Despite her entrepreneurial and worldwide fame, Heidi Klum “couldn’t book a job” when she started modeling.

The 36-year-old star expected it to be easy to launch her career after winning a $300,000 modeling contract on the 1992 television show Model 92, but initially found it hard to find work.

“After winning I thought, ‘This is my ticket. Things will happen.’ But they didn’t—I could never book a job. I was walking around New York for three or four years,” she explained.

Heidi, who raises three children with husband Seal and is currently pregnant with her fourth, says everything changed for her when she was spotted at a Victoria’s Secret show.

She now regularly makes it onto the Forbes list of highest earning models, raking in $16 million to take the second place in the latest edition.

As well as forging a successful modeling career, Heidi hosts Germany’s Next Top Model and Project Runway and promotes Diet Coke, Volkswagen, LG, a range of Birkenstock sandals, and her own skincare line In An Instant.

However, not everyone is enamored with the blonde beauty. Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld has questioned her modeling credentials, claiming she does not have the right physique to be successful: “She is no runway model. Heidi Klum is simply too heavy and has too big a bust. And she always grins so stupidly. That is not avant-garde—that is commercial.”