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John Foster Meet The Model: John Foster John Foster
is an unlikely hero. He's the sort of good guy you'd expect to find
wearing a fireman's uniform or working in the Peace Corps. He's selfless,
altruistic — genuinely kind-hearted. He's educated and ambitious
while at the same time humble and centered. He's a fighter, whose past
harbors harrowing brushes with adversity and inspiring stories of personal
triumph. His list of could-have-beens includes Naval pilot, Olympian,
and brain surgeon. He's a daredevil, who tests his strength and skill
without recklessly risking his health or safety. And he's a model.
And John
Foster isn't just any model. If you've kept even the most fleeting tabs
on men's fashion in the past decade, then you've seen his strong features
and his deep blue eyes before. He's decorated the covers of international
fashion magazines on nearly every continent. He's been all over the
pages of GQ.
He's easily associated with his work for Dolce & Gabbana and countless
other designers in the rough and tumble world of high fashion. In that
world, John Foster is something of a superstar, and here's the back
story.
John attended
college in Upstate New York on a Navy ROTC scholarship. After studying
biology and psychology, he reported to flight school in Pensacola, Florida.
Pensacola Beach is now John's home, but a lot of things occurred in
the interim.
John's
mother was a language teacher, and his father was an engineer. Admiring
his father as young boys do, John set his sights on becoming an engineer
as well. By the time he was in high school, that aspiration had undergone
a slight overhaul: he set his heart on a career in medicine. A keen
interest in neurobiology had John leaning in the direction of neurosurgery,
but his natural strength and his skill in wood and metal-working —
coupled with his compelling desire to work with and help people —
turned his interests to a field that seemed to capitalize on his talents
and desires: orthopedic surgery. Obviously, the absence of an "M.D."
behind his name is your first clue that something diverted John from
his hippocratic goal. That something was a career in modeling.
On his
way to starting medical school, John wanted to make some extra money.
So, when an offer came his way to go to Europe and do some modeling,
he took it. He went to Milan, but he didn't end up making the big bucks
he had anticipated, so he found his way back to New York, where the
work started rolling in. That's when John really began to make a name
for himself in the industry, and that was certainly not lost on us.
International
Male began courting John as a prospective model 7 or 8 years ago, when
his career was white hot, and his agents and designer clients were very
possessive of him. After years of persistent haranguing, we succeeded
in getting him into our book and onto our cover, and frankly, we're
lucky. John never expected that he would still be making his living
in front of the camera nearly a decade after he cut his modeling teeth.
"The biggest reason I kept at it as long as I did is that I enjoyed
the travel — and, of course, the money." But the travel wasn't
always a walk in the park. John describes a seven-day trip with Esquire
Gentleman in Ecuador during which he found himself carrying a baby
tiger that ended up locking its teeth over John's well-known face. "Two
of its teeth were up my nose, and the other two were up over the top
of my head. I heard the photographer say, 'Don't move!' and believe
me I didn't." His scrape with nature's feral side left him none the
worse for wear, though. He still cherishes outdoor adventures and leads
a sport-filled lifestyle that would leave most of us coughing in the
dust.
When we
spoke with John, he had just returned from a two-week ski trip. He's
been skiing since the tender age of five. He rides a motorcycle, enjoys
cliff jumping, and is a certified skydiving instructor and tandem master,
averaging 750 jumps a year. But this daredevil isn't sporting a death
wish by any means. He's had his share of scrapes and bruises, but no
major injuries mar his record. He attributes this to his conscientious
attention to safety. "[Skydiving] is really a very safe sport unless
you do risky things," he says. "When you're jumping alone, you can come
in at 40 or 50 miles an hour and hit the ground too hard. But I did
a tandem jump with an 84 year-old woman, who wanted to skydive for her
birthday, and we did a tiptoe landing. Her feet never touched the ground."
With a four-year total of 2200 safe jumps behind him, John's commitment
to safe sporting appears to have served him well.
John hasn't
completely escaped the clutches of sports injury, though. "I had two
buddies on the United States Olympic Bobsled Team," he says. "Two years
ago, I trained with them for six months and qualified to compete on
the Olympic Team in Japan, but I dislocated my shoulder skydiving, so
I couldn't compete." He attributes the injury to how far he was pushing
himself during the grueling Olympic training schedule. But John is incredibly
active, so even a disappointing injury didn't keep him down for long.
"I've been working out a lot harder recently, but I've always stayed
in shape," says John. It's a necessary component of his modeling success,
but it comes to him as naturally as breathing. John's workout schedule
includes weight-training five days a week and a host of recreational
activities that help him stay in tip-top shape.
There's
a surprise waiting for you in John Foster. With his intelligence, his
stunning good looks, and his awesome success, you would never expect
to find him to be such a genuinely nice and giving fellow — a
real humanitarian spirit. Delving past the glamour and the wealth, John
will tell you that he considers himself semi-retired, that the only
reason he has continued to model is that he relies on the income to
support him while he devotes as much of his time as he can to a job
that doesn't pay at all: counseling. John has been clean and sober for
eleven and a half years, and he's out in the world, sharing what he's
learned and helping people who need him, wherever they may be —
including prison. He may one day make it his full-time career, in which
case we will be tremendously disappointed to lose him, but thrilled
to pieces to have worked with him. He's a man worth knowing.
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