Roberta Close

Who is Roberta Close?

Roberta Close is a Brazilian model. The first pre-operative transsexual model to have posed for the Brazilian edition of Playboy, Close is probably Brazil's most famous transsexual woman.

Close was born under the name of Luiz Roberto Gambine Moreira, and as an adolescent, began to adopt feminine attire and secretly began taking female hormone injections. By the age of seventeen, Close's career as a model and actress was beginning to take off.

Close won the "Miss Gay Brazil" beauty pageant at the age of twenty. That same year, she made headlines and was dubbed "The world's most beautiful model". She has played a cabaret singer on a popular soap opera, starred in the 1986 movie Si tu vas a Rio... tu meurs, hosted a late night talk show, and was the inspiration for a hit song by Roberto and Erasmo Carlos.

In 1989, Close underwent sex reassignment surgery at Charing Cross Clinic in London, England. Afterwards, she appeared in an extensive photo spread in the Brazilian men's magazine Sexy, and was subsequently voted the "Most Beautiful Woman in Brazil."

In 1993, Close married Roland Granacher.