Catherine, Princess Royal

Catherine, Princess Royal
Catherine, Princess Royal
Born	Catherine Charlotte Natalie Lauren Charles; January 28, 1969 (age 55); London, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Model; Actress; Businesswoman; Activist;
Years active	1991 - 2005
Spouse(s)	Jodie Foster (m. 2011)
Partner(s)	Mick Jagger (1989 - 1994); Madonna (1989 - 2008); Dennis Rodman (1994 - 1995)
Children	Georgia May Jagger; Kate Rodman
Parent(s)	Charles III (father); Lauren Bacall (mother)
	Modeling information
Height	170 cm (5 ft 7 in)
Hair color	Blonde
Eye color	Blue
Agency	IMG Models

Catherine, Princess Royal (Catherine Charlotte Natalie Lauren Charles; born 28 January 1969), known professionally as Kate Joan, is a British supermodel, actress, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and a member of the British royal family. The only daughter of King Charles III and American actress, Lauren Bacall, she was made Princess Royal in 1996 upon the death of her great-aunt Alexandra, Princess Royal.

Beginning in the early 1990s, under the pseudonym of Kate Joan, Catherine first rose to fame as a model for Victoria's Secret, becoming its first-ever British Victoria's Secret Angel in 1993. Over a decade-long career, she walked for various designers and brands including Vera Wang, Karl Lagerfeld, Alexander McQueen, Prada, and Louis Vuitton, appeared on a variety of publications including Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Glamour, and notably holds the record with six cover appearances for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, surpassing Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson. Due to her ancestry, Catherine was often compared to fellow English model Kate Moss, with Karl Lagerfeld famously dubbing them "The Great Kates". By the turn of the century, she was one of the highest-paid models in the world and was dubbed by Anna Wintour to be the "quintessential English rose" with her slim build and high cheekbones being distinguishing features.

In 2005, upon retiring from professional modeling, Catherine embarked on a new career path as an actress, beginning with her breakout role as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. In the following year, she starred opposite Jamie Foxx and Matt Damon respectively in The Kingdom and The Bourne Ultimatum, the latter being a considerable commercial success while also establishing her as a rising female action star. To that end, following a brief role as Agent 99 in the 2008 spy comedy Get Smart, in that same year, Catherine founded her own production company Atlantic Hub under which she later went on to star in the the widely-successful Kate Joan spy trilogy, winning four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and three BAFTA Film Awards in the process. In that, whilst primarily known for her work with the Kate Joan franchise, Catherine has also starred in a number of other films including The Dark Knight Rises, Ocean's 8, Ghostbusters, Enola Holmes, and Money Monster that was directed by fellow actress and wife Jodie Foster.

In addition to her modeling and acting careers, Catherine has also been actively involved in activism, especially concerning women's and children's issues. In 2014, she founded the program Women Without Silence in order to combat domestic violence, workplace discrimination, and other related issues. In response, she was later made an honorary advisor to the Minister for Women and Equalities in 2017 by the current minister Nicky Morgan. Meanwhile, as a noted businesswoman, Catherine has been boyh the founder and CEO of Regal Holdings, a British conglomerate founded in 2014 which, through its subsidiaries, owns magazines British Vogue, Marie Claire, and Sports Illustrated, luxury department stores Harrods and Arnotts, Harvey Nichols, and Fortnum & Mason, fashion houses Balmain, Hugo Boss, and Valentino, and sports teams that included Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants, National Football League's Philadelphia Eagles, National Basketball Association's Golden State Warriors, Women's National Basketball Association's Golden State Warrioress, Major League Soccer's Los Angeles FC, National Women's Soccer League's San Diego Wave FC, Serie A's Inter Milan, and A-League Women's Sydney FC. As the chairwoman of Inter Milan, Catherine is a member of the board of the European Club Association, an independent body for European football clubs.

Known for her somewhat unconventional and controversial romantic history, Catherine notably gained much infamy as the longtime romantic partner of American singer Madonna that garnered both publicity and controversy. Moreover, she also enjoyed brief romances with singer Mick Jagger and former basketball player Dennis Rodman. In January 2011, she married American actress Jodie Foster, becoming the first British royal to engage in a same-sex marriage. Through her relationships, Catherine is the mother of fashion models Georgia May Jagger and Kate Rodman.

