When you see someone, you automatically start putting those people together - the eyes and the lips. And what that does is that it creates an identity with that person, so when they actually start working, the audience sees exactly what you're seeing, and they become recognizable. So instant recognition is when certain women and men have features that look like other people. So baby Gisele is, like, Linda V - that's what she was called for a long time.

America has always been the most fertile ground for models - and they were always exported to other countries. When Eastern Europe opened up its doors to the rest of the world, a lot of the girls that were basically working there for $1 a month realized that if they were beautiful and that they could go to Paris and work for $1,000 a day versus the $10,000 that the other girls were demanding. So it created a huge imbalance in the financial structure of how clients could budget out campaigns. The market became flooded.

When you look at Steven Meisel's pictures and you see girls rolling around in mud or cars are blowing up? It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be able to do that. I think you have to be malleable, and that's what makes a truly great model. It's not the perfect lip or the perfect face, it's your own ability to take on a character and that's, I think, something there's a misconception about.

Today they have to be three-dimensional. Technology's changed, the communication, the marketing and advertising community supports beautiful girls that can be articulate and smart. And also Anna Wintour doesn't want to sit next to some girl who can't say two words.

I think as a scout you have to pick. It is harder. You have to talk and explain that this is not just about standing one-dimensionally in front of a camera.

think it's easy to find girls in climates where their bodies are exposed. Obviously, if you go scouting in Alaska, you're not going to find anybody because they're always covered up. Anywhere there's a beach is great for scouting. And state fairs. I've gone to a lot of state fairs.

A lot of people don't make the correlation between acting and modeling, they think of them as two separate things. But I really believe that a model is an actress.