We thought we knew Paris Hilton. We were wrong. This is the untold true story that shaped the woman, and the iconic character she created.
Paris Whitney Hilton was on born February 17, 1981 and is an American media personality, businesswoman, socialite, model, singer, actress, and DJ. She is a great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels. Born in New York City and raised there and in Beverly Hills, California, Hilton began her modeling career as a teenager when she signed with New York-based modeling development agency Trump Model Management. David Lachapelle soon photographed her for the September 2000 issue of Vanity Fair. Her late-night persona and reputation as a socialite made her a fixture of tabloid journalism, and Hilton was proclaimed "New York's leading It Girl" in 2001. In 2003, a leaked 2001 tape with her then-boyfriend Rick Salomon, later released as 1 Night in Paris, catapulted her into global fame, and the reality television series The Simple Life, in which she starred with her friend and socialite counterpart Nicole Richie, started its five-year run with 13 million viewers, on Fox.