes. At Demme's personal recommendation, Pfeiffer joined the cast of Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons (1988), with Glenn Close and John Malkovich, playing the virtuous victim of seduction, Madame Marie de Tourvel. Her performance won her widespread acclaim. She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. During the 1989–1990 awards season, Pfeiffer dominated the Best-actress category at every major awards ceremony, winning awards at the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and the Chicago Film Critics Association. By 1990, Pfeiffer began earning $1 million per film. In 1990, Pfeiffer formed her own boutique film production company, Via Rosa Productions, which ran for ten years. The company allowed her to produce and/or star in films tailored for strong women. She asked her best friend Kate Guinzburg to be her producing partner at the company. Via Rosa Productions was under a picture deal with Touchstone Pictures, a film label of The Walt Disney Studios. The first film the duo produced was the independent drama Love Field, which was released in late 1992. Reviewers embraced the film and she earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Drama and won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. Pfeiffer took on the role of Selina Kyle / Catwoman in Tim Burton's superhero film Batman Returns (1992), Batman Returns was a big box office success, grossing over US$267 million worldwide. Pfeiffer received universal critical acclaim for the role, and her performance is consistently referred to as the greatest portrayal of Catwoman of all time by critics and fans alike, and is also one of the best regarded performances of her career. In Martin Scorsese's period drama The Age of Innocence (1993), a film adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of the same name: The Age of Innocence, Pfeiffer starred with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, portraying a Countess in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. For her role, she received the Elvira Notari Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture. Also in 1993, she was awarded the Women in Film Los Angeles' Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. Following the formation of her producing company in 1990, Pfeiffer saw a growing professional expansion as a producer. While she continued to act steadily throughout the decade, she and her producing partner Guinzburg experienced a winning streak of producing back to back films next under their Via Rosa Productions header. In 2003, Pfeiffer took a four-year hiatus from acting, during which she remained largely out of the public eye to devote time to her husband and children. Pfeiffer returned to cinemas in 2007 with villainous roles in two summer blockbusters, Hairspray and Stardust. In the former, a film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name, she starred as Velma Von Tussle, the racist manager of a television station. Released to widely positive reviews, Hairspray grossed $202.5 million worldwide. Pfeiffer's performance was also critically acclaimed. In the film Chéri (2009), an adaptation of Colette's novel of same name, Pfeiffer reunited her with the director (Stephen Frears) and screenwriter (Christopher Hampton) of Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Pfeiffer played the role of aging retired courtesan Léa de Lonval, with Rupert Friend in the title role. Chéri premiered at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, where it received a nomination for the Golden Bear award. In 2012, Pfieffer reunited with Tim Burton, her Batman Returns director, in Dark Shadows (2012), based on the gothic television soap opera of the same name. While Dark Shadows grossed a modest US$79.7 million in North America, it ultimately made US$245.5 million globally. Pfeiffer has stated that her lack of acting throughout the 2000s was due to her children, and now with both her children away at college, she intends to "work a lot". She has commented that she feels that her best performance is "still in her", and that she thinks that's what keeps her going. The slew of films that would follow in 2017 would prompt the media to dub her career resurgence a "Pfeiffer-sance". Pfeiffer landed the role of Ruth Madoff for the HBO Films drama The Wizard of Lies, based on the book of the same name. The film, directed by Barry Levinson, reunites her with actor Robert De Niro, who played her husband, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff. The Wizard of Lies premiered on HBO on May 20, 2017, garnering favorable reviews from critics and an audience of 1.5 million viewers, HBO's largest premiere viewership for a film in four years. Pfeiffer earned her first Emmy nomination for her performance in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. Pfeiffer had a supporting role in Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express (2017), the fourth adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1934 novel of the same name. The mystery–drama ensemble film follows world-renowned detective Hercule Poirot, who seeks to solve a murder on the famous European train in the 1930s. The film grossed US$351.7 million worldwide and received decent reviews from critics, with praise for the performances, but criticism for not adding anything new to previous adaptations. Although most critics agreed that the ensemble cast was underused, Pfeiffer's performance earned positive reviews. On January 21, 2021, it was