Lauren Hutton

German autograph card by Kino, 1988.

Over her career, Lauren Hutton (1943) has worked both as a model and an actress. Though she was initially dismissed by agents for a signature gap in her teeth, Hutton signed a modeling contract with Revlon in 1973, which at the time was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry. She made her film debut in the sports drama Paper Lion (1968) and played leading roles in The Gambler (1974) and American Gigolo (1980). On television, she appeared in such series as Paper Dolls (1984) and Nip/Tuck (2007).

Mary Laurence ‘Lauren’ Hutton was born in 1943 in Charleston, South Carolina, to Lawrence and Minnie Hutton. After the war, Hutton’s mother divorced her father, and she relocated to Miami, and later, Tampa, Florida, where Hutton spent the remainder of her early life, not knowing her father, who died in 1955, at 36, while working as a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. After her mother remarried, Hutton took the surname "Hall", although her stepfather never formally adopted her. She graduated from Chamberlain High School in Tampa in 1961, and was among the first students to attend the University of South Florida in 1961. Hutton later relocated with former Tampa disc jockey Pat Chamburs, 19 years her senior, to New York City, where she worked at the Playboy Club. The pair later moved to New Orleans, where she attended Newcomb College, then a coordinate college within Tulane University, and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1964. Hutton returned to New York in the late 1960s, changed her name to ‘Lauren Hutton’, and embarked on a career as a model. She was advised by agents to hide the gap in her teeth and tried using morticians’ wax to cover the gap. Hutton eventually retained this ‘imperfection’. She continued to book modeling jobs, and appeared in a Chanel advertisement in 1968, photographed by Richard Avedon. In 1973, Hutton signed a contract with Revlon cosmetics, a professional relationship that lasted for ten years. At the time, it was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry. Hutton’s initial contract with Revlon involved representation of the Ultima II brand. Her contract with Revlon garnered Hutton further modeling work, and she became a ‘cover girl,’ appearing on the front cover of Vogue magazine a record 26 times. In 1988, she appeared in a campaign for Barneys New York, and in 1993, performed as a runway model for designer Calvin Klein. Hutton was presented on the November 1999 Millennium cover of American Vogue as one of the ‘Modern Muses’. Following her recovery from a motorcycle accident in 2000, she became the spokeswoman for her own signature brand of cosmetics, ‘Lauren Hutton’s Good Stuff’, a line of cosmetic products for mature women. Hutton has continued to model into her seventies, appearing in numerous advertising campaigns for H&M, Lord and Taylor, and Alexander Wang, and performed on the runway for Tom Ford’s spring 2012 collection, as well as for Bottega Veneta at the 2016 New York Fashion Week.

Before becoming an established model, Lauren Hutton made her film debut in the Paper Lion (Alex March, 1968), opposite Alan Alda. It was followed by leading roles in the drama Pieces of Dreams (Daniel Haller, 1970) with Robert Forster, and the comedy-drama Little Fauss and Big Halsy (Sidney J. Furie, 1970), with Robert Redford. In Italy, she played with Marcello Mastroianni in the comedy Permette? Rocco Papaleo/My Name Is Rocco Papaleo (1971), directed by Ettore Scola. Back in the US, she appeared in The Gambler (Karel Reisz, 1974), opposite James Caan. Arthur D. Murphy of Variety called The Gambler "way ahead as the better of two current films about the gambling compulsion. Director Karel Reisz has one of his most compelling and effective films. Title star James Caan is excellent and the featured players are superb." She was among the ensemble casts of Alan Rudolph’s Welcome to L.A. (1976) and Robert Altman’s A Wedding (1978) and played the leading role in John Carpenter’s TV movie Someone’s Watching Me! (1978). Her best known role is probably the female lead in American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980). Richard Gere played a high-priced male escort in Los Angeles who becomes romantically involved with a prominent politician’s wife (Hutton) while simultaneously becoming the prime suspect in a murder case. She appeared opposite Tom Selleck in Lassiter (Roger Young, 1984), which was made to cash in on Selleck’s popularity in the television show Magnum, P.I., but failed to do so. She had more success with the minor hit Once Bitten (Howard Storm, 1985), in which she played a vampire who seduces Jim Carrey. She also made an uncredited cameo appearance as a celebrity party guest in Perfect (James bridges, 1985) with John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. On TV, Hutton joined the cast of the short-lived primetime soap drama Paper Dolls (1984), which co-starred Lloyd Bridges and Morgan Fairchild, co-starred in the lavish TV miniseries Sins (Douglas Hickox, 1986), with Joan Collins, and Hutton starred opposite Stacy Keach in the TV Movie The Return of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Ray Danton, 1986). In the spring of 1987, Hutton had a starring role opposite William Devane and Klaus Kinski in the Sci-Fi themed TV movie Timestalkers (Michael Schultz, 1987), and later that year she guest-starred in the primetime soap drama Falcon Crest (1987) for several episodes. In the cinema, she was seen in Guilty as Charged (Sam Irvin, 1991). In 1995, Hutton was cast in the soap opera Central Park West, playing the wealthy socialite Linda Fairchild until the show was canceled the following year. The following year, Hutton’s late-night talk show Lauren Hutton and…, debuted and ran until 1997. Hutton’s partner at the time, Luca Babini, was the director, set designer and post-production supervisor of the talk show, and the couple founded Lula Productions. In 2009, Hutton appeared in The Joneses (Derrick Borte, 2009), her first feature film in a decade. She played the head of a marketing company alongside David Duchovny and Demi Moore. Lauren Hutton was involved in a 27-year-long relationship with her manager Bob Williamson, who died in 1997. Upon his death, Hutton discovered that several years’ wages were gone. In his will, he left $2.5 million to his new wife, and nothing to Lauren Hutton – the rightful owner of most of his money. Williamson squandered some $13 million of her money, but Hutton later explained that he had saved her life on five occasions and made sure that she "didn’t get seduced by the work." In 1991, Hutton met Luca Babini on a film set in and they developed a relationship. Lauren Hutton’s latest film is the comedy I Feel Pretty (Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, 2018), starring Amy Schumer and Michelle Williams.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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Posted by Truus, Bob & Jan too! on 2019-12-11 10:48:53

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