Lauren Hutton (born Mary Laurence Hutton; November 17, 1943) is an American model and actress. Born and raised in the southern United States, Hutton relocated to New York City in her early adulthood to begin a modeling career. Though she was initially dismissed by agents for a signature gap in her teeth, Hutton signed a modeling contract with Revlon in 1973, which at the time was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry.^[2]

Over her career, Hutton has worked both as a model and an actress, making her film debut in the sports drama Paper Lion in 1968, opposite Alan Alda. She also played central roles in The Gambler (1974) and American Gigolo (1980), and later appeared on television in the network series Paper Dolls, Falcon Crest, Central Park West and Nip/Tuck.

Hutton has continued to model into her seventies, appearing in numerous advertising campaigns for H&M, Lord and Taylor, and Alexander Wang, and performed on the runway for Tom Ford's spring 2012 collection, as well as for Bottega Veneta at the 2016 New York Fashion Week.

Hutton was born Mary Laurence Hutton on November 17, 1943, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Lawrence Bryan Hutton and Minnie (Behrens) Hutton.^[3] Her father was a native of Mississippi, where he grew up next-door to William Faulkner, and was stationed in England, during World War II when Lauren was born.^[3]

After the war, Hutton's mother divorced her father in 1945, and she relocated to Miami, and later, Tampa, Florida. Hutton spent the remainder of her early life in Tampa, not knowing her father, who died June 24, 1956, from a heart attack at age 37. He was working as a Farm Editor for The Cotton Trade Journal, living in Shelby, Tennessee with his second wife, Mary Elizabeth (Everette) Hutton. He is buried at Oxford Memorial Cemetery, in Oxford, Mississippi. "Never meeting my father was the most painful thing in my life," Hutton said in 1996. "I look just like him and I'm named for him, but all I have are these two books of his letters and drawings from the war. The day of my birth he wrote and told me about our ancestors, what he thought was important in the world, what books I should read and what he wanted for me."^[3]

After her mother remarried, Hutton took the surname "Hall", although her stepfather never formally adopted her.^[4] She graduated from Chamberlain High School in Tampa in 1961^{[citation needed][5]} and was among the first students to attend the University of South Florida in 1961.^[6][7] Hutton later relocated with former Tampa disc jockey Pat Chamburs, a war veteran 19 years her senior who had lost a leg in a kamikaze attack, to New York City, where she worked as a "Bunny" waitress at the Playboy Club, at which time she made her first appearance on camera as a decoy contestant on To Tell The Truth in 1963.^[8] The pair lived in Europe, the Bahamas and later moved to New Orleans, where she attended Newcomb College, then a coordinate college within Tulane University,^[2][3] and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964.^[6]

Before becoming an established model, Hutton made her film debut in Paper Lion (1968), and later notices for her performances in James Toback's The Gambler (1974), opposite James Caan.^[35]

She also starred in John Carpenter's TV movie Someone's Watching Me! (1978) and played the female lead in American Gigolo (1980). She went on to appear in Lassiter (1984), Once Bitten (1985), a modest hit,^[36] and Guilty as Charged (1992). She also made an uncredited cameo appearance as a celebrity party guest in the 1985 film Perfect.

In 1984, Hutton joined the cast of the short-lived primetime soap drama, Paper Dolls, which co-starred Lloyd Bridges and Morgan Fairchild. In 1986, she co-starred in the lavish TV miniseries Sins, which starred Joan Collins, and also starred opposite Stacy Keach in The Return of Mike Hammer TV movie. In the spring of 1987, Hutton had a starring role opposite William Devane in a sci-fi themed CBS Movie of the Week titled Timestalkers, and later that year guest-starred in the primetime soap drama Falcon Crest for several episodes.

In 1995, Hutton was cast in the CBS soap opera Central Park West, playing the wealthy socialite Linda Fairchild until the show was canceled the following year.^[6][7]

The following year, Hutton's late-night talk show for Turner Original Production, Lauren Hutton and..., debuted and ran until 1997.^[18] Hutton's partner at the time, Luca Babini, was the director, set designer and post-production supervisor of the talk show, and the couple founded Lula Productions as part of their arrangement with the Turner media company.^[3]

Hutton appeared in her first feature film in two decades with the 2009 release of The Joneses, in which she starred alongside David Duchovny and Demi Moore. When asked about her decision to play the head of a marketing company, Hutton explained:

I thought it was an extraordinary script, and a great idea, this stealth marketing. My character had worked with Demi [Moore] when Demi was an 18-year-old, having her sitting on bar stools at expensive bars and ordering certain champagnes and certain cigarettes. And now she has little pods of these families all over the country, and she's got them in rented houses for a year at a whack to heist all the neighbors. And I thought that capitalism could be as vicious as anything they ever came up with in the U.S.S.R. And certainly to some degree, we do seem to be involved in that, don't we? All these people who do double jobs of acting were on red carpets wearing diamonds and $20,000 dresses, and that's a full-time job. I never did that.^[20]

Hutton was involved in a 27-year-long relationship with her manager Bob Williamson, who died in 1997.^[37] Williamson squandered some US$13 million of her money.^[4][37] Hutton later explained that he had saved her life on five occasions and made sure that she "didn't get seduced by the work." She spoke of a void that Williamson filled:

I didn't have a father, and I wanted to be a child with a protector. I'd never seen a shrink, and there was a psychological situation that clearly needed to be addressed. But, you know, I wanted to see the world and how people lived and think about who are we, how are we, why is the world? And Bob did that for me.^[12]

Hutton met Luca Babini on a film set in 1991 and he said of the relationship's development in 1996: "I was coming out of a divorce, and she became like a sister to me. Then I fell in love with her. And I loved her feet, which say so much about a person." Babini also referred to Hutton as "accessible and down to earth," and described her as a person with "very clear opinions" that she was willing to express.^[3]

In October 2000, Hutton joined a motorbike group, which included actors Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne and Jeremy Irons, to celebrate "The Art of the Motorcycle" exhibit at the Hermitage-Guggenheim museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. Prior to the journey, Hutton informed the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "I love the feeling of being a naked egg atop that throbbing steel. You feel vulnerable—but so alive." En route, while going over 100 miles (160 km) per hour, Hutton crashed near Hoover Dam, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada, and suffered multiple leg fractures, a fractured arm, broken ribs and sternum, and a punctured lung.^[7] Hopper later recalled from before the start of the ride: "She had on a little helmet, sort of tied under her chin. It was cute. And Jeremy [Irons] came up to her and said, 'You got to be kidding.' He took it off her and gave her a proper helmet."^[38]

Hutton is the original vice-president of the Guggenheim Museum Motorcycle Club, and, in 2003, was a board member of the National Museum of Women in Arts in Washington, D.C., US.^[18]

In July 2013, Hutton revealed that she was in the process of writing her memoir, which may be titled Smile, and also explained the value of traveling and exploration in her life thus far: "whenever I came back from Africa or the Antarctic, head swelling with the beauty of it all, I found I was loving life again. You look different because of everything that has gone on inside of you..."^[12]

She has lived in NoHo in Manhattan in New York City.^[39] As of 2004, Hutton resided mainly in Taos, New Mexico,^[40] where she owns a prefab steel home.^[41]

Hutton was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2007 as a conservationist and scuba advocate. She started scuba diving in the 1960s, and has dived worldwide. She used her status as a celebrity to promote marine conservation, particularly of sharks, and supports the Shark Research Institute. She has also supported the recreational activity of scuba diving in interviews, articles and personal appearances at dive shows.^[42]