The inspiration behind the Emmy Awardโwinning HBO film Gia with Angelina Jolie, this โvividโฆexhaustiveโ (The New York Times Book Review) account of the iconic and tragic life, career, and legacy of supermodel Gia Carangi features a new afterword by the author.
At seventeen, Gia Carangi was working the counter at her fatherโs Philadelphia luncheonette. Within a year, she was one of the worldโs top models, gracing the covers of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, partying at Studio 54, and redefining the fashion industryโs standard of beauty.
But behind the glitz and fame, Gia was a young woman in pain, desperate for her motherโs approval and facing a drug addiction that quickly spun out of control. With dizzying speed, she went from $10,000-a-day fashion shoots to using drugs on the streets of New York and Atlantic City before finally being blackballed from modeling. At twenty-six, Gia once again made history as one of the first famous women to die of AIDS.
This โchilling taleโ (The Boston Globe), based on hundreds of interviews with friends, family, lovers, and fashionistas (the term author Stephen Fried coined for her industry colleagues), is comprehensively explored in this unputdownable biography that will introduce Gia to a new generation. It is also a powerful exploration of our societyโs views of beauty and sexuality, fame and objectification, mothers and daughters, love and death.