With an estimated net worth of $47.5 billion via her shares in the multi-billion dollar holding company Atlantic Connection, Catherine is widely accepted to be the richest fashion model in the world and also the fourth richest woman in the world.

Early Life

Education

Modeling Career

Acting Career

Activism

Entrepreneurship

Personal Life

As per longstanding British royal customs, being the eldest and only daughter of the British monarch, in 1996, Catherine was given the title of Princess Royal by her father sometime after her great-aunt, who previously held the title, had passed away. Ironically enough, during her subsequent years as a model and later an actress in her own right, Catherine largely avoided using the title herself, preferring to instead be referred to by her own given name as opposed to simply being known as "the Princess Royal", a title that she once described as "fancy to have but not so pleasant to be known by especially in public".

Despite her past reputation as a "party girl" and, by her own admission, a "very wild person", Catherine is nonetheless said to be somewhat academically inclined in her own right, as evidenced by a bachelor's degree in design that she earned from the University of London prior to her modeling career, as well as a master's degree in fine arts from the State University of New York, which she earned sometime between the end of her modeling career and the beginning of her ensuing acting career, which Catherine chose to pursue after being personally inspired by her then-girlfriend and later wife's academic prowess.

An admirer and collector of automobiles in her family's tradition, Catherine herself owns a somewhat small but nonetheless luxurious collection of vehicles, namely a first-generation Dodge Viper, a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, a Mini Countryman, and a Land Rover Discovery.

Standing at approximately 1.70 metres tall, compared to her family members, Catherine is known for her somewhat short stature, especially in contrast to her older brothers Thomas and Nelson, who stand at 1.87 metres and 1.82 metres tall respectively. Conversely, she is of similar height to her 1.70 metres tall daughter Georgia May Jagger although her wife Jodie Foster is much shorter than herself, standing at roughly 1.6 metres tall.

Relationships

Mick Jagger

From 1988 to 1994, Catherine engaged in a romantic relationship with English singer and The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger who was said to be her first serious boyfriend. In this, reportedly out of general familiarity owing to their common English nationalities as well as Catherine's own high social standing as a member of the royal family, the Princess Royal first engaged in a discreet relationship with Jagger while the latter was then still in a relationship with his then-partner and English model Jerry Hall with whom he later parted ways after his relationship with the royal was discovered sometime afterward.

Over the course of their almost five-year-long romance, the couple had only one daughter, namely Georgia May Jagger. Around January 1994, an alleged refusal on the part of Jagger to officially enter into a state of marriage resulted in the couple officially parting ways with Catherine herself taking sole custody of their daughter. Later, around June 2018, Catherine became the subject of renewed media interest when Georgia May Jagger married Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster, a British aristocrat and one of the richest men in Britain with an estimated net worth of $14.5 billion, thereby becoming Duchess of Westminster by marriage. Then, in June 2022, the couple welcomed their first child together, namely a daughter Lady Catherine Grosvenor, making the Princess Royal, after whom the child is named, a first-time grandmother at fifty-three. Meanwhile, a 2023 report by The Guardian claimed that Jagger will stand to inherit her mother's full $47.5 billion dollar wealth, reportedly after her maternal half-sister chose not to inherit her mother's shares in the multi-billion dollar holding company Atlantic Connection. Therefore, although married to a fairly wealthy husband, Jagger stands to become far wealthier than the latter once her mother fully transfers her shares in the company to her, the sole heir to Catherine's shares in the company which are an equal 1/3rd division of the original amount held by her late father that was divided roughly equally between his three children. By and large, Jagger is also expected to inherit her mother's massive multi-billion dollar conglomerate Regal Holdings which owns various brands and companies in a number of industries.

Presumably owing to her seniority and apparent plans to continue and inherit her mother's legacy, Georgia May Jagger is often said to be her mother's "favourite daughter" compared to her half-sister Kate Rodman, a modestly successful fashion model for Victoria's Secret in her own right. Nonetheless, since reaching adulthood, Jagger has been publicly visible with her mother, often participating in photoshoots or advertisements for brands.

