Rico is soft-spoken and not particularly comfortable during the online interview from his hometown of Montreal. His answers are short and it's hard to get a read on him. He had refused all interviews until just this past January. Now he has a website and a YouTube channel.
For those who have not yet heard of the Zombie Boy phenomenon, here it is in a nutshell: Genest, 25, grew up in Chateauguay, a bedroom community on Montreal's south shore. He got his first tattoo at age 16 and left home the following year to live as a squeegee kid on the streets of Montreal. There he discovered his new family in the city's underground punk-rock scene.
Genest, a horror-film aficionado, began spending more time in the tattoo parlour and at 19 decided to become a performance artist. He spent $15,000 for 200 tattoos and predicts his body will be fully covered within a year.
Zombie Boy won't stop there. He plans to have the whites of his eyes tattooed and he wants to have his teeth filed down into vampire fangs. The capper with be a "snake tongue" procedure, which involves having the tongue split into two halves.
The buzz around Rick Genest started on the web in January. A photo spread in Dressed to Kill magazine caught the eye of Nicola Formichetti, Lady Gaga's personal stylist who created the pop star's infamous "meat dress." Formichetti Facebooked Rico, who had no idea he was chatting with a fashion giant.
Formichetti said he wanted Rico to model clothes for the Mugler fashion house in Paris, where he serves as creative director. The problem was Rico had no passport, and faces several unpaid municipal infractions. Formichetti wanted him so badly that he flew to Montreal, hired an immigration lawyer and paid his bills.
Rico has since stalked the runway alongside Lady Gaga and he appeared in her video Born This Way. In between, Rico has also partied with Gaga in New York, graced the pages of GQ and was photographed by famed shooter Steven Klein for the popular magazine Arena Hommes Plus. His fame continues to grow -- Zombie Boy had a brief cameo with Keanu Reeves in the movie 47 Ronin in Budapest and there are plans for a documentary project in Europe.
But despite his newfound fame, Rico says he still has his naysayers.
"People say my career is gonna be short because I don't have what it takes to be a model," said Rico, who admits to preferring the circus to the runway. "To set the record straight, it was never my intention to become a model."
For three years Rico performed in various freak shows. His talents include lying on a bed of nails, eating worms and fire and putting objects in his nose. The New York Times sent a photographer to a recent performance in Montreal, and Rico says he has no plans to leave his beloved hometown.
"I got my friends here and I can't imagine it being any different," he said. "I mean a job is a job, right?"
And how does his family feel about his lifestyle choice?
"We're on good terms, I'm sure they are following," he said, before adding: "from a good distance."
Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2011/04/24/zombie-boys-rise-from-squeegee-kid-to-gq
