Son of David and Victoria Beckham
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“Mom’s constantly telling us not to play football in the house.” While these rules may seem fairly standard, they take on all new meaning when you factor in the person who said them: then-16-year-old Brooklyn Beckham, son of former professional footballer (AKA soccer player) David Beckham and businesswoman, fashion designer and singer Victoria Beckham. Today, Brooklyn is all grown up with a successful photography career.
The Beckham family has been hailed as “Britain’s real royal family.” That would make oldest son Brooklyn Beckham the crown prince. Despite being born into a life of fame and fortune, however, the model/photographer has all the makings of a celebrity in his own right. Here’s a closer look at where Brookyn Beckham's been and where he’s headed.
The Birth of a “Bloke”
Brooklyn Joseph Beckham was born in London on March 4, 1999 to David and Victoria Beckham. In her autobiography, Victoria, AKA "Posh Spice," explained that she was in New York when she found out that she was pregnant, and further liked the name because it was a “bit blokey” and therefore suitable for a footballer if he ended up following in the footsteps of his famous father. Brooklyn is the oldest of four; his younger siblings are Harper, Cruz and Romeo. Brooklyn doesn’t just lay claim to famous parents; his godparents are also celebrities: Elton John, David Furnish and Elizabeth Hurley.
Brooklyn made his media debut at just five weeks old in an OK Magazine photoshoot at his parents’ penthouse flat in Manchester, England. Their reputed payment for the appearance? $1.8 million.
With his father playing for Manchester United, Real Madrid and LA Galaxy, Brooklyn’s childhood years were spent between the UK, Spain and California. David Beckham has said that his children not only learned to speak Spanish fluently during this time, but also developed American accents from their time in Southern California.
Brooklyn may have grown up with money -- his parents’ mansion in the south of England was dubbed “Beckingham Palace” by the British press -- but from an early age he was eager to start paying his own way. At the age of 15, he began working weekend shifts at a coffee shop in West London. According to Metro, his parents encouraged him to get a job due to their own humble beginnings.
Given his extraordinarily good-looking parentage, it’s not exactly a surprise that Brooklyn is good-looking, too. In his teens, he landed several high-profile modeling gigs, including a major editorial in Vogue China alongside his brother, Romeo. He’s also graced the pages of Man About Town, Teen Vogue, T Magazine, and others.
From Football to Photography
While Brooklyn enjoyed modeling and also played football (he was even enrolled at the Arsenal Football Club’s youth academy), he ultimately decided to go in another direction, “I had a lot of pressure on me. Every time I made a mistake, everyone was looking at me...I kind of wanted to go in my own direction. Photography is it,” he told Entertainment Today.
Of what led him to photography, Brooklyn has said, “I’ve kind of been into it my whole life; when I was 12 or so, my dad always took photos of me, and I kind of always wanted to know how a camera worked. But I hadn’t really thought about it doing it professionally, or really been actually trying to study it—and felt the way I do about it now—until now.”
While David Beckham may have handed Brooklyn his first camera, mom Victoria helped foster his passion and talent for the art in her own way. “I do backstage photography at my mum’s shows, and I mean, I love doing it — but my mum’s like, ‘Go take pictures of the models!’ and I’m a bit shy. So I kind of have to get the first two out of the way, and then I’m used to it,” he told GQ.
That experience paid off. When he was just 16, Brooklyn made headlines by nabbing the Burberry Brit fragrance campaign. And while some people wrote it off as nepotism, others said it was well-earned. Raved Teen Vogue of the development, meanwhile, “Brooklyn Beckham just scored his first beauty campaign. Which makes sense, considering he is beautiful.”
Brooklyn's photography career was so promising that a publishing company soon came knocking on his door. The result was his first book, What I See. He was just 18 at the time. “Penguin came to me two and a half years ago. I was really shocked and I couldn’t believe that they’d actually ask me to just yet, because I’d just kind of started. It took two years to really get it to its final thing, but it’s been a really cool process, and I’m really happy with it. They actually first saw my work on Instagram, which has kind of helped—it's where I post my photos and use my following to get my work out there, which I feel like is what most people nowadays do," he said of being discovered.
Speaking of Instagram, Brooklyn has made quite a name for himself there, too, with more than 11.6 million followers.
While Brooklyn may have gotten his start photographing models, he enjoys shooting other things more -- like interesting faces and his family, too. “I really enjoy taking pictures of my family, and I feel like they're some of my strongest work—and what people like. I love taking pictures of my mum, brothers, my sisters. My dad’s pretty cool, too,” he says.
Brooklyn eventually moved to New York to study photography, but ended up dropping out to accept an internship with a “prestigious photographer” in the UK.
Along the way, Brooklyn has also had a busy social life with the tabloids reporting on relationships with model Hana Cross, actress Chloe Moretz, and singer Rita Ora. Brooklyn is also crazy about tattoos: He celebrated his 18th birthday with his first ink, and added six more in the subsequent years, including one reading “Mama’s Boy” and another proclaiming, “Made in England.”
The second-generation celebrity is well aware of the perks of his parentage, but he’s also eager to establish his own identity in his own way. “Yeah, I mean, people are always going to know me as Victoria and David Beckham’s son, and people thought that [I've gotten this] because of my parents—and part of it maybe, yeah, of course, it does help, but I’m just trying to make my own way.”
He’s well-positioned to do so. Esquire magazine once declared him to be “one of the hottest prospects in showbiz.” Said the magazine's style director Teo Van Den Broeke, “Just by working the fashion industry alone [Brooklyn] has the potential to be more famous and wealthy than either David or Victoria. And best of all, he seems like a genuinely pleasant, down-to-earth guy.”
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