Porizkova had a crazy childhood, with her parents fleeing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and leaving her with her grandmother, thinking they could get her later. Czech authorities wouldn’t allow this however, causing a huge uproar that finally allowed Porizkova to be reunited with her family a crazy seven years later. She then became a model at the age of fifteen, and appeared on SI’s swimsuit issue cover in 1984 and ‘85.