She's Christie Brinkley. The name barely needs an introduction. For nearly thirty years, she has been the healthy Californian face that has launched a thousand advertisements, magazine covers and videos and her unique Uptown Girl elegance and Covergirl carefree smile have set her apart. But if you ask, she will tell that her secret to longevity lies in the fact that she hasn't given modeling her all, and while she has certainly broken a few, she has never set out to fit a mold.

In fact, Christie Brinkley never wanted to be a model. The daughter of the well-known radio and television writer and producer Don Brinkley (The Shadow, the Fugitive, Medical Center) used to have lunch with her father in the studios and watch the actors.

"It was fabulous," said Ms. Brinkley during an interview with Networking magazine, "but I was determined that I was going to live in Paris and be an artist." At age 18 she turned down offers to do television and modeling work and, speaking French fluently, moved to Paris to study art, and then married a French artist who was soon drafted into the army. She struggled for a while and made a living by taking on various art commissions - like illustrating "little travel maps with elephants in India and flamingos in Florida" for airline companies.

It was a sick puppy that actually got her into modeling. With veterinary bills adding up fast, Ms. Brinkley finally took an opportunity offered to her by a photographer who had seen her in the telephoning office, and needed a face just like hers.

"I thought - well, I'm curious - I'll do just this one thing," remembered Ms. Brinkley. From the Parisian modeling office, she was discovered by Mike Reinhardt, a top New York photographer who then told Eileen Ford about her.

In the meantime, the starving artist had taken a look her first paycheck. "I did one job and I couldn't believe the money and I thought Wow! Okay! I'm going to the south of France," remembers the then supermodel-to-be.

She didn't know it, but that excursion would soon make her into a commodity. While she was off exploring the rest of the country on a bicycle tour, agencies thought she was on a booking. "I came back to Paris and there were notes all over my door from the Paris agencies, from Ford modeling agency, saying we have this job and that job. The fact that I would do a job and then just disappear created a demand. Meanwhile they didn't know where to find me." Besides, after receiving her next check, she said, "I was off to explore Italy!"

Since then, Christie has become the first model to ever appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated for three consecutive years. She has held major contracts with Chanel No. 19, Prell, MasterCard, Breck, and Diet Coke. Her 20 year contract with Cover Girl was one of the longest in modeling history, and began during a time when a model's career was expected to end by age 30. She believes her success has been due, in part, to the fact that she has always had a reason behind her actions. For example, when she wrote and illustrated a health and beauty book, Christie Brinkley's Outdoor Beauty and Fitness Guide which topped The New York Times Best Seller list. The book was dedicated to and its mailing list was used to raise funds for Greenpeace.

Christie also believes that due to the growing number of outlets for "celebrity building," (ET, E! Extra, People magazine, Us magazine, tabloids, etc.) "there are a lot more opportunities than there were before. there's a hunger for personalities so you don't simply remain a face, you become a personality," said the model whose acting debut in 1983 opposite Chevy Chase in the hit film National Lampoon's Vacation created a who's that girl' sensation. "Now, models go on as models because they have to fill that seat and fill those pages," she added. Christie has been the subject of many documentaries including the HBO program Beautiful Baby, Beautiful and the E! Model Show and Lifetime's Intimate Portrait and Barbara Walters Oscar Night Special".

This summer Ms. Brinkley will be featured on the VH1 special: Two Hundred Pop Icons and will appear on the Discovery Channel's Secrets of Superstar Fitness. She also recently aired on 48 hours about body image, and is a spokeswoman for a line of energy health bars called EAS Advantage. She has appeared in her former husband Billy Joel's classic music videos Uptown Girl and Keeping the Faith as well as Mick Jones' music video Just Wanna Hold.

On television, Christie has appeared on NBC's Mad About You and hosted Lifetime Television's Celebrity Weddings InStyle, which became the highest rated special in Lifetime's history. In 1992, Christie hosted a daily lifestyle program on CNN titled Living in the 90's with Christie Brinkley, in which she scripted and filmed her own segments on health, style, travel, food and entertainment.

