FORMER supermodel Niki Taylor, 33, once the ubiquitous face of Seventeen and Vogue in the 1990s, has been quiet over the past few years.

But her turn as a host in reality TV show Make Me A Supermodel may signal her return into the limelight.

Contestants slug it out by facing challenges such as posing nude for art classses and doing photo shoots in cemetaries.

The winner gets a modelling contract worth US$100,000 (S$137,250) in cash and a GQ magazine spread.

"It is really modelling bootcamp," Taylor said of the show that blends the formats of America's Next Top Model and American Idol, allowing viewers to vote a contestant out every episode.

Besides the show, the Florida beauty also plans to launch more fragrances - she released her first fragrance, Begin, in 2005 - and eventually started her own bag or clothing line.

Thanks to her spoils from her supermodel days, she and husband Burney Lamar, 28, a driver for Nascar, don't really need to work. Lamar works just several months out of a year when racing season is on, while Taylor plays mum to her kids.

She and Lamar, whom she calls her "best friend", married in 2006 and live in Brentwood, Tennesse, with her twin sons, Jake and Hunter, 13, from a previous marriage.

"A normal day for us is waking up at 5:30. We make a huge coffee, have lunch and go to the gym together.

"We don't have to work, so we spend time together just bonding with the kids. I'm a boring person at home, just a mum and a wife," she laughed.

They intend to have more children. She revealed she has been trying for another baby.

"If we don't get pregnant in a year, we might adopt," she said.

Taylor's illustrious modelling career enjoyed a whirlwind start when she was 14. The youngest model to appear on a Vogue cover, she also appeared on an unprecedented six magazine covers in the same month in 1996 and has to date, over 400 magazine cover credits.

Still, her life has had its fair share of upsets. In 1995, Taylor's sister Krissy died abruptly from a rare cardiac disease.

And Taylor went through a serious car accident in 2001 in which she sustained grievous damage to her liver and reportedly underwent over 50 surgeries.

It prompted her to refocus on her boys as she settled in Brentwood into a life out of the public eye, she says.

Taylor also divorced her first husband, football player Matt Martinez in 1996.

She adopts an almost sanguine approach to the tough times.

"Maybe it was to encourage somebody else who went through the same (kind of) accident," she says of the time when she fought for her life.

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