Celebrity Victories: Part 2 of 4

This is the second part in a 4-part case study on the lives of celebrities who have lived through emotional abuse, survived, and gone on to live happy and vibrant lives.

You're going to think I'm absolutely crazy for who I've picked next. It's arguable that this woman is just off-her-rocker "out there". She's loud, she's unapologetic, she's in your face, and sometimes she's just plain insulting. But she doesn't care who doesn't like her - she likes herself enough for the whole world, thank you very much! LOL I picked this woman because she's fun to watch, and even aside from her silly personality, she's accomplished a lot.

Janice Dickinson

Janice Dickinson was born in 1955 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Hollywood, Florida in a four-person household with her parents and younger sister. Her start to life was one full of abuse. As she was quoted from her future autobiography written in 2002, No Lifeguards On Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel, Janice described her parents this way:
"My father was a tall, slim, handsome man with a thick head of silver hair, buzzed flat, and gunmetal gray yes. People liked Ray. He had an easy smile. A pleasant laugh. He was a good storyteller, a good listener, popular with the neighbors. But I didn't often see that easy smile. Or hear that pleasant laugh. I saw, instead, the way his eyes changed color when he got angry, the whites glowing red. Or the way he balled up his big, freckled fists when he came after me, like a bull in heat. I hated him. I hated his eyes; his hair; that acrid breath; the wife-beater, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. I hated him with every fiber of my being. I hated my mother, too; hated her because she was numbed into oblivion with the pills she'd been prescribed for an old back injury. She would come home at the end of the day, floating, and she stayed aloft with the help of those lovely pills. She would glide through the house on a cushion of air, in slow motion, unaware, unseeing, her voice soft, her mind elsewhere, always smiling this benign Hare Krishna smile -- like she was At One With God or something; which she was, I guess, at least chemically."

Janice's father was very physically and emotionally abusive to her, especially when puberty hit. Her younger sister was the initial target of her father's pedophilia, but when he turned his sights on Janice - who was growing more beautiful by the day - and she repeatedly refused to have sex with him, Janice's father beat her daily and would constantly hurl insults on her. He told her that she "wouldn't amount to anything", that she "looked like a boy", and that he would kill her if she ever told anyone of what he did to her. At the same time, Janice's mother developed an addiction to painkillers after an accident when Janice was young, and was always high - no help to her daughters. But Janice always had a fiery spirit, and in the early 1970s when she was about 15 years old, Janice ran away from home and went to New York City in hopes of becoming a model.

Janice was determined to be a success, if only to be able to stay away from her abusive family forever. She began calling modeling agencies incessantly. At the time, the top working models in the industry were the blond, "girl next door" types (like Cheryl Tiegs and Jean Shrimpton), and Janice hardly fit the mold with her dark hair, dark eyes, and plump lips. She went to Ford and was turned down by the modeling agency for those lips, but ended up going to Paris after her new friend, actress Lorraine Bracco, told her boyfriend - who was a photographer - to check Janice out. Janice became a European hit and finally returned to New York City in 1978, where her career took off.

Janice's wild streak emerged with her rising fame. She spent much of her youth in the notorious Studio 54 and with the celebrities of the time like Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, and John Belushi. She also began to experiment with men and women - sleeping, allegedly, with Prince Albert II, Warren Beatty, John Cusack, Mick Jagger, Grace Jones, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Kelly LeBrock, Jon Lovitz, Dolph Lundgren, Liam Neeson, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Willis, and Frank Zappa, among others - and drugs, taking up alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. Soon Janice became known for her brash, wild personality. Once while still riding the high off of recreational drugs, Janice fell off a runway and into Sophia Loren's lap. Janice also became the self-proclaimed first supermodel. In E! Network's E! True Hollywood Story, she described how she coined the term "supermodel" in 1979. Her manager, concerned that at the peak of her modeling career she was doing too much work, told her, "You are not Superman." Janice replied, "I am not Superman, I am a supermodel." She got to a point in her career where she was virtually untouchable, appearing in Harper's Bazaar, Vogue (a staggering 37 times on its cover), and Playboy, and working with huge fashion houses Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, and Calvin Klein. Remembering when Ford snubbed her at the start of her career, Janice finally got her revenge when she signed with Elite Model Management, telling Ford, "It's me, big-lipped Janice. I'm going to Elite. I don't like you, I've never liked you."

Janice first married in the early '80s to Ron Levy, then in 1987 to Simon Fields (a marriage that lasted 6 years), and finally to Albert "Alan" B. Gerston in 1995 (which lasted 1 year). Her marriage to Fields produced her first son, Nathan Fields, and later a relationship with Michael Birnbaum produced her daughter Savannah Dickinson. At first, Janice believed her daughter's father was Sylvester Stallone, with whom she'd been having an affair, but this was settled after much public speculation and a paternity test. In 2002, Janice wrote her autobiography, and followed that up with her second book in 2004, Everything About Me Is Fake...And I'm Perfect!, in which she describes her battles with self-esteem, her alcoholism, drug abuse, anoxeria and bulimia, her experience with plastic surgery, and her modeling career.

Since her victim's past and racy youth, Janice has cleaned up her act considerably - but she's still Janice! She's overcome her struggles with substance abuse and indiscrepant sex, and is now at the point where she can poke fun at her experiences. She acted as a judge on the wildly popular reality TV show America's Next Top Model for four years alongside Tyra Banks, and moved on to have her own show, The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. In 2005, Janice was a contestant on The Surreal Life for its fifth season, and there she spoke candidly to the rest of the contestants about her abusive childhood. Janice is now working on a fourth book after her funny and tender Check Please! Dating, Mating and Extricating, and has begun work philanthropically as a motivational speaker, travelling to various schools to speak about child abuse.

Say what you will about her, but Janice has never apologized for who she is or what she wants out of life. She became a self-made success out of ashes, and has never assumed her parents' pathology as her own. When learned patterns of self-destruction threatened to overcome her, Janice snuffed all of those crippling behaviors out of her life. She is open and candid about her mistakes as well as her triumphs, and has a kill-or-be-killed spirit about life in general. Janice made herself fit - in turn, she's broken the mold and gone on to be a great, if kooky (!), example of "independent woman"...gone wild!