Heathy Info Plus: Swimsuit Model: Brooklyn in the House

Check out scenes from Brooklyn's cover shoot:

When you're 5'10" with sparkling blue eyes, flowing blond hair, and a traffic-stopping body, come-ons from guys are de rigueur. But a recent encounter took 23-year-old Brooklyn Decker by surprise.

While walking down the street in Santa Monica, California, she was approached by a race-car driver from Pennsylvania, who explained he was looking for girls to be on a calendar.

"It's classy," he assured. "You'll wear my racing jersey and lie on my car, and I'll take pictures. You got an agent?"

Brooklyn could have responded that she's with the Marilyn modeling agency, one of the biggest in the world. Or asked the guy if he happened to catch her on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue earlier this year. Or informed him that she'd just wrapped a movie due out in February called Just Go With It, starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler.

But that's just not Brooklyn's style. Instead, she heard the guy out, waited a few beats, and then let him down easy: "You know, I'm under contract with a company, so I can't do anything other than that. But I appreciate the offer and wish you the best of luck."

Nice Girls Finish First
Two days later, relaxing after her Women's Health cover shoot, she good-naturedly shrugs off the pinup proposal, saying, "He was really nice about it." Curled up on a sofa, Brooklyn looks stunning in a loose-fitting bohemian-print top and skinny jeans. But the most striking thing about her is how down-to-earth and, well, nice she is. She's more of a hugger than a handshaker, and she effusively thanks people for the most insignificant of gestures, like when a member of the photo crew retrieves the iPhone she had left in another room. "It's like she's somebody out of a Jimmy Stewart movie," marvels Dennis Dugan, director of Just Go With It.

In actuality, she grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. The daughter of a nurse and a sales associate at a medical company, Brooklyn wanted to become a broadcaster or a veterinarian. But that was before a modeling scout discovered her at a mall when she was 16. She moved to New York two years later and snagged a spot in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue a week after landing in the city. Still, she believed that in order to hit it big in an industry in which flat chests and bony clavicles rule, she had to shrink down. "I have a curvy body. I have boobs. I'm a size 4. In modeling, that's often too big," she says.

For a while, she did juice fasts to try to drop pounds quickly, but a pep talk from her dad convinced her to stop that craziness and focus on working out and eating well. "Oddly enough," she says, "[after that] more people wanted to work with me."

Advertising campaigns for the Gap and Victoria's Secret followed, as did offers for guest spots on shows such as Ugly Betty. Then came a plum role in the upcoming movie Just Go With It, playing Adam Sandler's love interest. She praises her costars for being "amazingly kind" and dismisses rumors of Jennifer Aniston's on-set jealousy as "totally bogus...I couldn't have had a bigger supporter."

No doubt, Brooklyn's goofy personality helped endear her to the cast. "When people hear 'bikini model,' they have one thing on their mind," she says. "Then they see you're someone who shows up to the set in pajamas and no makeup, watches sports, and belches."

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Last updated: November 22, 2010 Issue date: September 2010