Miss USA has been a staple of American culture since 1952, with numerous celebrities competing in the annual competition over the years.
This year’s winner will be crowned on Saturday, Aug. 4, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles by reigning titleholder Savannah Gankiewicz. Gankiewicz, who represented Hawaii, was announced as the winner earlier this year following the unexpected resignation of former titleholder Noelia Voigt, amid a wave of resignations.
Voigt cited mental health reasons for her resignation, while both Voigt’s mother and the mother of former Miss Teen USA 2023 UmaSofia Srivastava claimed their daughters had been “abused, bullied, and cornered.” Miss USA President and CEO Laylah Rose has denied these allegations, and Voigt has requested that her non-disclosure agreement be waived so she can speak freely about her experience.
When accepting the crown, Gankiewicz emphasized that “my decision to accept the Miss USA crown was not one that was made lightly.”
“I stand with Noelia and admire her strength,” she added in a statement. “Noelia, it was the honor of a lifetime to share the stage with you during your crowning moment, and I wish you all the best in your next chapter.”
Before this year’s winner is crowned, let’s take a look back at some of the most famous Miss USA contestants, from Halle Berry to Olivia Culpo.
Halle Berry
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1966, Halle Berry entered the beauty pageant circuit as a teenager, winning the Miss Teen All American pageant in 1985 before being crowned Miss Ohio USA the following year.
“Once you start winning these things, it’s like a snowball. And you have to go to the next one, and if you win there, you go to the next one, and I kept winning all the way until the Miss USA pageant where I did not win,” Berry said of her pageant journey during a 2016 interview with W Magazine.
She ended up finishing as first runner-up behind Miss Texas Christy Fichtner in the 1986 Miss USA pageant.
“That ended my beauty pageant career,” Berry told W Magazine.
As for her talent, she quipped, “I had no talent.”
“We didn’t have to have talent. [In] Miss America you need a talent. Miss USA you’re talentless. You just show up,” she said. “Thank God I didn’t have to sing.”
Berry then began her career as an actress, starring in films like Catwoman, Die Another Day, Cloud Atlas, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Her most recent film, Moonfall, was released in 2022, and she will appear in the upcoming film The Union, which premieres on Netflix on Aug. 16.
Kenya Moore
Kenya Moore entered the pageant scene at age 22, after beginning her modeling career at age 14. In 1993, Moore was crowned Miss Michigan USA and later became the second Black woman to win Miss USA that same year. (Carole Anne-Marie Gist was the first Black Miss USA, earning her crown in 1990.)
“Being Miss USA… being the second [Black] woman to be crowned Miss USA. I’m a part of American history,” Moore, now 53, told Entertainment Tonight earlier this year.
“A little young Black girl from Detroit, having come from really nothing to being a celebrity overnight and touching people and having people be excited to see you in person and crying over you, that was a lot,” she added. “It was a lot to deal with, but I just remember it was the best time of my life.”
She went on to place in the top six for the 1993 Miss Universe pageant, which was won by Dayanara Torres of Puerto Rico.
Moore then began her acting career, taking on roles in films and television series like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Waiting to Exhale, Deliver Us From Eva, and I Know Who Killed Me.
Moore entered the reality television sphere in 2012 when she joined the Season 5 cast of The Real Housewives of Atlanta on Bravo. From there, she appeared on Season 7 of The Celebrity Apprentice and competed in Season 30 of Dancing with the Stars in 2021.
In June, it was announced that Moore would not be returning to RHOA after she was suspended from the set indefinitely for allegedly leaking explicit pictures of new cast member Brittany Eady.
Shanna Moakler
Shanna Moakler was crowned Miss New York in 1995 and finished as a runner-up to Chelsi Smith in the Miss USA pageant that year. However, after Smith was crowned Miss Universe, Moakler succeeded her as Miss USA.
She began her acting career in 1996, appearing on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Due South, before becoming a regular on the drama series Pacific Blue in 1998. She later starred in a reality series called Meet the Barkers alongside her then-husband Travis Barker, the drummer for Blink-182, in 2005.
Moakler and Barker, who share two children, divorced in 2008. She also shares a daughter with boxer Oscar De La Hoya.
In a June interview with PEOPLE, Moakler opened up about her life, saying, “I’m more than just the ex-wife of famous men.”
