Heidi Montag
Love her or hate her, Heidi Montag is a tabloid staple…
2004 – After graduating high school, Colorado-native Heidi Montag heads to California to crack the books at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. At a freshman orientation, she meets Lauren Conrad, star of MTV’s hit reality show, Laguna Beach. “Everyone in the room was kind of gothy, and we were the two blond girls in the room scared out of our minds,” Montag recalls to the New York Times in 2006. “I ran up to her and said, ‘Will you please talk to me.’” Soon after, the new friends plot their move to L.A. to study at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.
2006 – MTV develops a spinoff with Conrad called The Hills, featuring Conrad’s move to L.A. as she studies fashion, interns at Teen Vogue, and lives with Montag. Creator Adam DiVello tells PEOPLE, “It’s really about the next stage in life, when you leave high school and leave home for the first time.” In the first season, Montag drops out of FIDM to work for the event-planning firm, Bolthouse Productions.
2007 – During the second season of the hit show, tension surfaces between Montag and Conrad when Montag begins dating instigating bad boy, Spencer Pratt. Montag eventually moves in with Pratt, ignoring Conrad’s warning of his wandering eye and her prediction that it will ruin their friendship. Conrad is also hurt when the couple urges her friend, Jen Bunney, to hook up with her ex, Brody Jenner. “I … felt so betrayed,” Conrad tells Montag.
Although Pratt tells EW, “We would get engaged; we just wouldn’t do it on Lauren’s show,” he does just that. Around that time, Montag appears on CosmoGIRL!, but readers of the teen mag question editors’ judgment. They call Montag “plastic and fake” and say she “trashed her best friend.” An editor responds, “I just wish everyone would cut Heidi a little slack. Just imagine if you and your best friend got into some huge fight, and for whatever reason, you were never allowed to tell your side of the story, but your friend could, and everyone believed her.”
2008 – With her new look, Montag appears on the cover of Maxim, where she says, “[Lauren's] changed. Some people go more Hollywood than others…I’ve heard from other people that she’s a big diva now.” Of their so-called reality show, Montag explains that it’s “22 minutes” that’s “edited for drama…They’re not with us all the time, although I wish they were, because it would be a way crazier show. Let’s see how Lauren would look then!”
Attempting to breakthrough as a singer, Montag releases her music video, “Higher,” which receives an almost unanimously negative reception by PEOPLE.com readers. Directed by her faithful Pratt and featuring a bikini-clad Montag romping across a beach, the underperforming video is shot in 30 minutes, independently, for “zero dollars.” “All negative energy,” Montag tells PEOPLE. “I completely ignore it.”
Montag, 21, and Conrad, 22, appear together – with Audrina Patridge, 22, and Whitney Port, 23 – on the cover of Rolling Stone. The shoot is the first time the two frenemies have been photographed together since their ratings-boosting feud. The magazine calls The Hills – which an MTV exec calls “the most influential show we’ve ever had” – “a maddeningly addictive TV show in which nothing ever really happens.” “Who were Paris and Nicole before they weren’t friends? That’s when they became superstars,” Montag’s Pratt says. “If Lauren and Heidi were friends, people wouldn’t tune in.”
While on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Montag and Pratt elope. “I would be upset if she got married and didn’t invite me!” Montag’s father Bill tells PEOPLE. Montag’s mother, Darlene Egelhoff, similarly voices her disapproval, even claiming Pratt “drugged” Montag into marrying him. The wedding is filmed for season five of The Hills, but isn’t legal in the U.S., as California does not recognize marriages performed outside of the country.
2009 – At 22, Montag officially becomes a Pratt when she marries her longtime beau, 25, in an early evening ceremony at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, Calif. The Hills stars exchange vows before about 200 guests, including Audrina Patridge and Brody Jenner.
Montag appears as Playboy’s latest centerfold and opens up about being perceived as a TV villain. “If women aren’t jealous of you, talking about you and cutting you down, then you’re a nerd,” she tells the magazine. “And I would never want to be that.” She also reveals that isn’t done with plastic surgery and eventually plans to “go bigger” for Spencer.
LINKS:
Official Heidi Montag
IMDB
