Caprice Bourret Bio

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Caprice Bourret Pictures

Caprice Valerie Bourret (born October 24, 1971) is an American lingerie model, actress, television personality and businesswoman. Much of her career has been in the United Kingdom where she is known by her first name. Although she has also made a number of appearances in American television programmes such as The Surreal Life.

Caprice Bourret: Biography

Caprice Bourret - Early life

Bourret (pronounced Bour-Ray) was born in Whittier, California to working class parents of French and Jewish ancestry. Dale Bourret and Valerie Pion; who originate from Quebec, Canada. After growing up in Hacienda Heights, California, Caprice moved to the United Kingdom in 1996 to further her career in modeling. An appearance in a see-through dress at the 1996 British National Television Awards ceremony helped gain her public recognition.

Caprice Bourret - Modeling career

At 25 she became one of the UK's best known models after becoming one of the models for Wonderbra. She has appeared on the covers of GQ, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Maxim, FHM and the 1998 Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated. Bourret posed nude for the March, 2000 issue of Playboy magazine. She was voted GQ magazine's Woman of the Year and Maxim's International Woman of the Year in three consecutive years. She has been featured in television ad campaigns for Diet Coke and Pizza Hut. She is currently the face of Paradise Poker.com, and appears on billboards and advertisements in London and elsewhere.

Caprice Bourret - Lingerie line

In 2000, Bourret entered a licensing agreement with Debenhams, giving her name to a lingerie range. The line is now in its sixth season but has yet to make it to high-street success despite a 2009 relaunch in Liverpool. She also founded the company "by Caprice", which launched her own range of hair styling products including hair straighteners, however these didn't sell well and were quickly discounted to below half price by retailers.

Caprice Bourret - Other work

Bourret appeared on stage in London in The Vagina Monologues and Rent. She also appeared in the low-budget films Hollywood Flies, Nailing Vienna, and Jinxed In Love, the soap operas Hollyoaks and Dream Team, and the one-off comedy show Hospital.

In 1998, Caprice became the host of a UK television series, "Caprice's Travels". The series involves Bourret's tour through several major holiday destinations across the world. Bourret has hosted Friday Night's All Wright as well as several award shows, including the European MTV awards and the Monaco World Music Awards in 1997, the British National Television Awards in 1996, 1997 and 1998, and several series for the television channels VH1 and E! Entertainment.

In 1999, Bourret released her first single as a pop singer, "Oh Yeah" (#24), then follow-up single "Once Around the Sun" (also #24), which was co-written by '90s one-hit wonder Chesney Hawkes.

In early 2005, she appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in the UK, where other contestants implied that she was only taking part in order to boost sales of her products. During a boozy game of 'spin the bottle confessions' on the show, she confessed to thinking about having a lesbian romp.

She was a cast member on the fifth season of the VH1 reality series The Surreal Life and has previously appeared in the reality shows Celebrities Under Pressure, Celebrities Disfigured, Three Celebrities and a Baby, and Road Raja.

Bourret travelled to Los Angeles, where she played in the World Poker Championship, coming in at 120th out of 700, beating actors Ben Affleck, Matthew Perry, Tobey Maguire, and James Woods.

In May 2006 Caprice captained the England Women's team in the Celebrity World Cup Soccer Six tournament, in which they lost to Brazil in the final. In June 2006 she starred in the English independent movie Perfect Woman, produced by Olympus Productions Limited.

In South Africa, she produced the hit off-Broadway musical Debbie Does Dallas at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre in January and February, 2007.

On 13th November, 2008 she came joint second with Jimmy Osmond in Celebrity Come Dine with Me, along with Nicky Clarke and Nancy Sorrell.

Caprice Bourret - Personal life

When she arrived in London she posed as a celebrity "It" girl from a rich American family. In a documentary series, Filthy Rich: Daddy's Girls, she claimed to come from a moneyed family who lived in a security-screened Hollywood mansion. In fact, she was raised - mainly by her single mother - in a three-bedroom bungalow in an ordinary suburb of Los Angeles called Hacienda Heights. Her father was a used-car salesman who split from her mother when Caprice was five. Penniless Valerie Bourret was arrested on charges of credit-card theft; she had hatched a plot to defraud retailers with a young male accomplice and was given three years' probation.

In August 2003 21 year old Alexander Davis, heir to a £4bn oil fortune, asked Caprice to marry him. At the time Caprice was claiming to be 28, but she was later exposed as being more than ten years older than the boy. Davis' mother was quoted as saying "Alex needs to be studying not hanging out with a woman old enough to be his mother", and threatening to cut him out any legacy. They split up less than two years later.

Caprice then sued a sunday newspaper for accusing her of being a 'gold digger', and claimed during the court hearings that the boy's mother wrote 'Caprice is perfect for my son. I look forward to planning their wedding'. Caprice was later forced to hand the money back when it was discovered she had used a forged letter to win the case. It is unclear whether she repaid the money by taking it back from the charities she had stated she'd given the libel damages to.

In August 2006, defended by Nick Freeman, Caprice was banned from driving for one year and ordered to pay £2,500 costs when she was found guilty of drink-driving. She was held in police cells for several hours after she allegedly argued with officers who ordered her to take a breath test. "Do you know who I am?" she is said to have protested. Freeman claimed the model had a urinary tract infection, and that she was affected by the drugs she was taking. She owns two homes in South Africa, one in Cape Town's Camps Bay and another in Johannesburg's Bryanston.

In 2006 she was exposed for her false claim to have been 'Miss Teen California' when the organiser of the competition stated he'd never heard of her. MTC organiser Frank Lameira stated 'Caprice whomever never won Miss Teenage California and never was a participant in Miss Teenage California. The Miss Teenage California Pageant was created by myself in 1980. Perhaps she won another state teen pageant in California prior to 1980 that had a similar title, but I can assure you the Miss Teenage California's first pageant was in 1980.' He goes on to point enquirers to his website of previous winners. Caprice appears to have claimed it was some sort of mistake, however she has made the false claim in interviews such as one in Stuff Magazine published 19th February 2003 (which also includes the false claim that she is 27) with quotations such as "I was Miss Teen California. I had to do parades and openings and wave and, you know, the things that a beauty queen does. God, I'm glad those days are over."

Caprice Bourret - Charity work

Bourret has been an ambassador for the Prince's Trust, an ambassador for ChildLine, and is a committee member of Jewish Blind and Disabled, Action on Addiction and Breast Cancer Awareness.