Uptown Girl

Christie Brinkley's memoir opens on April 1, 1994, when a helicopter carrying Brinkley and several companions plummeted from the sky during a heli-skiing trip in the San Juan Mountains near Telluride, Colorado. As the aircraft smashed into rocks and bounced across a narrow mountain saddle, Brinkley focused her thoughts on her daughter, Alexa Ray, repeating her name like a mantra. Everyone survived, and Brinkley credits the miracle in part to a charm of sacred dirt from the Santuario de Chimayo, a New Mexico shrine where Pueblo Indians believe the golden soil offers protection. From this opening, the memoir spirals backward to trace everything that brought her to that mountain.

Born on February 2, 1954, in Monroe, Michigan, Brinkley moved to Los Angeles as an infant with her mother, Marjorie, and biological father, Herb Hudson, a milkman who routinely whipped her with his belt and threatened to send her to an orphanage. One vivid childhood memory stands apart: a dreamlike experience of floating over a forbidden cornfield near her Canoga Park home and spotting what she believed was the ranch of Western TV stars Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. The next day, she led neighborhood children through the field to the ranch, where Dale invited them inside for cookies.

Life transformed when, at age eight, Brinkley inadvertently introduced her mother to Don Brinkley, a television writer, by delivering an envelope to the wrong office. Don eventually became the children's adoptive father after Herb voluntarily relinquished his parental rights. He brought warmth and spontaneity, instilling a philosophy Brinkley carries throughout her life: "Christie, baby, you write your own script." Under his encouragement, she developed a passion for art and French culture, enrolling at Le Lycée Français, a private French-speaking high school in Los Angeles, and dreaming of studying art in Paris.

At fifteen, Brinkley fell in love with a boy named Johnny, an artist and part-time grip on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but discovered he had been cheating on her. Devastated, she dropped out of college, and in February 1973, at nineteen, boarded a flight for Paris.

In Paris, Brinkley met Jean-François Allaux, a French political cartoonist, at the brasserie La Coupole in Montparnasse. The connection was instant, and she moved into his tiny seventh-floor studio. When Jean-François was drafted into the French military, he arranged for Brinkley to take over his illustration work at Air France, and she traveled alone through Greece, encountering both wonder and danger as a solo female traveler.

On April 1, 1974, exactly 20 years before the helicopter crash, American photographer Errol Sawyer spotted Brinkley outside a Paris post office and told her she should model. Test photos led to a contract with Elite Model Management, whose owner, John Casablancas, signed her immediately. Work cascaded in: covers for Parents, Vogue France, Elle, and other magazines. In November 1975, Brinkley and Jean-François married barefoot on a beach in Hawaii.

They relocated to New York, where Brinkley's career accelerated under the guidance of legendary agent Eileen Ford. She appeared on dozens of magazine covers and traveled the world for shoots, often with her best friend and hairstylist, Maury "Hops" Hopson. In 1979, she landed her first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover, catapulting her fame. But Jean-François, proud and uncomfortable that Brinkley paid for their lifestyle, withdrew emotionally. She asked for a divorce, which was finalized quickly.

After a brief relationship with French photographer Pierre Houlès ended over his infidelity, Brinkley met Olivier Chandon de Brailles, heir to the Moët et Chandon champagne fortune, at a 1981 Studio 54 party. Olivier was passionate and adventurous, pursuing race car driving despite a lifelong premonition that he would die young. Brinkley made the Sports Illustrated cover three consecutive years, an unprecedented feat, and filmed National Lampoon's Vacation, playing "the Girl in the Red Ferrari." On March 2, 1983, while Brinkley was in Los Angeles, her mother delivered devastating news: Olivier had died at a speedway in Palm Beach, Florida, after his car crashed into a retaining wall and sank into a canal. Brinkley was consumed by grief.

Singer-songwriter Billy Joel brought her back to life. The two had first met weeks earlier at a dive bar in St. Barts. After Olivier's death, Billy called daily, cheering her with jokes, songs, and handwritten poems, some of which became hits: "The Longest Time," "Leave a Tender Moment Alone," and "Christie Lee." In September 1983, they filmed the "Uptown Girl" music video, cementing their public identity as a couple. Billy proposed on August 7, 1984, with an unpublished verse and a diamond ring.

They married on March 23, 1985, on a yacht beneath the Statue of Liberty, and their daughter, Alexa Ray, was born that December. The marriage fractured under the weight of Billy's drinking, which worsened after he discovered his manager and ex-brother-in-law, Frank Weber, had allegedly stolen over $30 million from him. Billy disappeared from dinners, holidays, and family milestones. Brinkley channeled her distress into cutting horse competitions, a Western equestrian discipline, and won a national championship in Fort Worth, Texas. After repeated incidents of intoxication, suspected affairs, and a violent episode in Hawaii, Brinkley asked for a divorce.

The helicopter crash in Telluride followed almost immediately. Ricky Taubman, the charismatic man who organized the heli-skiing trip, called Brinkley repeatedly from his hospital bed, and their shared survival forged an intense bond she interpreted as fate. They married in December 1994, but Ricky quickly proved financially exploitative, borrowing nearly two million dollars. Their son, Jack Paris, was born in June 1995. When Ricky threatened to walk away from her and the baby just as Herb Hudson had, invoking her deepest childhood wound, Brinkley filed for divorce. Ricky relinquished his paternity rights to Jack in court, echoing the abandonment scene from her own childhood.

Brinkley rebuilt her life as a single mother. In 1996, she married architect Peter Cook, who had first introduced himself to her at a Studio 54 party years earlier. They had a third child, Sailor Lee, in 1998. Brinkley purchased Tower Hill, a historic Bridgehampton estate, threw herself into activism and environmental causes, and continued modeling well past the age when the industry expected her to retire. In 2006, a man at a commencement ceremony informed her that Peter had been having an affair with his teenage daughter, and a six-year public divorce followed.

To escape the paparazzi, Brinkley took her children on a series of adventures, eventually finding refuge at Tall Timbers, a remote Colorado wilderness retreat. A trail ride through a burned-out forest canyon that had regenerated into lush growth became a lesson in resilience. In 2011, Brinkley won the role of Roxie Hart in the Broadway musical Chicago, performing to sold-out houses and reprising the role in London's West End. Her father, Don, died on July 14, 2012, with Brinkley and her mother holding his hands; a rainbow appeared on the kitchen wall moments after his passing. Three months later, her mother followed.

Brinkley closes the memoir affirming that her parents' gifts of self-determination, independence, and the belief that she writes her own script continue to guide her. Her story, she insists, is far from over.