Gia Carangi - Legacy

Legacy

A biography of Carangi by Stephen Fried called Thing of Beauty (the title of John Keats' famous poem) was published in 1993. A biographical film, Gia, debuted on HBO in 1998. Angelina Jolie starred in the title role, garnering a Golden Globe award for the role.

In 1996, actress-screenwriter Zoë Tamerlis, herself a heroin addict who died of drug-related causes in 1999, was commissioned to write a screenplay based upon Carangi's life. This version of Gia was not produced, but after Tamerlis' death, footage of Carangi, Tamerlis, photographers, Carangi's family, and Sandy Linter discussing her life was incorporated into a 2003 documentary entitled The Self-Destruction of Gia.

Carangi's sexual orientation has been disputed during and after her life; LGBT outlets label her lesbian, and other times as bisexual due to her occasional sexual relationships with men. However when talking about her first experience having sex with a man, Gia is quoted as having said words to the effect: "I could have done that with a German Shepherd!" This alleged quote was used in the movie Gia. In the film, Jolie also portrayed her as being sexually intimate with men and women. Since Carangi's death, she has been considered a lesbian supermodel and icon and is said to have epitomized "lesbian chic" more than a decade before the term was coined.