announced that Pfeiffer had been cast as Betty Ford in the upcoming Showtime television series, The First Lady. The series will premiere in 2022. As one of the most famous sex symbols of the 1980s and 1990s, her beauty and fashion choices attracted significant media attention throughout both decades. In 1990, Pfeiffer appeared on the inaugural cover of People magazine's annual 50 Most Beautiful People in the World issue. She was again pictured on the cover in 1999 – the first celebrity to appear on the cover of the issue twice, and the only celebrity to grace the cover twice during the 1990s – having been featured in the "Most Beautiful" issue a record-breaking six times during the decade (1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996 and 1999). In 2020, Vogue Paris listed Pfeiffer among the 21 most beautiful American actresses of all time/ Ranking her among history's most beautiful actresses While taking acting classes in Los Angeles, Pfeiffer was taken in by a seemingly friendly couple who ran a metaphysics and vegetarian cult. They helped her to cease drinking, smoking, and doing drugs, and over time the couple took control of her entire life. Much of her money went to the group. "I was brainwashed ... I gave them an enormous amount of money." At an acting class taught by Milton Katselas in Los Angeles, she met fellow budding actor Peter Horton, and they began dating. Pfeiffer and Horton married in Santa Monica in 1981, and it was on their honeymoon that she discovered she had won the lead role in Grease 2. In 1988, Pfeiffer had an affair with John Malkovich, her co-star in Dangerous Liaisons, who at the time was married to Glenne Headly. Pfeiffer and Horton decided to separate in 1988, and were divorced two years later; Horton later blamed the split on their devotion to their work rather than on their marriage. After her marriage to Horton, Pfeiffer had a three-year relationship with actor/producer Fisher Stevens. They met when Pfeiffer was starring in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Twelfth Night, in which Stevens played the role of Sir Andrew Aguecheek. In 1993, Pfeiffer married television writer and producer David E. Kelley. She played the title character in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, for which Kelley wrote the screenplay. Pfeiffer had entered into private adoption proceedings before she met Kelley. In March 1993, she adopted a newborn daughter, Claudia Rose, who was christened on Pfeiffer and Kelley's wedding day. In 1994, Pfeiffer gave birth to a son, John Henry Kelley II, named for his grandfather – Pfeiffer's father-in-law John Henry "Jack" Kelley. Having been a smoker for ten years, and having a niece who suffered from leukemia for ten years, Pfeiffer decided to support the American Cancer Society. Her charity work includes as well her support for the Humane Society. In 2016, she also attended the Healthy Child Healthy World's L.A. Gala for people who lead the organizations for children's environmental health and protect those most vulnerable. In December that same year, Pfeiffer, who is a vegan, joined the board of directors for Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group based in Washington. D.C.
ProfileMelania Trump (born Melanija Knavs, Germanized as Melania Knauss, April 26, 1970) is a Slovene-American former model and businesswoman. She was the first lady of the United States from 2017 to 2021, during the presidency of her husband, Donald Trump. BiographyMelanija Knavs was born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, on April 26, 1970. Her father, Viktor Knavs (born March 24, 1944) managed car and motorcycle dealerships for a state-owned vehicle manufacturer. Her mother Amalija (née Ulčnik) (born July 9, 1945) worked as a patternmaker at the children's clothing manufacturer Jutranjka in Sevnica. She has an older sister, Ines, who is an artist and an older half-brother from her father's previous relationship. Knavs grew up in a modest apartment in a housing block in Sevnica. She attended the Secondary School of Design and Photography in the city and studied architecture and design at the University of Ljubljana for one year before she dropped out. Knavs began modeling at five years old. As a child, she and other children of workers at the factory participated in fashion shows that featured children's clothing. She started doing commercial work at sixteen when she posed for the Slovenian fashion photographer Stane Jerko. When she began working as a model, she adapted the Slovene version of her last name "Knavs" to the German version "Knauss". At eighteen, Knauss signed with a modeling agency in Milan, Italy. In 1992, she was named runner-up in the Jana Magazine "Look of the Year" contest, held in Ljubljana, which promised its top three contestants an international modeling contract. After attending the University of Ljubljana for one year, Knauss modeled for fashion houses in Paris and Milan, where in 1995 she met Metropolitan Models co-owner Paolo Zampolli, a friend of her future husband Donald Trump, who was on a scouting trip in Europe. Zampolli urged her to travel to the U.S., where he said he would like to represent her. In 1996, Knauss moved to Manhattan. Knauss was featured in a sexually explicit photo shoot for the January 1996 issue of Max, a now-defunct French men's magazine, with another female model. In September 1998, Knauss met then-real estate mogul Donald Trump at a party, and the couple began dating while the latter was in the process of