Mehgan Heaney-Grier | |
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| Born | Mehgan Renee Heaney (1977-08-26)August 26, 1977 (age 48) |
| Occupation(s) | Fashion model,free-diver |
Mehgan Heaney-Grier (bornMehgan Renee Heaney; August 26, 1977) is an American championfreediver,fashion model,actress,conservationist, andTV personality.[1][2]
Heaney-Grier was born inDuluth, Minnesota to Bill and Renee Heaney. Her parents divorced when she was six years old.[3] When she was eleven years old her mother remarried to Nelson Grier and in the summer of 1989, Heaney-Grier, along with her sister Erin, mother and new stepfather moved to theFlorida Keys. When she was 16 years old, she legally changed her last name to Heaney-Grier.
In 1996 at the age of 18 Heaney-Grier established the first constant weightfree-diving record in theUnited States with a dive to 155 feet (47 meters) on a single breath of air. The following year she beat her own record with a dive to 165 feet (50 meters),[4][5] When she set her second US record, the women's world record for free diving was 204.5 feet (62.3 meters).[3]
In 1998 Heaney-Grier captained the first United States Freediving Team to compete in the World Cup Freediving Championships held in Sardinia, Italy.[6] In 2000, Heaney-Grier was inducted as part of the inaugural roster into theWomen Divers Hall of Fame.[4]
Heaney-Grier has modeled for, and been featured in, numerous catalogs and magazines includingPeople,Outside,Life,Vogue Japan,Abercrombie & Fitch. She has also been a public relations ambassador forOmega Watches.[7]
In the late 1990s, Heaney-Grier partnered with her diving trainers,Manny Puig and Mark Rackley (who was at the time also Heaney-Grier's boyfriend), filming underwater encounters with animals such as alligators and sharks.[8] Rackley had worked as a spearfisherman and underwater videographer,[3] and Puig had experience as an animal handler on movie sets[3] and had learned how to ride and handle alligators in their environment.[8] Together with Heaney-Grier, they formed a company namedExtreme Encounters, and the footage they produced led to theAnimal Planet series titledExtreme Contact.[3] The 20-episode series featured the trio in cage-free encounters with sharks, alligators and other aquatic wildlife.[9] They also worked on a USA Network one-hour special titled "Deep Diver: Tiger Shark Odyssey".[2] In 2002, Heaney-Grier went on to other projects.[2]
In 1999 Heaney-Grier had a guest-starring role as a free-diver on an episode ofBaywatch, and a starring role on a UPN movie of the week,Avalon:Beyond the Abyss, produced byViacom Productions. Heaney-Grier has been a featured guest on theLate Show with David Letterman, London'sTFI Friday,Primetime Live withAnderson Cooper andRipley's Believe it or Not. Heaney-Grier also hostedSaturn's Gravity Files, covering theGravity Games in 2004, and theMad Fin Shark Series forESPN in 2008.
In 2015 Heaney-Grier co-starred as a member of a 5-person exploration team on the reality showTreasure Quest: Snake Island, which documents the search for the legendaryTreasure of the Trinity onSnake Island, Brazil.
In 2003, Heaney-Grier was sought by the director ofPirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,Gore Verbinski, to perform an underwater stunt forKeira Knightley.[10] Heaney-Grier has also performed underwater stunts, includingscuba diving, free diving and working with sharks, as a stunt double forJessica Alba andAshley Scott inInto the Blue, and for actressOlivia Wilde inTuristas.
Heaney-Grier was featured in the booksA Family of Women by Carolyn Jones.[11] andFreedive! by Terry Maas and David Sipperly,[12]
Heaney-Grier married Silas Binkley on June 6, 2010. For seven years she has been the guardian of a rescuedwolf-dog hybrid namedRontu,[10] and they are in the process of becoming a registered team foranimal-assisted therapy work. Heaney-Grier graduated from theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder in 2011 with both aB.A. degree inEcology andEvolutionary Biology and a B.A. inAnthropology.[4][13] They have one child together, Cash, born 2013.
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