Perhaps you just had to be there.

There was a time in the 1970s when Christie Brinkley’s face – and fame – was so pervasive that she can remember being on the cover of 11 magazines at the same time, including Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle and Harper’s Bazaar.  

“When I could go to the kiosk, or the news rack, I would see myself staring back, all lined up,” the OG stunner (and one of the OG celebrity vegetarians!) told Zoomer recently.

This was, of course, at a time when magazines were the social media, and the gravity of celebrity moved in a way that’s hard to imagine in our world of Hadids and Jenners. Brinkley, now 71, recalls one year where she was on the front of Glamour every second month, and another year when she was home for only 143 days – the rest she was “on location.” The rainforest of blonde, with those alpine cheeks, was also beaming out from our TVs, too, as the star of commercials for dozens of brands, including Revlon, Breck shampoo and Bloomingdale’s.

And this was all before Brinkley’s fame supernovaed the next decade when New York magazine declared her look as the one that “defined the Reagan Cold War years.” She essentially turned into a precursor of the “supermodel” era to come in the ’90s. And her name was lodged forever more into the Boomer-verse as the “Uptown Girl” – the muse of her then-husband Billy Joel’s hit song and music video. (While they divorced in 1994, the couple have stayed friends and Brinkley recently sent messages of support to Joel, who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder.) 

No surprise, Uptown Girl is also the name of her new memoir, and tells of the peripatetic life of a Malibu beauty: Brinkley was discovered outside a phone booth in Paris, had four tumultuous marriages, and, of course, there was all that epic globe-trotting, from the Seychelles to the Cote d’Azur, Senegal to Marrakech, from being feted at Studio 54 to the odd drop-in at Buckingham Palace.

Taking us into Brinkley’s world of searching, and unbridled optimism, the memoir uncovers a woman who’s been a true Zelig during so many monumental events: whether it’s in Moscow, with Joel, when he was the first U.S. pop star to play a full concert after the curtain of the Cold War fell or in the room with a galaxy of legends as We Are the World was recorded in 1985. 

Zoomer recently caught up with the 71-year-old icon. 

You write that “When you believe in magic, magic happens” and also that “there are many things in my life I can’t explain…it’s part of the magic and mystery of being alive.” And in many ways your story does seem like a fairy tale, and unfolds like a film, the way you tell it. Have you always looked at things that way?

Absolutely. Even as a kid, I liked pretending I was in a movie. I used to look at my feet on my beach and there were rock piles on the beach, and I’d make up these stories: Then she found her own little island. My life has always been me creating it from the get-go.

That certainly rings true in the chapters where you describe living and loving in Paris as a young person. That move was inspired by your love of the French film Umbrellas of Cherbourg, with Catherine Deneuve, n’est pas?

I remember seeing it – and she was so beautiful. I cried so hard at the ending, and so wanted them to be there. Happy ever after! And was so moved by the music. I started learning French because of that movie. I loved revisiting my Parisian years in my book…

It’s a good reminder – from your many travels, living in Greece, spending time in Morocco, etc. – that back then when you were away you were truly away. Siloed. Not living in dual timelines: your physical location and the world on your phone from back home. There was no easy communication with loved ones.

Thank goodness I was a letter writer because my letters home really did give me a lot of detail [for the book]. And good thing my mother had kept those letters. I also did drawings. So I have complete drawings of my room in Greece and in Paris! It was amazing to see when I first left home and went to Europe that I left with all my possessions in my backpack. All my worldly possessions I could hold in my backpack and in my hand. I had no plan.

So, 500 magazine covers later…

I stopped counting.

You stopped counting! Makes sense. You write in the book “Sometimes the things you believe are your drawbacks are actually what set you apart and make you stand out and shine.” Tell me about that.

For instance, when I first started modelling in Paris, my figure was much curvier than the models at that moment. So, I was aware of my hips and my thighs. I didn’t know what to do, how to pose. I was like: Where do I put my hands? What do I do? I was literally swerving, moving my hands through my curls, moving my hands down my body. And they said: look at those moves! They said I was smokin’! So moving out of absolute fear actually worked for me. And those extra curves were what they were looking for, it turns out.

One of the pleasures of your memoir is travelling the world with you. It has a you-are-there quality about it. Where would you time-travel back to, if you could?

I think I would have to go back to Morocco with Helmut Newton (during a famous shoot for Vogue). I absolutely love Morocco! My favourite artist is Matisse – and I love feeling like I’m in a Matisse painting. I feel so happy when I have bougainvillea around me. The draping. The squares. But, the south of France, too! Doing the Chanel commercial [in the 1980s]. I loved that trip, too.

St. Barts also, of course, holds a special place in your heart. It is where you first met your ex, Billy Joel, in a little shack of a bar. You paint a vivid picture of that night. Billy got on the piano and serenaded you – but in an amazing twist of fate, a young Whitney Houston also happened to be on the island, and in the bar, and she sang that night, too!

I mean, c’mon. It is one of the best meet-cute moments of all time. St. Barts then was pretty quiet. You read the book, so you know: I did not know who Billy Joel was.

And then you continued to date him…despite his shoes, as you say in your book?

He was not my type, really. And the shoes were not great. My mom told me: “You can change a guy’s shoes, you can change his hair, but you cannot change his heart, his soul. And he makes you laugh, that is the part of him that you need to focus on. 

Your eventual wedding to him was a crazy paparazzi event at the time, on the cover of People. And you famously exchanged vows underneath the Statue of Liberty. I have to ask: because of that, are you reminded of your ex every time you fly into New York, or see the harbour?!

I always loved [the Statue of Liberty] and that she was a gift of France. The meaning of her! We were thrilled to be under her, in a way to say: we do not feel like we are giving up our freedom to each other, we feel like we are free to choose each other. It was a beautiful take on freedom.

Ok, and it was amazing to read about you being in the room – one of the few – when We Are the World was being recorded for LiveAid. There with Michael Jackson,  Diana Ross, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney…

Stevie Wonder! Standing there with him, as Bob Dylan comes over, saying: “I don’t know how to sing this song!” And Stevie telling him: “Well, you sing it like Bob Dylan.” Which he went on to show him. And I’m like: How am I with Stevie Wonder as he [does an impression of] Bob Dylan to Bob Dylan. How lucky am I?

You’ve had your ups and downs, like we all do. But you remain such a sunny person. Your secret?

It sounds like a cliche, but my mom and dad always raised me to be optimistic and grateful. And to count my blessings. We hear so much about gratitude, but if you really, really start counting, it is what it is about.