divorcing his second wife, Marla Maples. The divorce was finalized in 1999. Knauss continued her modeling career with her American magazine cover shoots, including In Style Weddings, New York magazine, Avenue, Philadelphia Style, and Vanity Fair Spain. She also posed nude for the January 2000 UK edition of GQ magazine, appearing on the cover naked except for diamond jewelry, reclining on fur, aboard Trump's custom-fitted Boeing 727. They appeared together while Trump campaigned for the 2000 Reform Party presidential nomination. When asked by The New York Times what her role would be were he to become president, she replied: "I would be very traditional, like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy". The two became engaged in 2004. On January 22, 2005, they married in an Anglican service at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida, followed by a reception in the ballroom at her husband's Mar-a-Lago estate. The marriage was her first and his third. The event was attended by celebrities such as Heidi Klum, Simon Cowell, Senator Hillary Clinton, and former President Bill Clinton. The bride wore a US$200,000 dress made by John Galliano of the house of Christian Dior, and the ceremony and reception were widely covered by the media, including a Vogue cover which featured her in her wedding gown. On March 20, 2006, Melania Trump gave birth to their son, Barron William Trump. She chose his middle name, while her husband chose his first name. In 2010, Melania launched her own line of jewelry, Melania Timepieces and Jewelry, for sale on QVC. She also marketed a Melania Marks Skin Care Collection at high-end department stores. According to a financial filing in 2016, her businesses brought in between US$15,000 and US$50,000 in royalties that year. That same year, in an interview with CNN, Melania said her focus as first lady would be to help women and children. She assumed the role of first lady of the United States on January 20, 2017, the second First Lady (After Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams) to have been born outside the country, the first one to be a naturalized citizen, and the first whose native language is not English. She was also the second Catholic first lady of the United States since Jacqueline Kennedy. When she visited the Vatican, with her husband in 2017, Pope Francis blessed her rosary beads, and she placed flowers at the feet of a statue of Mary at the Vatican's children's hospital. Of Trump's inauguration, Vogue compared Melania's wardrobe to that of Jacqueline Kennedy and Nancy Reagan, writing that Trump closely works with her stylist, designer Hervé Pierre, preferring "strongly tailored pieces" in bold colors and wearing almost exclusively high-end designers. After the inauguration she continued to live in Manhattan at the Trump Tower with their son, Barron, until the end of his 2016–2017 school year. On March 8, 2017, she hosted her first White House event, a luncheon for International Women's Day. She spoke to an audience of women about her life as a female immigrant, and about working towards gender equality both domestically and abroad, noting the role of education as a tool against gender inequality. Melania Trump and Barron moved into the White House in Washington, D.C. on June 11, 2017. Her Secret Service code name is "Muse" (beginning with the same letter as Trump's code name, "Mogul", per Secret Service tradition). In January 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that during a three-month period when she lived in New York in 2017, she took Air Force jet flights between New York City, Florida, and Washington at a cost of more than US$675,000 to taxpayers. In comparison, former first lady Michelle Obama's solo travel cost an average of about US$350,000 per year. On March 13, 2018, Melania scheduled a March 20, 2018 meeting with policy executives from technology companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Snap, and Twitter, to address online harassment and Internet safety, with a particular focus on how those issues affect children. Melania took an active role in planning the Trump administration's first state dinner on April 23, 2018, to honor French president Emmanuel Macron. In October 2018, Melania took a four-nation, solo tour of Africa, without her husband, focusing on conservation and children and families, visiting Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, and Egypt. In December 2018, CNN reported that Melania's strongest base of support came from older, white, male Republicans and conservatives, while she had the least approval from women who were young or college-educated.
In March 2019, YouGov reported that Melania, with 51% approval, was polling more popularly among the American public than other members of her family: her husband Donald, step children Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, and her stepson-in-law Jared Kushner. In Gallup's annual poll of the most admired women, Trump ranked in the top ten each of her years as first lady, but never topped the list. She joins Bess Truman and Lady Bird Johnson as the only American first ladies who have never been named the most admired woman in this survey since Gallup began conducting the annual survey in the 1940s. Melania finished her tenure in 2021 as the least popular first lady ever polled, according to polling by CNN, SRSS, and Gallup. She was the only first lady who finished with a net disapproval rating. |
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