Candice Susan Swanepoel isn’t your average supermodel. The blonde beauty was born on October 20, 1988 in a small village in the coastal South African province of KwaZulu-Natal and was raised on a dairy and beef farm.
When she was just 15 years old, a model scout spotted Swanepoel walking around a flea market in Durban, a small South African harbor city that’s extremely popular with surfers, and the rest, as they say, is history. Deciding to pursue modeling full-time, Swanepoel moved to Europe and her risk sure paid off! She soon began making waves in the fashion industry, becoming a Victoria’s Secret Angel in 2010 and walking in every single Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show (sporting the $10 million Fantasy Bra in 2013, no less!) since then.
In addition to being one of today’s most successful and sought-after models, Swanepoel is also a proud mama to two adorable boys, plus she’s one smart Angel! Did you know she’s fluent in three languages (English, Afrikaans and Portuguese)? Yup, she is full of surprises! So without further ado, here are some interesting facts you never knew about Candice Swanepoel.
After being discovered in her native South Africa, Candice Swanepoel took a major leap of faith and moved to Europe as a teen to try and build her career. Along with the move came serious loneliness. “Every day, I was working with different people who were speaking different languages, so I was never able to form any relationships. I just wanted to go home,” she revealed to Self in 2015.
What’s more, industry insiders kept telling her to lose more and more weight. “I was [always] crying,” she told the mag of why at age 17, barely two years into pursuing modeling full-time, she began to seriously consider giving up on her high fashion dreams and moving back home to her parents’ farm and continuing her old life.
She started out as a talented ballerina
Despite her great success in the modeling world, Candice Swanepoel’s first love was dance. More specifically, ballet. “I was a ballerina in South Africa before I went to general girls boarding school,” she revealed to ET Online in 2014, adding, “That was what I actually wanted to do. I wanted to go to ballet school in New York.”
Swanepoel also gushed about her love of ballet in an interview with Marie Claire (via AZ Central) that same year, explaining that her training and pᴀssion for dance have helped further her modeling career and continue to make her a better model to this day. “[Ballet] has helped a lot with modeling because I think about all parts of my body, from my fingers to my toes,” she explained.