Fate of the world’s ‘most lovely’ girls and boys: As French mannequin Thylane Blondeau who discovered fame aged 4 proclaims her engagement, not all have been fortunate sufficient to have a cheerful ending

Thylane Blondeau was four years old when she walked the hay-covered runway for Jean Paul Gaultier at the Champs Élysées in 2005.

A cover for Vogue Enfants followed and captivated readers lauded her as the ‘most beautiful girl in the world’.

Aged 10, she appeared in a low-cut gold dress and heels in French Vogue, while her parents, footballer Patrick Blondeau and TV presenter Veronika Loubry, faced criticism for ‘sexualising’ their daughter at a young age.

Despite the controversy, Blondeau sparked a global craze to find the world’s other most beautiful girls – and boys – in an era where social media was taking off.

In 2014, there was a new contender for her crown when eight-year-old Kristina Pimenova was discovered after her mother sent photographs to a modelling agency in Russia.

Women Daily magazine declared her the ‘most beautiful girl’ in the world, while British model Kya-Shae Walker, eight, was compared to Thylane when she started appearing in national ad campaigns in 2019.

Thylane, now 24, has managed to turn her early fame into a booming lifestyle empire – including hair care, fashion, and social media clout – and has found personal happiness, announcing her engagement to DJ Ben Attal earlier this week.

While some stories have happy endings, the ‘most beautiful’ plaudit can also be a heavy cross to bear.

Actor Bjorn Andresen – whose delicate features made him a gay icon at the age of 15 – suffered a more tragic fate.

Thylane Blondeau 

The model daughter of retired footballer Patrick Blondeau was four years old when she walked down the runway for John Paul Gaultier.

Two years later, the six-year-old was named the ‘most beautiful girl in the world’ by Vogue Enfants and Blondeau earned a Vogue Paris editorial when she was just 10. 

However, the photo shoot was criticised for ‘sexualising’ Blondeau after she was styled in a low-cut gold dress and heels.  

Her mother Veronika Loubry, a fashion designer, later defended the cover, telling a French newspaper: ‘The only thing that shocks me about the photo is the necklace that she’s wearing, which is worth 3 million Euros, or about $4.3 million.’ 

Blondeau continued modelling and made her adult runway debut in February 2017, when she walked for Dolce & Gabbana at Milan Fashion Week. She was such a success that the famed designer duo invited her back to walk for them again in September 2017.

She was appointed a L’Oreal brand ambassador and signed a slew of endorsements, including for high-end fragrances and fashion. 

Since earning worldwide fame as the world’s most beautiful girl, she has mingled with the creme de la creme of the industry, including Jourdan Dunn and Gigi Hadid, as well as famous nepo babies like Brooklyn Beckham, who used to live next door to her in the exclusive London neighborhood of Kensington.

Today, she juggles her career as a model and social media influencer with her role as an entrepreneur. 

The Parisian beauty, now 24, confirmed she accepted her long-term boyfriend and DJ, Ben Attal’s proposal in Greece on Sunday.  

‘I said yes to my best friend,’ she captioned the engagement photos, as Blondeau showed off a massive diamond engagement ring. 

Kristina Pimenova 

With her piercing azure eyes and long, honey blonde locks, it’s not difficult to see how Kristina Pimenova, now 20, from Moscow, was dubbed a ‘most beautiful girl’ at the age of eight. 

Her career exploded when Kristina’s image caught attention online in Russia and worldwide and she quickly gained more than 2.1 million likes on Facebook and 315,000 followers on Instagram. 

Her portfolio by the age of nine, included Vogue and Armani, yet critics saw a dark side, with one commentator branding a photo of her in shorts as ‘creepy’ while a male user wrote worryingly: ‘I like it’. 

Kristina’s mother, Glikeriya Pimenova, herself a former model, faced backlash from critics, who claimed that she had sexualised her daughter.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail in 2014, she said: ‘I do not accept those accusations about the sexualisation of my child.

‘I am certain in my mind all her photographs are absolutely innocent. I have never asked her to take this or that pose, and in fact I must say she does not especially like it when I am photographing her, so I do it quickly and when she doesn’t notice.’

‘You must think like a paedophile in order to see something sexual in these pictures, so it is time for you to see a doctor.’

The comments failed to deter Kristina from pursuing her career in modelling, and she secured a slew of impressive campaigns for the likes of Vogue, Armani, and Burberry.