“I was Miss USA at 19. I’m smart. Every part I’ve ever got in any movie, or every show I hosted or auditioned for, I worked… to get,” she said. “I’m proud of who I am.”
Ali Landry
Ali Landry entered the pageant world in 1990, winning the title of Miss Louisiana Teen USA, and later claimed the Miss Louisiana USA crown in 1996. That same year, she won the Miss USA title and went on to finish in the top six at the Miss Universe competition.
After her pageantry career, Landry transitioned into modeling and acting, appearing in several Doritos Super Bowl ads from 1998 to 2000. She also hosted the NBC reality series SpyTV and had a role on the TV series Eve.
In 1998, she was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World by PEOPLE, and she has been featured multiple times on FHM magazine’s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list.
Vanessa Lachey
Although Vanessa Lachey, formerly Vanessa Minnillo, never competed in Miss USA, she did win the Miss Teen USA pageant in 1998 as a representative of South Carolina.
She transitioned into a successful career as a television host and correspondent, working on MTV’s The Morning After and Total Request Live, as well as reporting for Entertainment Tonight. Her acting career began with small roles on shows like 30 Rock, Psych, Hawaii Five-O, and How I Met Your Mother.
Vanessa met her husband, singer Nick Lachey, while filming the music video for his song “What’s Left of Me” in 2006, and they married in 2011. The couple competed against each other on Season 25 of Dancing with the Stars, with Vanessa being eliminated seventh, just a week after Nick was eliminated.
Since 2020, the Lacheys have hosted the Netflix series Love is Blind, covering every episode of the series.
In 2021, Vanessa was cast as Jane Tennant in NCIS: Hawai’i, making history as the first female lead in the NCIS franchise. However, the series was canceled by CBS in April.
Olivia Culpo
After winning Miss Rhode Island in her debut pageant, Olivia Culpo went on to win the Miss USA pageant in 2012 and then secured the Miss Universe title later that same year. Following her Miss Universe victory, Culpo transitioned into a successful social media personality and launched her career in entertainment.
She appeared in the films The Other Woman (2014) and I Feel Pretty (2018), and made guest appearances on the television series Model Squad and Paradise City. Additionally, she served as a judge and backstage correspondent for the Miss Universe pageants in 2015 and 2019, and later hosted the Miss Universe pageants in 2020, 2022, and 2023.
In 2023, Culpo competed as “UFO” on Season 9 of The Masked Singer, but was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
Culpo began dating NFL star Christian McCaffrey in 2019, and the couple married in June 2024 in Culpo’s home state of Rhode Island.
Hannah Brown
Hannah Brown, who won the Miss Alabama title in 2018 after competing several times, represented her state in that year’s Miss USA pageant. During the competition, she met Caelynn Miller-Keyes, who would later become her co-star on The Bachelor.
“It is a huge responsibility to do this, and represent the state of Alabama and everything I stand for,” she said in an interview with Alabama News Center.
Although Brown did not place in the Miss USA competition, she was cast in Season 23 of The Bachelor, where she competed for Colton Underwood’s affection and finished seventh. She was then announced as the lead for Season 15 of The Bachelorette. Brown chose Jed Wyatt as her fiancée during the season finale, but they broke up after filming.
In 2019, Brown competed on Dancing with the Stars Season 28, winning the competition with partner Alan Bersten.
In 2021, Brown launched her author career with her memoir God Bless This Mess: Learning to Live and Love Through Life’s Best (and Worst) Moments, which debuted at number 13 on The New York Times best-seller list. That year, she began dating Adam Woolard, and they got engaged in 2023.
Her debut romance novel, Mistakes We Never Made, was published in May 2024, and she has another book scheduled for release next summer.
Caelynn Miller-Keyes
Caelynn Miller-Keyes competed in the 2018 Miss USA pageant as Miss North Carolina, finishing as the first runner-up to Sarah Rose Summers, who represented Nebraska.
In 2019, she participated in Season 23 of The Bachelor, where she placed fourth. Later that year, Miller-Keyes appeared on Bachelor in Paradise, where she left the show with her boyfriend, Dean Unglert, whom she began dating on the show.
In 2023, Miller-Keyes and Unglert tied the knot in Meredith, Colorado, near Unglert’s hometown.
