Hoyt Richards

Hoyt Richards is an American model and actor who rose to fame in the late 1980s and was dubbed the first male supermodel. Born in Syracuse and educated at Princeton University, he graduated in 1985 with no plans for modeling. A visit to New York led to his being spotted by a casting director and meeting with the Ford Model Agency. Over a career lasting more than fifteen years, he was photographed by Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton and worked for brands including Gianni Versace, Valentino, Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s to focus on acting, appearing in Six Days, Seven Nights and more than fifteen independent films such as Hit and Runway (1999), Taxi Dance (2009) and The Disciple (2010). He also writes screenplays and founded Tortoise Entertainment in 2005, which produced Dumbbells (2014), a buddy comedy he wrote and starred in.