Dennis Rodman

Around 1994, via her then-girlfriend and singer Madonna, Catherine became acquainted with the American professional basketball player Dennis Rodman who was then playing for the National Basketball Association's San Antonio Spurs. Not long after their first encounter, Catherine, having recently parted ways with English singer Mick Jagger, began a relationship with Rodman whose mutual attraction towards Madonna, Catherine's own girlfriend, resulted in them establishing a short-lived ménage à trois that famously led to both Catherine and Madonna being dubbed "Rodman's Little Ladies" given that Rodman largely towers over the two of them in height.

In that same year, the couple's affair reached a new high when as part of a spontaneous challenge in which both Catherine and Madonna attempted to have children by the basketball player, Rodman, promised by financial rewards, reportedly attempted to impregnate both women at the same time. In this, Rodman proved successful with both women as Catherine later gave birth to a daughter Kate whereas Madonna gave birth to a son Rodman. Consequently, for several years, the trio then lived together in a ménage à trois in which the two women raised their children jointly with Rodman. However, the arrangement would prove short-lived as alleged issues of incompatibility and Catherine's own apparent inability to adapt to the unusual living circumstances led her to eventually leave the throuple altogether while also assuming full custody of their daughter together. Not long afterward, Madonna herself also parted ways with Rodman, assumed custody of their son together, and continued with the princess as her long-term romantic partner in the years that followed.

During an interview in 2016, in recounting the past years of cohabiting together with both Madonna and Dennis Rodman, Catherine described it as an "undoubtedly eventful and colourful period" but admitted that she has since looked back on it with some regret and skepticism, stating, "Back then, I was just very in touch with my wildest senses and was personally very into trying stuff that would be considered abnormal or unconventional by most people. Among others, getting both yourself and your own girlfriend pregnant by the same man was definitely something that I just look back on and now question whether it should have happened at all. Undoubtedly, not many people thought of ever doing that yet me and Madge did it and it is certainly something that will remain forever etched in our minds no matter how hard we try to forget it".

Madonna

Prior to her eventual marriage, among Catherine's best-known romantic relationships was the one with the American singer Madonna which aside from its longevity, having lasted for almost two decades long, was also the subject of much attention and controversy, most of which was due to Madonna's own provocative and controversial persona as a singer.

In any case, the couple's relationship was said to have begun sometime in June 1989 when Catherine, while attending a local concert featuring Madonna in California, was granted the rare chance of meeting the American singer herself after much negotiation and persuasion with the latter's security detail. To that end, after a reportedly fruitful first encounter backstage, the couple soon began an initially discreet romantic relationship that was only known to their closest acquaintances. Eventually, after several years of secrecy, the couple chose to finally publicise their relationship at the inaugural Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in August 1995 where Catherine, who was one of the models that walked the runway alongside the likes of Rebecca Romjin and Stephanie Seymour, grabbed headlines when she proceeded to kiss the American singer upon reaching the end of the runway where Madonna herself was standing and singing a song of hers. Nonetheless, the incident, while helping to publicise the event further that year with the media attention that the kiss generated, marked the first official confirmation of the couple's relationship which had been the subject of tabloid rumours in the years prior.

Despite the ensuing controversy, the couple persisted as an item well into the next decade even if Madonna herself later married the English film director Guy Ritchie in 2000, a union that effectively made Catherine the singer's "mistress" until her ensuing divorce from Ritchie in 2008. Meanwhile, around 1996, Madonna herself had a daughter Lourdes Leon by her fitness trainer Carlos Leon and in 1994, had a son Corey Rodman by the American professional basketball player Dennis Rodman by whom Catherine herself also had a child, namely a daughter Kate Rodman.

