Louise Glover

Louise Glover (born 8 February 1983) is an English model and photographer. She is well known from her work as a glamour model, with appearances in British lad mags, including FHM, Bizarre, Maxim, Loaded, and tabloids such as the News of the World, The Sun and Daily Star. She is the first British model to be named "Model of the Year" in Playboy Special Editions.

Glover grew up with a troubled childhood, with drug abusing parents, in foster care, and eventually living alone from the age of 15. She struggled to become a model from an early age. At the start of her career, she was sentenced to community service for not reporting her early earnings while receiving welfare. Glover has been a continued participant in and supporter of the charity Raleigh International, which she credits for contributing to her early motivation.

Early life

Louise Glover was born on 8 February 1983 in St Helens, Merseyside, England. She had a troubled childhood; her parents had problems with drugs and spent time in jail. She ended up growing up partly in St Helens with her father's family, partly in Great Yarmouth with her mother's, and partly in foster care, which, she says, led to her being bullied and made her a very shy and quiet child. She changed homes and schools many times. At age 15, she was released from foster care, and got her own apartment.

Glover had started her modelling career early, when at the age of 9, a photographer noticed her on a shopping trip with her mother, and compared her to a young version of Lorraine Chase from the British TV show Emmerdale. Glover found she enjoyed being photographed, and planned to become a professional model from the age of 12. She began entering modelling contests at the age of 14, and beauty pageants, to get noticed as a model. She was a regional finalist for the top beauty title Miss Great Britain at the age of 17, and traveled to London to be a national finalist at the age of 18, while studying Holistic Therapy at St Helens College.

Living on her own in the charitable Grosvenor Housing Association's Ravenhead Foyer in St. Helens, Glover had to appeal to others for financial support for the contest entry fee and travel costs. She found time to raise funds to help others, however, traveling to Belize in 2000 with a Raleigh International project, and to Israel in 2001, to teach English language to disadvantaged children. The ten weeks in Belize had a great impact on her motivation. "It was the best thing I could have ever done at that point in my life", she says.

Career

Glover began getting paid modelling work in 2002.

She became known as a glamour model, appearing in British lad mags, including FHM, Bizarre, Maxim, Loaded, and tabloids News Of The World, The Sun and Daily Star. She was featured in TV shows and documentaries including Dream Team, National IQ Test, and Blaggers. She has also appeared as a clothing model, for Ed Hardy clothing, Sex Symbol denim wear, Austin Reed ladies wear, and on front covers, photo shoots and interviews for magazines in South America, USA, Canada, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Russia, South Africa, and Australia.

Glover kept supporting Raleigh International after her modelling success, raising funds for the group, and traveling to Malaysia in 2004 to help build a footbridge and teach English to residents of a remote village. She climbed Mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Malaysia, to help Raleigh International raise funds. She ran in the 2005 London Marathon to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

Legal problems

In August 2005, Glover was sentenced to 240 hours community service by St Helens magistrates after admitting claiming £14,831 in welfare benefits between August 2002 and November 2004 while posing for newspapers and magazines. She stated that she did not know the small and irregular earnings would make a difference to her benefits, and that she had been sometimes too depressed to leave her flat. While performing the community service in 2006, she was assaulted twice by a group of girls, one attack leaving her with a broken nose. This cost her a month of modelling work, and contributed to her depression, but also to her taking kickboxing classes to learn to defend herself.

Playboy

Glover says appearing in Playboy magazine was an important goal for her ever since becoming a glamour model. She met publisher Hugh Hefner during a photo shoot in Los Angeles, when she was 21. He offered her a test shoot, and she visited the Playboy Mansion. Glover appeared on the cover of Playboy Vixens magazine in January 2006, in the "Top 100 Sexiest Playboy Models" 2006 pictorial special edition, and won Playboy Special Editions Model of the Year 2006; she was the first British winner. To celebrate her success, she was portrayed on the cover and inside a special edition of Playboy Lingerie, which she calls possibly her favourite magazine cover.

Glover became the UK's Penthouse "Pet of the Month" for March 2007 after posing for a celebrity cover and 10 page feature. She has appeared in the American edition of Playboy magazine for September 2007, and on the cover of Playboy France. Her beauty pageants also continued, and after three tries, she won Miss Hawaiian Tropic UK 2007, and competed in the international finals in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Besides modelling, Glover has attempted to expand her career into other areas, as a fall-back if she can't make it as a model. She has maintained a web site as a professional photographer since 2004. In 2006 Glover co-launched an adult lingerie online store called Female Bliss, and signed a contract with a Swedish record label as an aspiring singer. In 2007, she appeared in her first music video acting role, for Scouting for Girls' single "She's So Lovely". In 2007, Glover was interested in expanding from glamour modeling into fitness modelling, and was in talks with WWE to become a professional wrestler, which were put on hold due to her lack of US citizenship.

Personal life

As of 2007, Glover lives in London, but travels the world for recreation as well as photo shoots. She has loved to travel since her early days working for the charity Raleigh International in Malaysia and Belize. She spends so much time in the United States that she says she should have been born in America. In 2007, she married, to a London man named Mark Cullern, in a ceremony held in the Grand Canyon.

Glover's favorite sports pastime is scuba diving in her travels, with a goal to scuba dive in the seven seas, and to be able to teach scuba internationally (again, as something to fall back on if the modelling doesn't work out). She has scuba dived in the Red Sea, passed open water certification in Malta, and an advanced scuba diving course in Borneo.

See also

• List of glamour models

External links

• Template:MySpace
• 2007 Exclusive Interview with Louise Glover