Lack of discipline. First of all, I think some of them fail because they just don't have natural talent, and they shouldn't even be in the business to begin with.

If you look at the greatest models, it was because they were muses to photographers. They collaborated with the artist and they created the kind of images that become iconic.

There's something I call telegenekicity, and it's not about just models. Of course, I can reference Iman, Tatiana Patitz, Kelly Emberg, Bonnie Berman - I go all the way back - but I think that you develop an eye to register iconic images - like Greta Garbo and Elizabeth Taylor.

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.

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.

Lack of discipline. First of all, I think some of them fail because they just don't have natural talent, and they shouldn't even be in the business to begin with.

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.