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America’s Next Top Model Contestants Who Actually Made It

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Most reality show winners fade fast, but a handful of America’s Next Top Model alumni turned a modeling competition into real Hollywood careers.

Tyra Banks launched America’s Next Top Model in 2003 promising to turn unknown hopefuls into working models, and for most contestants that promise never fully materialized. But a select group of winners and even non-winners parlayed their fifteen minutes into acting credits, supermodel status, and one Dancing with the Stars trophy. Nicki Swift’s video breakdown tracks the contestants who actually cashed in on the exposure long after the judging panel stopped caring.

• Eva Marcille (born Eva Pigford) became the show’s first Black winner in Cycle 3, then logged 72 episodes on The Young and the Restless, earning NAACP Image Award nominations before joining The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
• Cycle 3 runner-up Yaya DaCosta went on to play Whitney Houston in Lifetime’s 2015 biopic Whitney and later starred on NBC’s Chicago Med.
• Nyle DiMarco, the show’s first Deaf contestant and its Cycle 22 winner, won Dancing with the Stars Season 22 in 2016 while becoming a leading advocate for the deaf community.

The Cycle 3 Breakthrough

Eva Marcille’s Cycle 3 victory did more than land her CoverGirl and Ford Models bookings — it opened a door into scripted television that most ANTM winners never find. Her run on The Young and the Restless racked up 72 episodes and multiple NAACP Image Award nominations, a resume line that outlasted her runway work. She later resurfaced in a completely different arena as a full-time cast member on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, proving her staying power went well beyond the modeling world that made her famous.

Her runner-up, Yaya DaCosta, arguably outpaced her. DaCosta sidestepped the reality-TV stigma entirely, landing a role in The Kids Are All Right before taking on one of the more demanding parts any ANTM alum has attempted: playing Whitney Houston in Lifetime’s 2015 biopic Whitney. She then settled into a multi-season run on NBC’s Chicago Med, the kind of steady network gig that modeling rarely offers.

The Non-Winners Who Outgrew the Show

Not every crossover success came from someone who actually won. Lio Tipton — known as Analeigh Tipton during her Cycle 11 run, when she finished third — got singled out by Tyra Banks for what the host called one of the franchise’s best commercial shoots. That momentum carried Tipton into Crazy, Stupid, Love in 2011, Warm Bodies in 2013, and Lucy in 2014, a run of studio films most winners never came close to matching.

A third-place finish and one standout commercial shoot were enough to launch a Hollywood run that outlasted most of the winners who beat her.

Winnie Harlow, who competed as Chantelle Brown-Young on Cycle 21, took a different path entirely. Rather than chase acting roles, she leaned into high fashion, becoming an internationally recognized supermodel and one of the most visible spokespeople for vitiligo awareness in the industry. Her trajectory is a reminder that the show’s biggest wins sometimes happen well after the finale airs — a pattern also explored in What The Winners Of America’s Next Top Model Look Like Today.

Nyle DiMarco’s Fast Turnaround

Nyle DiMarco’s Cycle 22 win in 2015 came with a distinction no other contestant shared: he was the first Deaf competitor and the first Deaf champion in the show’s history. He didn’t sit on the title long. By 2016, DiMarco had won Dancing with the Stars Season 22, then used the platform to expand his advocacy work for the deaf community, turning a modeling competition victory into a much bigger public role.

Victory Does Not Guarantee Future Success

The video’s throughline is straightforward — winning ANTM guaranteed almost nothing, and several non-winners built bigger careers than the champions who beat them. Tipton finished third and still out-earned plenty of Cycle 11 winners in screen time. Harlow never won a cycle at all and became the most recognizable name on this entire list within high fashion circles. DaCosta, a runner-up, ended up fronting a network medical drama while some Cycle 3 winners’ names have faded from casual conversation entirely.

What’s left is a short, specific list: Marcille, DaCosta, Tipton, Harlow, and DiMarco, each finding success in a different lane — soap opera and reality TV, film and biopic work, high fashion, and competitive dance and advocacy, respectively. None of them needed the ANTM crown to get there, and two of them never had one.