But at age 49, the causes that drive Ms. Brinkley reach far more than skin deep. Although she has been an advocate for various causes throughout her life, (UNICEF, Handgun Control, Ovarian Cancer, Susan G. Komen Foundation, Greenpeace, the Cousteau Society, Southern Poverty Law and The Wilderness Society) Christie's activism reached a new level of commitment when she and her husband, Peter Cook, learned they were raising three children in the cross-chains of several nuclear reactors. At an informational dinner, pediatrician Helen Caldicott explained the way a child's body absorbs the radioactive isotope strontium-90 due to its chemical similarity to calcium. Strontium-90 is produced by fission reactions in nuclear weapons and reactors. Said Christie, "It has been shocking to learn that the incidence of strontium-90 in a child's teeth is twice as high in children with cancer than in children without cancer.* My first feeling after listening to all of this was Oh my God! We've got to pack and run!' " It was actor Alec Baldwin, at her dinner table that evening, who spoke the words that have commanded her activism to this day. "Alec turned to me and said," (she mimicked his deep dramatic whisper,) "Where are you going to go? You tell me, where are you going to go?" and she remembered there were nuclear power plants nationwide.

Christie and Peter Cook joined the Board of directors of Standing for Truth About Radiation, or, STAR, in 1998, believing that the Millstone power plant - which is 11 miles off the coast of Long Island in Connecticut, Indian Point power plant - which is approximately 27 miles north of Manhattan, and Oyster Creek reactor in Tom's River in New Jersey, are threats to all Long Islanders. Since then, she has appeared on numerous talk shows including The View and Rosie O'Donnell Show. The celebrity also opened her Hamptons home for the first time to local environmental groups in order to gather support for the cause. Said Christie, "If you're an environmentalist trying to save a farm field, well, that's really important, we know all about overdevelopment, but if Millstone blows, that field is going to go. Nothing could hurt Long Island more than a problem at the reactor. "

She has avidly voiced her numerous concerns about the need for an evacuation plan (post September 11,) the dangers of low level radiation; a suspected correlation between the wind patterns and a rare, 22-child Long Island cancer cluster in a 10 mile radius; antiquated power plants and their overloaded spent fuel pools; the qualifications of plant operators; the breakdown of nuclear waste casings; the need for sensible nuclear waste disposal; the need to expand no-fly zone over power plants, among other issues.

Within the past year she has spoken before the senate subcommittee hearings in Washington about the Price Anderson Act, expressing her concerns that during an act of war, property might go uninsured.

Still headed in Washington by Bob Alvarez, former senior policy advisor at the Department of Energy, the Long Island office of STAR is in the process of regrouping largely due to its lack of funding and its loss of program director Scott Cullen. Its website is still up (noradiation.org) and it is currently creating a multi-tiered board while relocating to a larger office in Southampton, NY. Members of the organization are lobbying while forming strategic alliances with other environmental groups.

"We need lawyers to sue the nuclear industry, we need to do scientific research, and we need to inform the public about issues that are difficult to understand," said Brinkley, who has raised over $500,000 for the organization with her husband, "we are still overseeing the cleanup of the Brookhaven National Lab right now." Currently, the team is also seeking donations in order to air a television advertisement dealing with the no-fly zone in time to coincide with the June vote on a new bill called the Nuclear Security Act. "It's just a question of Peter and me sitting in front of a telephone for a few days and drumming up the money," said a determined Ms. Brinkley, who added that even small donations make a difference.

But it is not all about dread and disaster. The spokeswoman finds hope in alternate fuels. "We have a Long Island off shore wind initiative right now, where the STAR foundation is a member of a steering committee of a group that's working together with the Long Island Power Authority. Wind-power is something that is feasible for Long Island," said Brinkley.

She added enthusiastically when asked what other alternative energy sources she thought were most viable, "I see the flat buildings over Long Island as potential for solar energy. Solar power and the fuel cell technology [which has the ability to store energy to be used later] could be amazing for us. And then, hybrid cars. And the hydrogen car, where the only byproduct is potable water. I just think that if the government would give the same kind of subsidies that they give the nuclear industry to the renewable energies, that we could do amazing things."

She is currently working with Rich Kessel of the Long Island Power Authority and several department of energy officials in order to develop a solar energy program and explore alternate fuels.

