02 Sonja Henie

Sonja Henie was born in 1912 in Oslo, Norway. She started to ice skate when she was five years old. At age nine, Sonja won her first skating competition. Her family decided that Sonja should start to train seriously. Her father helped her, and she won her first national championship. Sonja was only 11 years old when she represented Norway in the Olympics in 1924. She finished in last place, but she got a lot of attention because she was so young. Sonja continued to train. She became a world champion and won a gold medal at the 1928 Olympics. She won two more gold medals in 1932 and 1936. Between 1917 and 1936, Sonja Henie won a total of 1,473 awards.

Henie had a very strong influence on women's figure skating. For example, she introduced music and choreography to skating. (Choreography is when you plan your dance to music.) She also introduced glamour to skating. Women skaters used to wear long, dark dresses. Henie wore beautiful, short, white costumes.

After she became a professional in 1936, Henie moved to Hollywood. She wanted to be a movie star! She appeared in several movies, and she skated in all of them. The movie company paid her $150,000 a year, which was a lot of money at that time. Sonja Henie was a great success once again.

Everyone wanted to see Henie's movies because they were glamorous and spectacular.Henie skated in ice shows also.She went on a world tour with the ice shows, and the performances were always sold out. Her movie fans went to her ice shows and her skating fans went to her movies. When Henie appeared, there was always a crowd. Sonja Henie was a big star.

Henie was also a tough businesswoman. She made sure no one cheated her in her movie contracts or her ice shows. She loved money. At age 26, she was a millionaire. She became the richest athlete of her time. Henie married three times. All her husbands were millionaires too.

Henie liked people to know that she was rich. She rode in a white Rolls Royce. She wore white dresses and a lot of jewelry. She lived in a mansion in Hollywood,and she had a chauffeur,a maid,a cook, a secretary, and a hairdresser. She gave big parties and invited all the most famous people to them. For one party, she put a tent over her tennis courts and hired people to fly to Hawaii just to get the best flowers. There were ice carvings everywhere and swans in the swimming pools. She always had the best food and drinks at her parties too.

Henie worked hard for her money. She worked very long hours.When she worked on a film, she got up at five o'clock in the morning, worked for 12 hours, came home, had dinner, and went to bed early.When she was on tour,she stayed up all night and slept half the day.Her diet was mainly raw eggs and raw beef.She wanted to have a healthy diet, but she ate very few vegetables.

In 1968, Henie and her third husband opened an art center outside of Oslo. This multimillion-dollar center contains most of her awards and her art collection, which is one of the best in the world. Fourteen months after the center opened, Sonja Henie died of cancer at the age of 57.