Catherine, Princess Royal

Catherine, Princess Royal
Born	Catherine Charlotte Natalie Lauren Charles (1969-01-28) January 28, 1969 London, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Model Actress Businesswoman Activist
Years active	1991 - 2005
Spouse(s)	Jodie Foster (m. 2011)
Partner(s)	Mick Jagger (1989 - 1993) Madonna (1989 - 2008) Dennis Rodman (1993 - 1994)
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. Aside from that, Catherine has also launched her own clothing line Kate Joan Clothings which is marketed as being "appropriate and fitting for all ages".

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 Kate Rodman.

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.

Relationships

Mick Jagger

From 1988 to 1993, 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. In spite of this, in 1993, allegedly after Jagger refused to officially enter into a state of marriage, the couple eventually parted ways with Catherine taking parental custody of their daughter and raising the latter alongside her then-girlfriend Madonna.

In August 2017, at forty-eight, Catherine became a grandmother when her eldest daughter Georgia May Jagger gave birth to a daughter Lady Iris Fitzalan-Howard by her husband, the former racing driver and aristocrat Henry, Earl of Arundel, through whom she is also styled Countess of Arundel as the wife of an earl. Meanwhile, her younger daughter Kate Rodman is currently in a relationship with Phoenix Suns shooting guard Devin Booker who previously dated American fashion model Kendall Jenner.

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 but with only Catherine actually ending up bearing a child by the former whereas Madonna herself remained unaffected. Consequently, Catherine then gave birth to a daughter Kate and, for the next few months or so, effectively lived together with Rodman with whom the royal initially planned on starting a family that included their daughter and her other child Georgia May by English rock singer Mick Jagger. However, a series of seemingly unsolvable difficulties that hampered plans for a marriage eventually resulted in Catherine parting ways with Rodman where she once again took sole custody of their daughter together whom she raised with her other two daughters in an endeavor where she was assisted by a willing close friend who was said to have acted as caretaker for the three girls whenever their mother is away. In this, Kate, named after her own mother, also followed in the latter's footsteps by becoming a model with Victoria's Secret where she was made a Victoria's Secret Angel in 2019.

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.

Titles & Honours

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

Ancestry

Ancestors of Catherine, Princess Royal

8. George IV and V of the United Kingdom and of the Netherlands 4. Frederick of the United Kingdom and of the Netherlands 9. Princess Sophia of Prussia 2. Charles III of the United Kingdom and of the Netherlands 10. Wilhelm II, German Emperor 5. Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia 11. Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg 1. Catherine, Princess Royal 12. Zalman Perski 6. William Perske 13. Sheyna Yofa 3. Lauren Bacall 14. Max Weinstein 7. Natalie Bacall 15. Sophia Bacall