Tyson Beckford

Tyson Beckford (born December 19, 1970) is an American model and actor best known as a Ralph Lauren Polo model. He was also the host of both seasons of the Bravo program Make Me a Supermodel. Beckford has been described as one of the most successful black male supermodels of all time, achieving fame and huge contracts similar to the female models who had huge success in the 1990s. Early life Beckford was born in Rochester, New York, on December 19, 1970, to a Jamaican mother, Hillary Dixon Hall, and a Panamanian father of Jamaican and Chinese-Jamaican descent, Lloyd Beckford. Soon after he was born, his mother took the family back to Jamaica, where they lived for seven years before moving to Rochester, New York, where he attended and graduated from Pittsford Mendon High School. During his school years, Tyson was often teased about his looks. Career In 1992, Erik Lauren Counsel of the hip hop magazine The Source approached Beckford "in Washington Square Park" about being "in a style piece" in the magazine New York City. In an August 2021 VLADTV interview, Beckford clarified that nobody named Jeff Jones "discovered him" and said that "the person who gets the credit is Erik."