By the late 2000s, despite signs and indications of a lasting romance, an apparent desire by Catherine to "settle down" and avoid the familiar spotlight brought on by her relationship with Madonna soon saw the couple gradually become distant from each other. In this, despite initial suggestions of following the example of the actress Angelina Jolie and model Jenny Shimizu by formalising their relationship with an official marriage, by September 2008, the couple was said to have officially broken up with Catherine subsequently going on to date and marry the American actress Jodie Foster whereas Madonna began a relationship with fellow actress Sarah Paulson, with whom the singer then adopted a daughter Cristina Ciccone, born in September 1996. However, in November 2014, the couple officially parted ways with Paulson, having initially dated the likes of Madonna and fellow actress Cherry Jones, who are sixteen and eighteen years older respectively, subsequently began dating yet another actress, namely Holland Taylor, who is notably thirty-one years her senior. Nonetheless, Madonna herself is also currently in a relationship with a significantly younger partner, namely the Dominican rapper Tokischa, who is thirty-eight years younger. Beforehand, the singer dated the similarly young model Ireland Baldwin, daughter of actors Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, and dancer Ahlamalik Williams.

In a 2018 interview reminiscing on her past romance with Madonna, Catherine described the singer as an "undeniably wild, brave, and fearless woman" but asserted that as she matured over the years, a desire to finally settle down and therefore shed her past party-loving and wild lifestyle led her to ultimately reconsider her relationship with the singer who she eventually summarised as "a good girlfriend to have and fool around with but not necessarily a good wife with whom you just kind of want a more tranquil and peaceful life". Nonetheless, despite the couple's fondness for controversy and wild antics, Catherine said that they "respected each other well" with the slightly older Madonna often acting as a "big sister" to the royal. Because of this, Catherine joked that the couple's close bond with each other often meant that any man or woman looking to begin a relationship with either of them must also naturally include the other, something that was the case with both Dennis Rodman and Jenny Shimizu who both engaged in a ménage à trois with both Catherine and Madonna each time. Consequently, Catherine is said to have therefore engaged in two separate three-way relationships, a feat that she later described as "one of the many oddities about my past life" but which she jokingly admitted to having proven useful in making her a more "considerate" and "understanding" person, stating, "When you had to share one single romantic partner with someone else, which is something that I did twice, it naturally makes you a more considerate, thoughtful, and in some way, a more emphatic person because as weird as it might sound, the fact that I always have to consider what the other person wants with my partner meant that I always try to stop myself from going overboard and ensure that both myself and my partner are happy with our rather peculiar living arrangement at all times".

Jodie Foster

In 2008, while attending the 80th Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, California, Catherine met and subsequently began a relationship with American actress Jodie Foster all while remaining romantically linked to the American singer and then-partner Madonna. Initially, fears and concern over excessive media coverage should their relationship ever become publicised led the couple to treat their relationship with utmost secrecy, and therefore, the two women were rarely seen in public together. Nonetheless, the relationship itself quickly progressed, with Catherine, in contrast to her then-girlfriend, seeing the actress as a less controversial and reserved partner while also perceiving the latter as her "mentor" in the acting industry given her newcomer status in Hollywood at the time while Foster, by comparison, had begun her acting career starting in the 1970s and was therefore considered a more senior figure in the industry whose expertise in the industry the royal greatly sought after. In a later interview, Catherine likened Foster's initial role as a mentor of hers in the acting industry to that of the singer Madonna during her early years in the United States, stating, "When I first came to the United States, I needed someone well-known but most importantly, someone who I could trust to help me when in need, and I found that in Madonna, now, when I was just getting started in the acting industry at the time, funnily enough, Jodie was definitely my Madonna at the time, in that she was the well-known person that I needed and who I could trust to help me in need, which she absolutely did to the fullest".

Eventually, after several years of near secrecy, the couple were married in a private ceremony in the Netherlands attended by both Catherine's and Foster's close friends and relatives, including the then-King Thomas, Catherine's own older brother. Reportedly, not long after the wedding concluded, it was said that King Thomas himself offered to make the American actress a duchess in honour of the couple's marriage, an offer which Foster herself personally refused before subsequently accepting a damehood instead, thereby officially becoming Dame Alicia Christian Foster. Interestingly, despite being born American, Foster, having acquired British citizenship prior to her marriage to the Princess Royal, was therefore allowed to use the relevant pre-nominal style of "Dame", as opposed to using the relevant post-nominal letters, an arrangement that remains strictly in use for a non-citizen of a Commonwealth country. Since then, the couple have together embarked on a number of philanthropic and social causes, while in regards to acting, Foster herself, in a 2015 interview, expressed her "huge interest" in personally directing her wife, which she later did so for the 2016 film Money Monster in which Catherine starred as a major character opposite George Clooney. The film itself, despite mixed reviews, proved to be a box office success, grossing over $93 million at the box office against a $27.4 million budget. Then, in a subsequent interview, Catherine herself described the process of filming the movie as "extremely fantastic" as well as "reasonably challenging", given the film's tense nature, while also praising Foster as a "great director" who she said "was not afraid to let someone know that something is wrong and ensure the highest quality and standards even if that someone is her own wife".

