Model Rachel Hunter is hailed as one of New Zealand’s biggest exports, having made her mark in fashion, acting, and reality TV.
Now 56 years old, the supermodel was a ’90s It-girl, making it from the sleepy town of Glenfield in New Zealand all the way to global fame, with her big break being a cover of Sports Illustrated as a swimsuit model in 1989.
She went on to land on more covers for Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Sports Illustrated again, and posed for Playboy in 1994 and later in the nude in 2004.
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She also ventured into film and TV, starring in a 1997 episode of The Drew Carey Show, and independent films such as 1999’s A Walk in the Park, 2000’s Two Shades of Blue with Marlee Matlin, and La Cucina in 2007.
Hunter is a seasoned pro when it comes to reality TV, having starred in the inaugural cast of the American dance competition series Dancing with the Stars in 2005, later going on to judge on New Zealand’s Got Talent from 2012 to 2013.
Hunter made her mark on pop culture, becoming the face of Tip Top Ice-Cream in New Zealand and being known as the “Trumpet Girl”, land even famously playing Stacy’s Mom in the music video for the eponymous 2003 song by Fountains of Wayne.
One of her most famous “roles”, however, was as rocker Rod Stewart’s wife.
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Early in her career, she modelled in an aerobic video, which Stewart used to grab her attention one fateful night in 1990. He imitated her moves from the video on the dancefloor of a Los Angeles nightclub, where the pair immediately hit it off.
Stewart popped the question at a park in LA just three weeks later, and the pair were married in December 1990. She was 21 and he was 45.
The couple soon after welcomed their children – daughter Renee in 1992 and son Liam in 1994, the latter of who now plays professional hockey with the Milton Keynes Lightning of the United Kingdom’s National League.
But by 1999, the famous couple’s marriage was over.
“To the outside world I was the mother of two beautiful kids, a wife to Rod and a successful model without any financial worries – but inside, I was in torment,” Hunter told The Mirror in 2001.
“In the nine years we were together, I’d never done anything for myself. If you’d asked me then what I liked or didn’t like, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I didn’t even have a hobby. I was nothing.”
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Stewart was left with a broken heart, spending days lying on the sofa, hugging a hot water bottle in the wake of Hunter’s absence.
But she says it was a necessary step for her to move on, despite still being in love with him.
“I can remember thinking: ‘Here I am, approaching 30’ and ‘Oh, s–t, what am I doing with my life? I knew very definitely in that instant that I didn’t want to get to that age and have any regrets about what I’ve done or not done. It gave me the impetus to move on,” she said.
Hunter later moved on with Canadian NHL ice hockey player Sean Avery in 2004 before two years later getting into a three-year relationship with Jarret Stoll, another Canadian NHL player who played for the Los Angeles Kings and was 13 years her junior. Stoll even mentored her son Liam when he played for the LA Kings Juniors.
After two years together, Stoll popped the question when he accompanied her on a trip back to New Zealand. The couple were due to marry on 14 August 2009, but the wedding was called off by Stoll seven weeks before their wedding day.
Hunter then spent much of her time globe-trotting, finding what really stuck was her time in India, which she visited while filming her 2015 travel show Tour of Beauty. She returned to the country later on after losing her mother, becoming involved with yoga.
“I had been doing yoga for some time, but I kept asking myself, what is yoga, and how do I put my career into yoga? Then, it all unfolded rapidly; I returned over and over again to India to learn more about where I wanted to go,” she said in an interview with Kiwi publication Beauty EQ.
“I never wanted to go to India, but I also never wanted to be a model; it’s strange how things happen.”
Hunter then settled down in her native Aotearoa, running retreats along with her daughter Renee, a fellow yoga teacher.
At the same time she pursued a television career, most recently appearing in RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under in 2023.
Three years on, she is now getting ready to enter the jungle across the ditch in the Australian version of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
The supermodel will be starring alongside Concetta Caristo, Gary Sweet, Deni Hines, Nath Valvo, Rebekah Elmaloglou, Mia Fevola, Barry Williams, Dyson Heppell, and Luke Bateman.
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