Supermodel Beverly Johnson reveals night she met Elizabeth Taylor, ‘preyed upon’ by Bill Cosby

Legendary supermodel Beverly Johnson, who was the first black model to cover Vogue, reveals details about her sexy exchanges with Mike Tyson and glamorous tales from her past in a memoir.

Johnson, 62, tells of her encounters with the rich and famous and friendships that included the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Oprah, Michael Jackson and Keith Richardson.

But she also shares the not-so-glamorous times which include her struggles with divorce, racism and drug addiction as well as intimate details about her love affair with late tennis icon, Arthur Ashe, for the first time.

Her first time meeting Elizabeth Taylor was in 1973 at a party of fashion designer, Halston, where Taylor was sat across from her and she got to try on her ‘famed Taylor-Burton diamond’.

‘Sitting across from me was the grand dame of all grand dames, Ms. Elizabeth Taylor, in all her legendary glory,’ she wrote in an excerpt from The Face That Changed It All.

‘I’d never imagined for a moment that I would be in the same room with her. But there she was, looking exactly how I’d have imagined she would, and more,’ she continued.

‘She was incandescently beautiful, with the most gorgeous porcelain skin and a head full of glossy dark-brown hair. I had to force myself not to stare.’

While Taylor said ‘hi’ to Johnson, all she could muster up to say in response  was ‘I love your ring’.

Shortly after the exchange, the 69.42-carat ring from Cartier – purchased by Taylor’s estranged husband, Richard Burton, for $1.1 million in 1969 – was thrown across the table so Johnson could wear it.

Taylor walked away from the table and left unsuspecting Johnson responsible for the expensive ring, which she took as Taylor’s version of a joke, according to the New York Post.

No stranger to luxury gifts herself, Johnson tells of the time that a Van Cleef & Arples five-carat ruby ring was sat next to the salad plate at a party of a well-known world leader.

During her modeling career, she experienced jealously from fellow models, particularly the few black ones at the time, who were all competing for exposure.

And among Johnson’s friends included Michael Jackson after she met the Jackson family in the 1970s. He often turned to her for skin-care tips as a result of struggling with acne as a teen.

Johnson recalled when tennis icon, Ashe, called her for a date after he won Wimbledon in 1975.

‘We had all-night lovemaking sessions,’ she wrote. ‘I was forced to pull out a bigger book of tricks to help him get to the point of no return sooner, or risk some serious health issues of my own.

‘Swinging from the chandelier [every night we spent together] was taking its toll on my well-being.’

Her love interests also included Mike Tyson, who she met when he was 20 years old, and during a phone conversation before his fight for the heavyweight championship, she blurted out that if he won, she would ‘give him some’ – surprising even herself.

The pair dated for months before eventually parting as friends.

After he won, he made it from Las Vegas where the fight took place to the door of her home in New York 19 hours later where she kept her promise.

She described the night as ‘the most passionate of nights she had experienced with a man’.

Johnson also details the time she believed she had been drugged by Bill Cosby during a visit to his home to read for a role on The Cosby Show.

She said he was a gracious host introducing her to the cast and asking her about her life and career.

He had invited her several times to his home to read for the role, and during the second visit she tells of how they were alone, and he insisted on her drinking an espresso that he brought to her.

‘He kept insisting I’d never had a cappuccino like this one, and I’d be missing out on something really spectacular,’ she wrote.

‘I didn’t want to argue with him after he’d been so gracious, so against my better judgment I took a few sips. In an instant, I felt woozy.’

She said the impact of the situation began to set in and in a rage she spewed off an expletive-laced tirade at him, and he looked at her as if she was losing her mind.

Johnson wrote that he grabbed her arm as she started to lose her balance and dragged her ‘roughly down the stairs’ and had put her into a cab and slammed the door before she could say anything.

After she called him to question him about the incident and his wife answered the phone saying they were in bed, she decided to drop it and make her own peace with it ‘somehow’.

The supermodel, who had a successful three-decade modeling career and was featured on the cover of American Vogue in 1974, talks about how although modeling agency Ford told her she was ‘too fat’, she was signed at 18 years old.

Source: The Daily Mail