Background and career
Cynthia Ann Crawford (born February 20, 1966) is an American model, actress, and television personality. One of the most popular supermodels of the 1980s and 1990s, she achieved a ubiquitous presence on magazine covers, runways, and fashion campaigns. She subsequently expanded into acting and business ventures.
Crawford was born in DeKalb, Illinois, on February 20, 1966, the daughter of Daniel Kenneth Crawford and Jennifer Sue Crawford-Moluf (née Walker). She has two sisters, Chris and Danielle, and a brother, Jeffery, who died of childhood leukemia at age 3.
On social media, she stated that her family had been in the United States for generations and that her ancestry is mostly German, English and French. She is a descendant of English Puritan settler Thomas Trowbridge, who helped establish the Congregational Church in New Haven. She was raised in the Congregationalist faith and found it "incredible" that religious values "trickled down" to her family. According to official census records, Crawford's paternal great-grandfather David Crawford was of Scottish ancestry from Northern Ireland, who in 1904 settled in Wisconsin. Appearing in an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in 2013, she discovered that her ancestors included European nobility and that she is descended from Charlemagne.
In her sophomore year at high school, she received a call from a local clothing store regarding modeling work, only to discover it was a prank by two of her classmates. However, the following year, another store hired a number of high school girls, including Crawford, to work for them (including a fashion shoot). In her junior year, local photographer Roger Legel, whose duties included photographing a different college girl to be that week's coed in the DeKalb Nite Weekly, asked to take her picture for the publication; the result was Crawford's first cover. The photo and positive feedback she received were enough to convince her to take up modeling. Initially, she worked with a small agency, which was sold to Elite Model Management shortly after she signed. In 1983, she entered Elite's Look of the Year contest at 17 and made the national finals.
Crawford graduated from DeKalb High School in 1984 as valedictorian. She earned an academic scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University, which she attended for only one quarter before dropping out to pursue a full-time modeling career. After working for photographer Victor Skrebneski in Chicago, she moved to New York City in 1986 and signed with the Elite New York modeling agency.
How Cindy Crawford makes money
Her performance was panned by critics—Leonard Maltin commented "In her acting debut, supermodel Crawford makes a good jogger." The film was also a financial failure, with expenses of $50 million and $11 million takings at the box office. In August 2021, the couple sold their home in Trousdale Estates, Beverly Hills, for a reported $13.5 million.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth, in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
