Melanie Iglesias is a multi-faceted celebrity, working as a model, actress, and musician. What did she do before she was famous?
Before Melanie Iglesias found fame as one of the world’s ‘most beautiful women’, she was trying to get a career started in music. Reportedly, Iglesias was focused on music as early as high school, deciding to not attend college and try to break into the industry instead, working on an EP.
Read on to learn more about Melanie Iglesias and her life before – and since – finding fame.
The Most Beautiful
Melanie Iglesias was born and raised in Brooklyn by a single father. She was a part of a huge family, with eight siblings. The family grew up in a considerably poor neighborhood, with little in the way of prospects. In an interview early on in her career, she spoke a little about growing up in Brooklyn.
In this article, she explained: “I’d always hear about murders that happened recently in that location but would still take that shortcut anyway.”
Her private life remained mostly that – private. It was well known that Iglesias has worked to keep her personal life out of the spotlight. While she may have made her name in being beautiful and outgoing, her privacy has always been a well-defended area of her life.
Reportedly, Iglesias had been working towards her dream of fame for some time. Since she was young, she’d had her sights set on popularity and riches. As she grew up, she gravitated toward modeling, arguably one of the easiest methods to gain recognition. To put it quite simply, if you’re very attractive and carry yourself well, you’ll be successful.
Iglesias first entered the scene in 2009, with the goal of appearing on America’s Next Top Model. However, she never really became a real contestant. The judges on the show removed her before the season progressed. Allegedly, they felt she was more suited to a career in music than in modeling.
In the interview mentioned above, she did explore her love for music. She claimed that she was influenced by the likes of Britney, Madonna, and Janet Jackson. She highlighted the fact that her father was a musician, and they’d apparently write songs together when she was growing up.
Hometown Hottie
In 2010, Melanie struck gold in her fledgling modeling career by winning a competition. She’d been crowned one of Maxim’s Hometown Hotties, a category that focused on ‘local’ models with striking beauty. Apparently, she was the only model in New York City to win the accolade.
There was a video posted on YouTube by Maxim in 2011 that shows Iglesias talking about this victory. She explains that she’s New York inside and out, and has lived ‘in every borough of New York City besides the Bronx.” In this video, she also states that she produced music, and was working with lots of artists. You can see this video below.
Following on with her Maxim success, she was featured in their magazine the following year, in 2011. In the publication, she was named one of their ‘world’s most beautiful women’, in the “Maxim Hot 100”. As the popularity came pouring in, she was made a cover girl for Maxim USA and appeared for three straight months in newsstands all over America.
Her original dreams of music faded away a little, and she focused more on acting and modeling for a while. She starred in some reality television shows and picked up bit parts in film and television. From 2014 through 2016 she found consistent success. At one point, she was named on FHM’s ‘100 Sexiest’ list.
Iglesias also found success on social media, amassing a considerable following. As of 2020, she boasted over one million followers on Instagram. She was heavily involved with the platform, regularly uploading pictures boasting her beauty and knowledge of the latest fashion.
She also amassed tens of millions of views on YouTube. She was a popular content creator and found great success with her ‘flip book’ videos. These were short-form stop motion videos created from thousands of individual photographs.
Ultimately, she did manage to gravitate back toward music. In 2018, she released her debut track, Tell ‘Em. This was followed in 2019 by L Is a B, and then in 2020, an EP was released. This small compilation of four tracks was released digitally, thus kickstarting Iglesias’ young dream of releasing music.