Inside rise of model Irina Shayk from traumatic event when she was just six to dating Kanye, Bradley Cooper and Ronaldo
SHE is one of showbiz’s busiest daters, racking up so many celebrity exes she gives Leonardo DiCaprio a run for his money.
And with her jet-set lifestyle and jaw-dropping figure, it is not hard to see why so many famous men have fallen for Russian model Irina Shayk.
American football legend Tom Brady is the latest star to vie for her affections — much to the dismay of her ex, Bradley Cooper, who is dad to her daughter, Lea De Seine, six.
Just last month it was rumoured that Irina, 37, and A Star Is Born actor Bradley, 48, were on the verge of reuniting.
But now she has been spotted getting cosy with Tom, Bradley is said to fear the former quarterback will take her away from him forever.
A source said: “To say Bradley is not bothered by this would be a lie. He has been on and off and on with Irina and has so much love for her.
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“She is the mother to his girl and they are his two favourite women in the world. He feels like, for the first time, she met someone in Tom that would take her heart away from him forever.”
Tom, 45, who split from 43-year-old supermodel Gisele Bundchen in October after 13 years of marriage, follows a long line of high-profile exes that includes Kanye West and footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
Irina was briefly linked with Titanic heartthrob Leonardo, 48, too, and was even wrongly accused of having a fling with scandal-hit Fifa president Sepp Blatter, 87.
Tom was snapped picking Irina up from an LA hotel, driving her to his home then dropping her back wearing the same outfit the next morning. He was also seen caressing her face in the car.
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‘Gun to my head’
But one source said that Bradley, who dated Irina from 2015 to 2019 and has been on and off since, is “taking a “wait-and-see attitude”, noting it could be over “in two, three weeks”.
Worth £19million, Irina is certainly more than a celebrity Wag. And the statuesque Russian has built her fortune from modest beginnings.
Born in 1986, the same year as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Irina had a poverty-stricken childhood in the depths of the old Soviet Union.
She still has memories of the family’s fight for survival and recalls how armed robbers raided their home when she was just six years old.
She told Vogue: “We had no washer, no dryer, no diapers. My mum had to stand in line for two or three hours with my sister, who’s 18 months older than me, just to get a bottle of milk.”
Irina said her mum Olga taught her how to survive “early in life, because in Russia you have to”.
She added: “In the summer you grow vegetables and bury them so in winter time you have potatoes, carrots, everything, so you can survive.
“When I moved to New York I was shocked that people go to the supermarket and buy potatoes. I was like, ‘That’s crazy’.”
The family saved for a car — seen as a badge of honour in her tiny town near the Kazakhstan border — but it was stolen after armed men burst into their home.
Irina said: “My father worked 20 years and finally bought a car. To have a car in the village, it was really like you were the king.
“He decided to sell it and was planning to put the money towards a new house and college and maybe another car. But when I was six we got robbed. I opened the door and three guys wearing masks came in and they were pointing a gun to my head”
After fighting the robbers, Irina’s dad, who was a coal miner, jumped out of a first-floor window to get help and the attackers fled.
Her dad was a Volga Tatar — the Turkic ethnic group who mainly live in the eastern central part of Russia — and it was from him that she inherited her stunning dark looks.
He died of pneumonia aged 44, when Irina was 14, leaving mum Olga to raise her and sister Tatiana alone.
Struggling to find a job, Olga, a pianist, taught music to local nursery kids.
After high school, Irina went to study marketing and also started a course at a local beauty school.
Next door to the school was a modelling agency and it was not long before she was scouted. Irina says she had never even read a fashion magazine, let alone harboured dreams of becoming a model.
She added: “I had no idea what modelling would be like. All I was thinking about was that maybe I could get some catalogue work and help my family.”
Aged 20, she was signed to an agency in Paris where she and other girls scraped a living on forty euros a week.
While her stick-thin contemporaries got jobs easily, Irina resisted the pressure from advertisers to lose weight, saying: “The other girls were making fun of me, saying, ‘She doesn’t look like a model’.
“Every time I would go for castings they would never hire me because I wouldn’t fit in small clothes.
“I had darker skin and I was more on the sexy side. I had boobs. Through my relationships and life experience I’ve learned to stand my ground. I came into this business stamped as a commercial model and I embraced it.”
Irina had the last laugh when she became the first Russian model to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition in 2011.
That was the same year she got engaged to football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, 38, who she meet in 2009 during an Armani photoshoot.
Brazilian model Andressa Urach, known as Miss BumBum, claimed in 2017 that the former Man United player cheated on Irina with her — something he furiously denied.
When Irina and Ronaldo split in 2015, she was linked to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, 51, after they co-starred in 2014 film Hercules.
She dated Linkin Park drummer Rob Bourdon, 44, for two years from 2007 and she also became the first woman to be linked to rapper Kanye West, 46, after his break-up with Kim Kardashian.
In August 2021, the pair were spotted on a cosy French trip but sources said Irina was keen to “cool off”.
But one of her most significant romances was with Bradley.
The pair split in 2019 after he sparked speculation of an affair with a chemistry-filled performance of hit song Shallow at the Oscars with his A Star Is Born co-star Lady Gaga.
Gaga was quick to dismiss the rumours.
But a source later told People magazine that the fall-out had affected Bradley’s relationship, saying: “The rumours didn’t help, especially with his constant travels [promoting the film]”.
After their split, Irina said: “Life after Bradley is definitely reflective, and I think in all good relationships you bring your best and your worst — it’s just the nature of a human being. Two great people don’t have to make a good couple.”
Last month it looked like Irina and her movie star ex were headed for a happy-ever-after reunion when they were pictured cuddling on a stroll in New York.
Last year, Irina courted controversy by seeming to back Russian dictator Vladimir Putin after his invasion of Ukraine.
She posted a picture of a salad with the phrase “Russianzz on Wednesday” — thought to be in reference to Russia’s notorious Z war symbol.
She later denied any wrongdoing, posting on Instagram: “Sometimes a salad is just a salad.”
Despite her busy love life, Irina has previously said that men find her intimidating.
Referring to herself in the third person, she told Vogue: “I’ve had several men in my life who have said they are scared of Irina. Well, first of all there’s a stereotype about Russian women — you know, she loves diamonds and vodka. I mean, hell, do I like that. Who doesn’t!
“I’m a tough person. I have a strong personality and I think some men are scared of that.”
But she says her tough upbringing made her resilient to any criticism, including in the modelling world, even though she was bullied as a child.
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She said: “I was really skinny and have darker skin, so boys and girls made fun of me.
“I always thought, ‘I want to be like everyone else’, so nobody would pick on me. I was really shy as a child. And I kind of hated being in pictures. Look at me now!”