Nine years ago, Adrianne Curry hung up her stilettos and laced up her work boots when she left behind her Hollywood career for a quiet life in Montana.
Most people know her for winning the title of America’s Next Top Model in cycle 1 of the Tyra Banks-helmed competition show. Some know her from her days on early 2000s reality television shows like The Surreal Life or My Fair Brady. But these days, surrounded by her 43 chickens, two cats and a dog, she tells PEOPLE exclusively over Zoom from her home that she feels a sense of peace now that her days in the limelight are behind her.
As she looks back on her career in modeling and television, Curry, 41, admits that the road was nothing less than rocky. When she nabbed the very first winning title of America’s Next Top Model in 2003, she thought she would be skyrocketed into a career in high fashion. Instead, she says she felt “betrayed and lied to by the show.”
“They told us every day whoever was going to win was going to be a big Revlon model, and then they dubbed over voiceovers when it aired on TV because they never intended that,” she recalls. “They lied to us because none of us would’ve fought as hard as we did for some half-ass prize. We’d be like, that’s stupid.”
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“That’s the industry. That is what it is. It is cutthroat. It is lying. It is predatory,” she continues, before going on to explain how the veil was lifted. “[America’s Next Top Model was] a polished jewel that prepared me for the awful truth that I couldn’t trust anybody, even people that I thought I could, and even knowing that I still got screwed over.”
Curry says if Top Model had been a “babying” experience, she imagines she’d have “wallowed” in an “onslaught of devastation” had she not been prepared “to not trust anything or anyone.”
“I’m grateful that things didn’t pan out the way they were supposed to because I don’t think I would be a very good person if I had found major success in modeling,” she explains. “I just don’t think my young brain would’ve been able to wrap itself around that in a good way.”
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If she were to do it all over again, Curry says she’d “dump my then-boyfriend” and push back on the nude photo shoots. In cycle 1, episode 7, Jay Manuel tells the girls that they’d be posing nude to model jewelry — and Curry would be first on the roster.
As she was brushed with water and grease in front of a crew, the more conservative contestants, Shannon Stewart and Robbyne Manning, whispered that “a lot of girls would do anything” as Curry posed.
“I felt like I was used as a guinea pig and I felt so cornered,” she recalls. “I couldn’t say no because the way they approached me was like, ‘Oh, we know you’re awesome with this, so we want you to pose nude right here, and we know you’ll do it,’ and blah, blah, blah.'”
After her shoot, the other contestants were offered “double bands” and underwear to conceal their intimate areas. Curry says Elyse Sewell, the model who followed her, was able to use a sheet between takes for privacy.
“It was in front of 400 people, but Elyse got her privacy behind the sheet,” she continues. “And I felt put in a position where I couldn’t say, ‘Hey, could I be behind the sheet like Elyse?’ Because Jay Manuel was like, ‘We know you’re awesome and we know you’ll do this.'”
“As a younger woman, I was like, ‘If I say no to this, they’re going to think I suck,’ but it was really uncomfortable,” she adds.
After winning America’s Next Top Model, Curry went on to star in The Surreal Life. She says she treated her stint on the show like “spring break in college” after producers allegedly informed her that those involved in ANTM — and “her people” — felt it would make Top Model “look bad.”
“So I went in there with so much f— you in my heart. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s on now. I’m just going to kick back bottles and give the finger.’ I’m going to do everything I can to piss them off, trying to take my paper — meaning my money,” she says now.
At the time, she felt “very vindictive” and “hurt” after feeling lied to when she didn’t receive her flowers post-ANTM.
“It hurt my feelings that they were trying to throw a wrench into the cogs of my career. I was like, ‘Dude, you guys already f—ed me over, and now you’re trying to stop me from making some money?'”
Reflecting now on the moment she knew it was time to leave Hollywood behind, Curry strokes her cat Drax, who she notes is “angry” after receiving his latest haircut.
“I felt that I was on a cusp,” she says after a pause. “I was 32 years old and I got offered a job for face fillers, and it was a huge payday with free face fillers and one up to my contract and all this stuff. And I remember sitting there, and that money was so good that I considered it. Then I thought, I am willing to deface, to mutilate myself for money?”
“I had to really start to question like, ‘Okay, where is this path going to take me if even for a second I considered injecting something in my face for a payday?'” she continues. “At 32 years old, you don’t need that.”
Then Curry met her now-husband, Matthew Rhode, and the two discussed the “dark” road that could lead them down a not-so-bright future.
“We didn’t think we were going to survive if we stayed there. I saw a future on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with my face full of filler and me clinging to youth that is gone,” says Curry, who was previously married to The Brady Bunch actor Christopher Knight (they met on The Surreal Life) from 2006 to 2013. “I just felt like there was something more out there than just relevancy and money, and I made that decision to leave. ”
“I found peace with the earth and myself, if that makes sense,” Curry adds. While she wouldn’t call herself a “narcissist,” the former reality star says being in front of a camera brought out “narcissistic traits” she didn’t like.
“So I left and I make a hell of a lot less money, but I feel like I have my dignity, my soul,” she smiles. “I felt like from when I won Top Model to that point that a lot of me had been chipped away. And it’s like every year you chip another piece off and you’re like, ‘Well, I won’t miss this little piece,’ just to keep it going.”
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Instead of chasing fame, Curry says she now chases “peace and quiet” — and it feels quite good. Life is “way slower,” and she spends most of her day outside. Some of her favorite pasttimes include snowshoeing and hiking.
“It’s like a complete reversal of where I used to be, and I feel richer than I ever was, and I have less than I ever did,” she says. “I want to die and leave this earth with people saying good things about me in terms of who I was to them as opposed to accomplishments or how many Prada bags I have.”
