After school Marlon’s destination was always his aunt’s restaurant, where he had lunch with his cousins everyday. On one of this afternoons when he was only 15 years old, his grandmother introduced Marlon to Anderson Baumgartner, the owner of Way Models agency. Baumgartner was impressed with the beauty of the boy and didn’t think twice about asking him to do a casting in Sao Paulo.
-I didn’t understand what he meant by that, but I thanked him and said that my bussines was catching waves– Marlon who is now 23 years old and 1,87m tall changed his mind when her mother suggested that he should start working at mc donalds during vacations, he said –I better get my things and go to Sao Paulo!
He went to the casting and he recalls that he felt unconfortable and didn’t understand a single word uttered by the team that analyzed him from top to bottom.
-Casting, look, book, it was all Greek to me.–He said joking.
Days after the casting they called and said that he was casted to do a campaign of Dior, he didn’t knew anything about the French fashion brand and he thought that call was just a prank.
-When they said that I had to go to Paris I thought it was expensive, I warned them that I didn’t have any money to pay the passage– he says between laughs.
Her mother supported him and he entered a plane and faced the catwalk, after that it was one job after another.
In the other hand, Marlon’s life had quite dramatic chapters. When he was only one year old his father was murdered, and at three he was diagnosed with cancer in the mediastinum and went through a heavy treatment with many sessions of chemotherapy, this nightmare ended only four years later when he received a medical release. When he came back from the hospital his mother was married to another man, feeling unconfortable with the remarriage of his mother, Marlon spent his adolescence between the houses of his grandmother and his aunt.
-I never imagined that all this would happen in his life– Says his mother Claudia Teixeira (41) who graduated in nursing thanks to the help of his son. –Our life wasn’t easy, but he was always a warrior. When I was sick and crying he used to say: “Mom don’t worry because I’m not going to die”.
The model left his mother and sisters in 2009, and moved to New York, now days he has an apartment in the West Village neighborhood. Last month he lost count in how much time he spent on airplanes. - I Hardly know where I’ll be in the next two or three weeks. But it doesn’t bother me. I feel privileged. Now, staying long distant sea drives me crazy. I always get a little time to escape for surfing.
- When I was younger I used to say that women were the best part of my job. Today, whatever I’m going to shoot, what I want is that the result is the best possible.
Marlon also controls his money he wants to invest in property and will open a bar in Praia Brava, Santa Catarina. He likes to give present, when he turned 18, he bought a car, not for him, but for his mother, and for traveling with friends behind waves.
- He has a different light than most people and faces his profession very seriously. Maybe it’s because all that happened to him- says Anderson Baumgartner.