Paris Hilton, American model, media personality, actress, singer, DJ, author and businesswoman
Paris Whitney Hilton (born February 17, 1981) is an American media personality, socialite, businesswoman, model, singer, DJ, and actress. Born in New York City, and raised there and in Beverly Hills, California, Hilton is a great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels. She first attracted tabloid attention in the late 1990s, when she became a fixture in NYC's late-night scene. She ventured into modeling at age 19, signing with Donald Trump's agency Trump Model Management. After David LaChapelle photographed her and her sister Nicky for the September 2000 issue of Vanity Fair, Hilton was proclaimed "New York's leading It Girl" in 2001. In 2003, a leaked 2001 sex 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 on Fox, reaching 13 million viewers.
Hilton published her debut book, Confessions of an Heiress (2004), which became a New York Times Best Seller, landed her first major film role in the horror remake House of Wax (2005) and released her self-titled debut studio album, Paris (2006), which reached number six on the Billboard 200, and respectively produced the successful single "Stars Are Blind". Her other reality television ventures include MTV's Paris Hilton's My New BFF franchise (2008–2011), Oxygen's The World According to Paris (2011), Viceland's Hollywood Love Story (2018), Netflix's Cooking with Paris (2021), and Peacock's Paris in Love (2021–2022). She has played small roles in Hollywood films and television series, produced several of her own projects, and recorded a line of standalone singles. She was also the subject of the documentaries Paris, Not France (2008), The American Meme (2018) and This Is Paris (2020). In 2012, Hilton made her debut as a DJ at Brazil's Pop Music Festival. She held a residence at the Amnesia nightclub in Ibiza between 2013 and 2017, was the highest-paid female DJ in 2014, and has performed at various festivals, such as Summerfest and Tomorrowland. In 2021, Hilton began hosting her podcast show, This is Paris, on IHeartRadio.A polarizing and often derided celebrity, Hilton is credited with influencing the revival of the "famous for being famous" phenomenon throughout the 2000s, and was, for a number of years, one of the world's most ubiquitous public figures. She appeared in the 2007 Guinness World Records as the Most Overrated Celebrity, while Forbes ranked her as the Most Overexposed Celebrity in 2006 and 2008. Critics indeed suggest that she exemplifies the celebutante—a household name not through talent or work, but through inherited wealth and lavish lifestyle. Hilton has parlayed her media fame into an eponymous brand, which includes 19 product lines, 45 boutiques worldwide, and an urban condominium development in Manila, Philippines. Her perfume line alone has brought in over US$2.5 billion in revenue to date. Variety named her its "Billion Dollar Entrepreneur" in 2011.