Trudie Styler (born 6 January 1954) is an English actress, director, and film producer.
Early life and family
Styler was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, the daughter of Pauline and Harry Styler, a farmer and factory worker.[1][2] When Styler was two years old, she was hit by a van. She received severe facial injuries that left her badly scarred and required several plastic surgery operations up until the age of 18. Her classmates nicknamed her "scarface", which caused her to feel for many years that she was "not a very attractive person".[3] She attended North Bromsgrove High School, where one of her teachers was the singer-songwriter Clifford T. Ward.
In the mid-1990s, Styler established Xingu Films,[citation needed] a production company dedicated to supporting new talent, such as Guy Ritchie, Dito Montiel and Duncan Jones. In late July 2008 it was announced that Xingu had optioned American Reaper, an upcoming graphic novel written by Pat Mills, who would also write the screenplay.[6]
In 1989, Styler and her husband, Sting, cofounded the Rainforest Foundation Fund, an organisation devoted to protecting rainforests and their indigenous peoples. Since 1991, she has produced regular Rock for the Rainforest benefits at Carnegie Hall. As a UNICEF Ambassador, Styler has also raised millions for their projects around the globe.[9]
In 2008, it was reported that Styler donated £10,000 into the charitable Ama Sumani cancer fund.[10] Sumani was terminally ill with cancer and unable to afford treatment in her native Ghana, but had been deported from a Cardiff hospital after the expiry of her visa. Sumani died on 19 March 2008.[11]
Styler married rock musician Sting at Camden Register Office on 20 August 1992, and the couple had their wedding blessed two days later in the twelfth-century parish church of St Andrew in Great Durnford, Wiltshire, south-west England.[13] In 1982, Sting separated from his first wife, actress Frances Tomelty,[13] following an affair with Styler;[14] Tomelty and Sting divorced in 1984.[15] The split was controversial; as The Independent reported in 2006, Tomelty "just happened to be Trudie's best friend (Sting and Frances lived next door to Trudie in Bayswater, west London, for several years before the two of them became lovers)".[16]
Sting and Styler have four children, three of whom were born before they married: Brigitte Michael ("Mickey", born 19 January 1984), Jake (24 May 1985), Eliot Paulina (nicknamed "Coco", 30 July 1990), and Giacomo Luke (17 December 1995). Coco is a singer who now goes by the name Eliot Sumner, and was the founder and lead singer of the group I Blame Coco. Giacomo Luke is the inspiration behind the name of Kentucky Derby-winning horse Giacomo.[17]
She is also step-mother of two kids, daughter Fuschia and son Joe, whom Sting shares with his ex-wife Frances Tomelty.[18]
^England & Wales, Birth Index: 1837-1983 [database on-line]. Original data: General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office.Ancestry.co.uk Lists Trudie Styler on the index of births registered in Jan-Mar. 1954.