Now, more than a decade after she first gained recognition for her looks, the model is studying at drama school with hopes of becoming a professional actress and has appeared in The Russian Bride, Secret Neighbour and Creators: The Past.

In an interview with Avant School she reflected on how she’d been working from an early age, saying: ‘Modelling happened naturally for me when I was younger, I was just like, “let’s try this”, I didn’t even know what it was.

‘I was just playing around; it was like a game. For me, it was a big part of my childhood. It turned into making friends travelling, so it was just really natural.’

She explained that she was attracted to acting because it allows her to ‘be anything I want for a while’.

When she’s not behind the camera or on stage, Kristina updates her 2.4 million Instagram followers on her life events, including sharing photographs from a Blackpink concert, where she met the K-Pop stars.

Discussing the backlash against her daughter’s modelling career in 2014, her mother Glikeriya said, ‘Some years ago I posted a picture of little Kristina on the beach in the Maldives hugging her three soft toys and laughing.

‘She was holding all her toys in front of her chest and hugging them, and you know what comments I got to this picture?

”Oh, she is covering her breasts because she thinks she has something to hide!’ Can you believe it? I think people who post something like this have serious psychological problems.’

Glikeriya insisted at the time: ‘All her ‘poses’ are natural. She is just a little girl who is attracting a lot of attention and unfortunately some of this attention is coming from strange people with huge personal problems, keen to throw dirt at anyone.’

Bjorn Andresen  

When he was 15 years old, Bjorn Andrésen was declared the ‘most beautiful boy in the world’ after Luchino Visconti cast the unassuming Swedish teen as Tadzio in Death in Venice.

The embodiment of ‘pure beauty’, Bjorn was handpicked by the Italian filmmaker to play the sailor-suited adolescent opposite Dirk Bogarde in one of the world’s most famous queer films.

His turn as Tadzio, whose youthful, boyish looks drove Bogarde’s character – an ailing, ageing composer – to temptation, catapulted Bjorn to stardom and gained him international recognition.

The Italian auteur’s film also ‘f***ed up a lot of things’ for Bjorn, whose almost unearthly beauty earned him comparisons to Michelagenelo’s David when he was still a child.

Bjorn later condemned Visconti, who died in 1976, as a ‘cultural predator’ who allegedly exploited his looks and sexualised him to promote the movie -before throwing him to the wolves.

The moniker became a millstone around Bjorn’s neck, as the actor admitted Death in Venice remained the unmoving grey cloud that totally eclipsed his life.

He died from cancer in October 2025 after being relegated to life of relative obscurity – marked also by a profound personal sadness and mental health struggles.

Born on January 26, 1955, in Stockholm, he grew up without a father and his mother committed suicide when he was 10. He was then raised by his grandparents.

His bohemian mother had never told him the identity of his father and, before her death, made no secret that she wanted more from life than being mother to Björn and his half-sister.

Growing up, Bjorn had no interest in acting and wanted, instead, to be a musician but his grandmother continued to send him to auditions in the hope that at least one of her grandchildren would become famous.

That was how Bjorn found himself standing before Visconti, whose search for Tadzio’s ‘pure beauty’ had taken him across Europe – but to no avail.

A documentary about Bjorn’s life – titled ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ – includes black-and-white footage of his audition for Death in Venice in a room full of young boys and casting directors.

‘How old is he? Older right?’ Visconti asks a Swedish-speaking casting director as Andrésen poses self-consciously for them at a casting call in Stockholm one chilly day in February 1970. ‘Yes, a little. He’s fifteen,’ the casting director replies. ‘Fifteen? Very beautiful,’ Visconti observes. ‘Could you ask him to undress?’

Bjorn, visibly taken aback, eventually strips down to his trunks, as a photographer snaps away and a delighted Visconti makes clear he has found exactly what he was looking for.

Looking back on his audition, Bjorn told Variety, Visconti ‘sexualised me’ and admitted he ‘wasn’t comfortable’ taking his clothes off.

‘When they asked me to take off my shirt, I wasn’t comfortable,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t prepared for that.

‘I remember when he posed me with one foot against the wall, I would never stand like that. When I watch it now, I see how that son of a b**** sexualised me.’

The 15-year-old was signed to the film and paid $4,000 for his role in Death in Venice – one that, he had no idea, would define him for the rest of his life.

