Emily Ratajkowski American Actress Born 1991 in Westminster

Early life

Emily O'Hara Ratajkowski was born on 7 June 1991 in Westminster, London, to American parents who both worked as school teachers. The family settled in Encinitas, a suburb of San Diego, California, where she grew up as an only child. As a child and young teenager she tried soccer, ballet and acting, and she took part in a few local theatre productions. She has said that her father introduced her to art, including the photography of Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts, and that third-wave feminist writing, among it the books of Naomi Wolf, also shaped her outlook.

She attended San Dieguito Academy in Encinitas while modelling and acting in Los Angeles. In 2009 she enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, but left after one year to model full time.

Career

Ratajkowski signed with Ford Models at the age of 14, after an acting coach helped her find a talent agent. Her first jobs were catalogue shoots. At 15 she began auditioning for television roles and was often cast as a bully or a cheerleader. She appeared as Tasha in two episodes of Nickelodeon's iCarly in 2009 and 2010.

After leaving university she worked with the photographer Tony Duran and appeared in several early issues of the magazine treats!, including the cover of its March 2012 issue. She credits that cover with bringing her two unrequested music-video offers. She appeared in Taio Cruz's "Fast Car", released in November 2012, and in 2013 in Maroon 5's "Love Somebody" and in "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell Williams. Thicke had seen the magazine cover and urged the director, Diane Martel, to cast her. The song was the best-performing single of 2013 in several countries, and the video drew a public debate about its portrayal of women.

Her feature film debut was a supporting role in David Fincher's Gone Girl (2014), in which she played Andie Fitzgerald, the mistress of Ben Affleck's character. She appeared in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues of 2014 and 2015, and in 2015 she played a fictionalised version of herself in Entourage. Her first leading role came in the same year in We Are Your Friends, opposite Zac Efron, as a character named Sophie. She later appeared in In Darkness and I Feel Pretty (both 2018), the latter alongside Amy Schumer, and in the comedy series History of the World, Part II (2023). She has said that she stepped back from acting after an unsuccessful audition for Triangle of Sadness (2022), and in 2024 she joined the cast of Too Much, a series created by Lena Dunham.

On the runway, she made her professional debut for Marc Jacobs at New York Fashion Week in September 2015. She walked for Miu Miu in Paris in March 2016, for Bottega Veneta in Milan in 2017 and for Versace in 2018. Her campaigns include DKNY, Kérastase and Paco Rabanne,. She designed a bag collection for The Kooples in 2017. In November 2017 she launched her own swimwear brand, Inamorata. In October 2022 she started a podcast with Sony Music Entertainment, called High Low with EmRata, and in January 2023 she became the face of Versace's spring and summer campaign.

Recognition

Esquire named her its Woman of the Year in October 2013. Vogue ranked her first among its twelve breakout beauty stars of 2015, and Vogue Italia included her on its best-dressed list the same year. In March 2018 she received the University of Southern California's Inspire Award at the first ceremony of that prize, and in April 2018 the Daily Front Row named her Model of the Year.

Public roles

Ratajkowski is a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood and has taken part in fundraising and public service announcements for the organisation's work on reproductive and sexual health. In February 2016 she spoke at a rally in New Hampshire in support of Bernie Sanders, whom she endorsed again in 2020. In 2025 she endorsed Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election.

She has written publicly about sexuality, image ownership and feminism. A letter published in Lena Dunham's newsletter in February 2016 was reprinted by several magazines. In September 2020 she wrote an essay for The Cut titled "Buying Myself Back", on who owns a model's image. Her collection of essays, My Body, was published by Metropolitan Books in November 2021 and reached the New York Times bestseller list. In 2021 she sold a non-fungible token at Christie's for 175,000 dollars, based on a photograph of herself in front of a painting that the artist Richard Prince had made from one of her Instagram posts in 2014 without her consent.