Lily Cole is an English model and actress.
Her modelling career was launched by a chance encounter with Benjamin Hart in Soho when she was 14 years old. She was booked for her first British Vogue cover at age 16, and has worked with many well-known brands, including Vogue worldwide, Alexander McQueen, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Prada, De Beers and Moschino. Other clients include Numero, Christian Lacroix, Hermès, and Galliano. Advertising campaigns include Longchamp, Anna Sui and Cacharel. She has a cosmetics contract with beauty brand Rimmel London and can be seen in TV and print advertising as part of her work with them. She attracted controversy in 2008 by appearing naked in a pictorial for Playboy’s French edition. She is listed by Vogue Paris as one of the top 30 models of the 2000s.
After several minor acting roles, starting with St Trinian’s in 2007, Cole’s first leading role was as Valentina in the 2009 film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Her other film work includes Passages, a short directed by Shekhar Kapur and There Be Dragons, directed by Roland Joffé. In June 2011, she was awarded a Double First in History of Art at Cambridge University.
In January of 2012, she met with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to get his guidance on starting her own socially networked gift economy website, impossible.com.
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