Back in Europe, he continued acting but struggled to shake off his ‘world’s most beautiful boy’ moniker. In 1976, he came to Paris for a film. It never came to anything but he stayed a year despite being penniless.

His lifestyle was funded by a string of rich men who showered him with expensive meals, gave him a 500-franc weekly allowance and even provided him with a flat, a 2021 documentary revealed, as Bjorn admitted he was ‘bloody naive’ about their intentions towards him.

‘I must have been bloody naive because it was sort of like: ‘Wow! Everyone’s so nice,’ ‘ he reflected. ‘I don’t think they treated me out of the kindness of their heart … I felt like [a] wandering trophy.’

While the documentary doesn’t explore Bjorn’s own sexuality, he previously told The Daily Mail he felt a fleeting confusion about his sexuality in his 20s and had one homosexual experience. ‘I did it more or less to be able to say I’d tried it but it’s not really my cup of tea. It wasn’t more serious than that,’ he said at the time.

Bjorn maintained he had always been attracted to women, but struggled to form relationships with them as he grew older.

After growing used to clicking his fingers and having girls come running, he admitted he never learnt how to flirt.

Even so, he married a poet named Suzanna Roman after they had a daughter, Robine, in 1984. However, tragedy again struck three years later when their nine-month-old son Elvin, died. Bjorn had been lying in bed beside him, insensible after a night out drinking, while his wife took their daughter to kindergarten.

Bjorn fell into a deep depression after Elvin’s death as he blamed himself for being an inadequate father.

‘Their diagnosis is sudden infant death syndrome but my diagnosis is lack of love,’ he said in the documentary. ‘I descended into depression, alcohol, self-destruction in all ways imaginable – it was an ego trip. Poor me, me, me.’

He disappeared from public view so completely that some thought he was dead until he re-emerged in 2003, when a photo of him was used to illustrate the front cover of The Beautiful Boy, Germaine Greer’s ode to the beauty of young boys.

Bjorn publicly complained he’d never given permission and said, having been exposed to it, adult lust – by men or women – for adolescents was nothing to celebrate.

In 2019, he had a role in Ari Aster’s horror movie ‘Midsommar’, where he played the role of the elderly Dan.

Anna Pavaga 

In 2017, eight-year-old Anna Pavaga was dubbed ‘the most beautiful girl in Russia’ after starting her modelling career at the age of three. 

She had already appeared in fashion campaigns for dozens of campaigns all over the world, including in China, as well as the glossy pages of Vogue Enfants, a supplement of French Vogue, as well as TV ads and some small film roles. 

With doll-like features and grey-green eyes she became the youngest client on the books at TANN Models, after her mother Ekaterina noticed her love of posing for the camera at the age of two. 

Her  mother insisted, however, that she encouraged her daughter to focus on her love of ballet and gymnastics over her burgeoning modelling career, and that her child’s health was her priority. 

She added that Anna had a very normal childhood and loved going to the cinema and shopping.  

St Petersburg-born Anna found viral fame just weeks after another Russian model, six-year-old Anastasia Knyazeva, hit the headlines for being ‘the most beautiful girl in the world’.

‘Beauty is a lottery organized by nature. Parents do not choose, but can only dream. We were lucky: dreams became reality.’

Now 16 years old, Anna boasts and impressive one million followers on Instagram and describes herself as an ‘it girl, teen model, ballet girl’. 

Anastasia Knyazeva

Anna shot to viral fame just weeks after fellow Russian model Anastasia Knyazeva, aged, 6, who wowed fans by her doll-like features and striking blue eyes.

The youngster caught the attention of the world in 2017 as a successful child model for major brands in Russia, including Chobi Kids, Amoreco and Kisabiano.

She was also voted the face of Little Miss Aoki, a line from luxury children’s couture house Mischka Aoki and fans were quick to predict that she could one day become the next Irina Shayk. 

Her mother Anna presided over her Instagram account, sharing images from her daughter’s photoshoots and snaps of her backstage. 

She started in July 2015, when the burgeoning model was four years old, but she too faced criticism for letting her daughter pose for the camera and wear make-up at such a young age.

One person wrote: ‘I’d like to know how much make-up her parents give her before each photo’, while another questioned why Anastasia never appeared to smile. 

Now 15 years old, she appears to be pursuing a career in music and released a Christmas single in December 2025, as well as appearing on 30 episodes of a cooking show Edible Inedible on Russian TV.