Cristy Thom Bio
Cristy Thom is an American glamour model, actress, and painter. Born Li-Wah Thom on September 8, 1971, in Los Angeles, California, she has also been credited as Christy Thom. Playboy named her its February 1991 Playmate at 19. Her appearance came during Playboy's 1990s print era, a period increasingly shaped by entertainment and celebrity culture.
Thom has natural breasts, brown eyes and black hair. Her measurements are 36-23-36.
Thom made the turn from image to image-maker in the early 1990s. In 1993 she enrolled at Otis College of Art and Design and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, emerging as a photorealist painter whose work the press has noted for its technical precision and unexpected warmth. Her canvases and photographs have circulated beyond Los Angeles, showing in commercial and gallery settings from Jacksonville to Santa Fe, Pasadena to Anchorage.
Childhood and an unorthodox adolescence set the stage. Raised by her mother after her parents’ divorce, she left high school at fifteen and moved to the San Fernando Valley. Those years away from conventional training became part of a trajectory that moved quickly from local shoots to international exposure.
Her early visibility included frequent appearances in Playboy videos and newsstand specials and a European recognition when she was named Playboy Netherlands Playmate of the Year in 1992. The pictorial that brought her wider attention was photographed by Arny Freytag, and she parlayed that visibility into screen work with small, memorable supporting turns in offbeat genre pictures such as Meatballs 4 and Best of the Best 2.
Now based in Santa Monica, Thom divides her time between painting and photography, translating a practiced understanding of the human form into studio work rather than glossy layouts. The sequence of gallery shows, moving-image projects and occasional screen credits reads less like a reinvention than a disciplined pivot: she kept the camera’s eye but changed the subject.
