Jamaican singer, actress and model Grace Jones was BOTD in 1948. Born in Spanish Town, she was raised in a strict Pentecostal Christian family, and left in the care of her maternal grandparents after her parents moved to the United States. When she was 13, she and her siblings moved to Syracuse, New York to live with their parents. She studied theatre at a community college in Syracuse and began rebelling against her upbringing by wearing makeup. She eventually joined a summer stock theatre company in Philadelphia, experimenting with psychedelic drugs, working as a go-go dancer and hanging out with the Hells Angels. At 18, she was signed to Wilhelmina Models, moving to Paris in 1970 where she worked with Helmut Newton and Yves Saint Laurent and shared an apartment with Jerry Hall and Jessica Lange. Jones’ height, androgynous appearance and killer cheekbones caused a sensation in the largely white fashion world, and she became one of the first Black models to appear on the cover of American Vogue. Returning to New York in the 1970s, she became a fixture of Manhattan nightlife, partying at Studio 54 with Andy Warhol. She began a singing career in 1977, scoring hits with I Need a Man and a cover of Edith Piaf’s La vie en rose, turning heads with her theatrical and sexually brazen performances. She achieved global success with her 1981 album Nightclubbing, featuring electro-disco covers of songs by Tom Petty, Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Marianne Faithfull, and her self-penned hit single Pull Up to the Bumper. The album’s cover, designed by Jones’ boyfriend Jean-Paul Goude, cemented her image as a Nefertite-like androygyne, with razor-cropped hair, dramatic makeup and a shoulderpadded Armani suit. Her 1985 album Slave to the Rhythm was an international hit, with a now-iconic cover photo of a naked, digitally-altered Jones in a one-legged yoga pose. Her extremely strange film career included playing an Amazon in Conan the Destroyer and Bond villainess May Day in A View To a Kill (followed by a well-publicised relationship with her View co-star Dolph Lundgren). After a fallow period in the 1990s when she raised her son in London (doing school pick-ups in Thierry Mugler jumpsuits), she made a spectacular comeback in 2008 with a series of live concerts. In 2012, she was the unexpected highlight of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee concert, performing Slave to the Rhythm in a red superhero helmet and hotpants while twirling a hula hoop. Now hailed as one of pop’s most original performers, her music and carefully curated image has been mimicked by Madonna, Beyoncé, Janelle Monáe, Lady Gaga and Nicky Minaj. In 2015, she published her memoir I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, written with Paul Morley.