There is a definite soft side to the Malibu-born beauty. When asked if it was growing up in California that fostered the activist in her, she says with a laugh, "Californians speak their mind," but that's not it, exactly. One can hear what it is in the whimsical lilt of her voice when she describes her childhood on the coast where she once surfed the waves with her brother - where a piece of her free spirit still seems to exist. "My house was on pilings raising up out of the sand. My brother and I were always out on our surfboards. And if we weren't surfing, we were roaming the hills behind us, climbing up the canyons back to the waterfalls, picking the blue lupins. and it was just glorious, just beautiful."

Her love for nature made her want to fight for it. A younger Christie took her first stance against a powerplant in California when she learned it was going to be built on the state's fault lines. Now the 17-year resident of Long Island believes, "For the sake of our children, our homes, our livelihood, our well-being, our communities, we cannot stop doing this work, it is just too important."

Her children are her true priority, said Brinkley, who now maintains a partnership with Total Gym and her own line of eyewear called Christie Brinkley Perspectives, "I squeeze my career in around my kids."

The proud mother who painted the cover for Billy Joel's 1993 triple platinum album River of Dreams and was awarded "Best Album Cover of the Year" by Rolling Stone Magazine, believes that all three of her children have inherited her artistic talents although they have distinctly different personalities.

Sailor Lee, 4, is "all girl" and Christie's "little ballerina" while Jack Paris, 7, is the explorer of the family whose first words were "up" and "out." 17-year-old Alexa Ray, daughter of Billy Joel, is swiftly showing the signs of a true musician. Said a glowing Brinkley; "Alexa is so talented. Music is her thing. She is so lucky to have been born with a talent so that her work is her love."

Would she choose the modeling life for them as well? She answered, "For me, it ended up to be just so perfect because I dabble," and went on to explain how all of her interests were able to be explored as she walked through the many doors that her modeling opened for her - boxing-photography, health and fitness, art, travel, the silver screen, etc.

If her children ventured into it, she would explain to them that modeling is "a great career as long as you have other things to focus your mind on so you don't get too involved with the fabulousness of modeling because that bubble will burst. You have to be interested in other things. I've gotten to see the world, see interesting people, but I was grounded enough by my close knit family to never have gotten swept away." 17 years ago, when Christie decided to live on Long Island's east end instead of Manhattan since she uses the luxurious Hampton location for many of her photo shoots, her parents were her Long Island neighbors. In fact it was only four months ago that they decided to tell her, " We're finally old enough to say we can't take the winter here anymore' " and moved away.

But their daughter is still in love with Long Island. In the quiet of the day, one may find her with her children walking the shoreline or in their Hampton home gluing seashells "all over everything," painting, or out in the garden. "We have our best conversations there," said Christie whose clear voice returned to the same soft tone that it had when she spoke of her own childhood, "With kids, it's all being open to learning with them and being allowed to be a teacher. getting on your bikes and exploring, turning rocks over and seeing what creepy things come crawling out from underneath. You know, things that you might forget to do if you weren't with them. Simple walks in the woods - poking mushrooms with sticks, seeing a little jack-in-the-pulpit growing up through something and getting down on your knees to look. You just notice every detail. Everything is so alive. It just renews your spirit, being able to see things fresh and new with them."

They may renew her energy, but they're also her reason and her fuel. When asked why she is such a passionate advocate for the environment she answers without pause, "Mankind needs to be able to wander out and see the trees and the starlight and the rivers; this is what keeps us human, what keeps us in touch with our hearts and our souls and what keeps our world from completely going insane in these increasingly tense times. I'm actively out there trying to make a better world for my kids. I want to be able to say to them I did everything I could to keep your environment clean and pristine for you.

*A five year study of baby teeth by the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) and funded by the Health Foundation of South Florida found a 37% rise in the average levels of known carcinogen radioactive Strontium-90 (SR-90) in southeast Florida from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. When compared with baby teeth collected from 18 Florida counties, the highest levels of Sr-90 were found in the six Florida counties closest to the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear reactors. Significantly, the study documented that the average levels of Sr-90 found in the teeth of children diagnosed with cancer were nearly twice as high as those found in the teeth of children without cancer. The results were released April 9, 2003.