Aimee Mullins

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Mullins at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

The artificially-legged Aimee Mullins watches the also artificially-legged Hugh Herr climb the wall at the MIT Media Lab's h2.0 symposium on 9 May, 2007.

Aimee Mullins (born 1976 in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is an American athlete, actress, and fashion model best known for her collegiate-level athletic accomplishments, despite a disability that resulted in the amputation of both of her legs.

[edit] Background

Mullins was born with fibular hemimelia (missing fibula bones) and, as a result, had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was just a year old. She is a graduate of Parkland High School in Allentown and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

While attending Georgetown University she competed against able-bodied athletes in NCAA Division I track and field events and set Paralympic records in 1996 in Atlanta in the 100-meter dash and the long jump. Her personal bests are: 15.77 seconds for the 100-meter dash, 34.60 seconds for the 200 meter, and 3.5 meters for the long-jump.

Also while at Georgetown, Mullins won a place on the Foreign Affairs internship program, working at The Pentagon. She also makes appearances as a motivational speaker.

[edit] Fashion model

In 1999, she modelled for British fashion designer Alexander McQueen in his London show, on a pair of hand-carved wooden prosthetic legs made from solid ash, with integral boots.^[1] She is able to change her height between 5ft 8 in and 6ft 1 by changing her legs.^[1] She has been named one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People.

[edit] Actress

In 2002, she appeared in Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3 as a cheetah woman (the Entered Novitiate and Oonagh MacCumhail). In 2006, she appeared in World Trade Center, playing the role of a reporter. She also appeared, in 2003, in the made-for-television version of Agatha Christie's Five Little Pigs, as the woman who asks Hercule Poirot to clear her dead mother of murder.

[edit] Films and television

• 2002 - Cremaster 3 (Cremaster Cycle), film directed by Matthew Barney.
• 2003 - Five Little Pigs
• 2006 - Marvelous
• 2006 - World Trade Center as a reporter
• 2008 - Quid Pro Quo (post production)

[edit] Books

Mullins been featured in the following books:

• Athlete (2002) ISBN 0-06-019553-3
• Laws of the Bandit Queens (2002) ISBN 0-609-80807-9
• The Prosthetic Impulse - Smith & Morra (eds.) (2006) ISBN 0-262-19530-5

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Aimee Mullins

• Aimee Mullins's Official Site at AimeeMullins.com
• Aimee Mullins at the Internet Movie Database
• Aimee Mullins at AllAmericanSpeakers.com
• TED Talks: Aimee Mullins: Running on high-tech legs, Filmed 1998
• TED Talks: Aimee Mullins: How my legs give me super-powers, Filmed 2009