Irina Shayk — model with roots in the USSR
Irina Valeryevna Shaykhlislamova, known professionally as Irina Shayk, was born on 6 January 1986 in Yemanzhelinsk, a coal-mining town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, then in the Russian SFSR. Her father, Valery Shaykhlislamov, a coal miner, was a Volga Tatar, and her mother, Olga, an ethnic Russian, taught music in a kindergarten; the family name derives from the Arabic title Shaykh al-Islām. She has an elder sister, Tatiana. She has said that she owes her looks to her father, and that people often take her for South American. Her father died when she was fourteen.
In 2004 she won a regional beauty contest in Chelyabinsk, which opened the way to modelling, and moved to Paris to work. In 2007 replaced the Brazilian model Ana Beatriz Barros as the face of the Italian lingerie brand Intimissimi; the same year she made her debut in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, in which she appeared every year until 2012.
On 14 February 2011 it was revealed on the Late Show with David Letterman that she was the cover model of that year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, the first Russian to appear on the cover; it was her fifth appearance in the magazine but her first on its cover. She had already covered GQ South Africa in August 2010 and Elle Spain that November, and further covers followed, including Tatler and Allure Russia in 2011 and Vogue Spain, her first Vogue cover, photographed by Giampaolo Sgura. She also became the face of a swimwear label and of a denim advertising campaign, and in November 2011 shared the cover of the second issue of Twelv magazine with a fellow Russian model. In 2014 she carried the placard for the Russian team at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, and that year made her film debut as Megara, the wife of Hercules, opposite Dwayne Johnson in Hercules.
She has supported a maternity hospital in her hometown of Yemanzhelinsk and is an ambassador of Pomogi ('Help'), a Russian charity that provides care for sick children. Her career has been built in Paris and New York, and she lives in New York, in Manhattan's West Village.
"Left the Urals for Paris after winning a regional beauty contest in 2004; later based in New York."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Yemanzhelinsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast (Russia)
Born in Yemanzhelinsk, a coal-mining town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, in 1986 to a Volga Tatar coal miner and a Russian kindergarten music teacher, she grew up there and began her career after winning a beauty contest in Chelyabinsk in 2004.
Yemanzhelinsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast (Russia). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.