Early Life
Romijn was born in Berkeley, California, United States. Her mother, Elizabeth (née Kuizenga), is a Community College teacher of English as a Second Language and textbook author, and her father, Jaap Romijn, is a custom furniture maker. Her father is a native of Barneveld, the Netherlands, and her mother is an American of half Dutch descent; she met Romijn's father while staying in the Netherlands on a teenage exchange program. Romijn's maternal grandfather, Dr. Henry Bernard Kuizenga, was a Presbyterian minister and seminary professor. When questioned about always being glamourous and beautiful on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Romijn revealed that as a child in her early teens she was in fact an insecure 'drama geek', and as a result of her growth spurt she suffered from scoliosis and was constantly in pain. Many sources say that she was once nicknamed the "Jolly Blonde Giant" because of her 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) height, but she has admitted to making that up "for a laugh". While studying music (voice) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she became involved with fashion modeling and eventually moved to Paris for more than two years.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)