Amanda Lear

Amanda Lear started as a fashion model in the mid-1960s, working for Paco Rabanne and Ossie Clark, before meeting Salvador Dalí and becoming his closest friend and muse for almost 20 years. She surfaced in public consciousness as the cover model for Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure in 1973, then pivoted hard into music. Signed to Ariola Records, she became a million-album-selling disco star from the mid-1970s to early 1980s, charting across continental Europe and Scandinavia with hits like "Blood and Honey," "Queen of Chinatown," and "Follow Me" - her album Sweet Revenge was the commercial peak in 1978. By the mid-1980s she'd shifted to Italian television, hosting primetime shows while still recording and re-recording older material with mixed results. She has since split her time among music, TV, film, and painting - the last of which she calls her biggest passion, exhibiting regularly since the early 1980s and writing books including My Life with Dalí. She's sold an alleged 27 million records and remains a widely recognized gay icon, though the chart dominance never returned.