As a result of their marriage, Catherine officially became the stepmother to Foster's two children from her previous relationship with producer Cydney Bernard, namely sons Charles and Kit, whereas Foster became the stepmother to Catherine's two daughters Georgia May Jagger and Kate Rodman.

Others

During a 2016 interview with CNN, which was conducted in the lead-up to the presidential election that year, Catherine revealed that the Republican candidate and later President Donald Trump once attempted to romantically pursue her after divorcing his first wife Ivana Zelníčková in 1990 around which time Catherine herself was an up-and-coming fashion model who reportedly became the subject of the real estate mogul's affections after the latter learned of her royal background which complemented her well-known physical beauty. However, for reasons that she later cited to be Trump's "brash" and "ungentlemanly" character, Catherine mostly rejected any romantic advances from the latter who ended up remarrying for a second time to actress and model Marla Maples in 1993.

Meanwhile, as with many other famous women, when she first arrived in the United States in the late 1980s, Catherine was romantically pursued by the American actor Warren Beatty. In this, the princess recounted a moment where she briefly met the Hollywood actor at a fashion event in New York which both of them were attending separately. Regardless, despite later describing Beatty in a mostly positive light, the two never actually began a long-term relationship with Beatty later marrying the American fashion model Stephanie Seymour, a woman three decades his junior and who is only a year older than Catherine herself. Beforehand, Seymour dated the similarly older modelling agent and Elite Model Management founder John Casablancas, with whom she had a daughter. Meanwhile, from 1973 until his death in 2013, a period of roughly four decades long, Casablancas was married to American supermodel Christie Brinkley and also briefly dated one of the "big five" supermodels Linda Evangelista, who was previously married to Gérald Marie, a French former model agency boss at Elite Model Management, from 1987 to 1993 after which Marie remarried to French supermodel Laetitia Casta.

During a 2018 interview, Catherine claimed that the late Saudi businessman and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who died in June 2017, once delivered her a marriage proposal, an offer that would have seen the princess become the second wife of the wealthy Saudi businessman who, during his heyday, was estimated to be worth around $4 billion in total. However, Catherine herself rejected the marriage proposal, claiming that despite the alluring prospect of gaining instant recognition as the wife of one of the wealthiest men in the world and the fact that she is relatively open to a polygamous household, given that she once did so alongside Madonna and Dennis Rodman, she otherwise could not bring herself to convert to Islam, as required for a marriage, and follow the religion's strict rules, stating, "Judging by who I am, I don't think I could really commit to being faithful to the religion itself which obviously meant that, among others, I had to stop liking women, something that I will just never do in my entire life". Meanwhile, despite once dating the English rock singer Mick Jagger, who is roughly two decades older, Catherine also expressed some reservations about marrying a man who is otherwise roughly three decades older, stating jokingly, "For me, a two decades gap is kind of tolerable and it depends on the personality of the man but a three decades gap is just a little bit too far me and it feels like I'm marrying someone old enough to be my own father". Meanwhile, in a rather unrelated manner, Adnan is also the uncle of the murdered Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in October 2018, reportedly by the orders of the Saudi government at the country's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Mohamed Al-Fayed, an Egyptian businessman and Adnan's brother-in-law, formerly owned the British luxury department store Harrods and the English football club Fulham before dying on 30 August 2023.

Likewise, the Iranian royal Aga Khan IV, firstly married to English model Sarah Crooker Poole, also attempted to court the Princess Royal but ended up marrying English supermodel Naomi Campbell, followed by a third subsequent marriage to English journalist Jemima Goldsmith, and later a fourth one to yet another English model, namely Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

Titles & Honours

28 January 1969 - 10 January 1979 Her Royal Highness The Princess Catherine
10 January 1979 - Present Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal