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Bob Paris

Bob Paris (born Robert Clark Paris on December 14, 1959) is a popular best-selling author, an award-winning public speaker and an internationally renown civil rights change-agent.

Paris was also the 1983 NPC American National and IFBB World Bodybuiding Champion, Mr. Universe, and is widely considered one of history's greatest International Federation of BodyBuilders professional bodybuilding champions because of his landmark efforts both on and off the competitive stage.

Biography

Paris grew up in Southern Indiana. He played high school football and participated in track and field events. It was here that Paris first began lifting weights, leading him down the road to professional bodybuilding, where he excelled.

Even 15 years after his retirement from professional competition, Bob Paris is considered one of the greatest athletes in the history of bodybuilding. In 2006, Flex Magazine ranked Bob Paris the most aesthetic athlete in the history of bodybuilding. Renowned for both his aesthetics and artistic approach toward the sport, Bob was also a dedicated advocate for the rights of athletes and an outspoken voice in the push for drug testing at the professional level.

In addition to his flourishing writing career, Bob Paris remains a committed civil rights advocate and motivational speaker.

He is also a model who has worked with the world's leading fashion, celebrity and fitness photographers; and a classically trained and highly regarded theatre actor.

On October 10, 1998, he made his New York stage debut, starring at Carnegie Hall opposite Bea Arthur, Sandy Duncan, Michael Jeter, Philip Bosco, Alice Ripley and Tyne Daly in the Broadway musical, Jubilee as the character Mowgli.

Since rising to fame in the early eighties, Bob Paris has graced the covers of scores of magazines worldwide.

Personal life

In the July 1989 issue of Ironman magazine, Paris came out in the media as a gay man.

He and his then-partner, Rod Jackson had a commitment ceremony in a Unitarian church in 1989, started successful non-profits, lectured on a wide variety of gay civil rights issues, and made many television, radio, newspaper and magazine appearances. In 1995, the two separated.

Today, Bob lives with his spouse of more than eleven years, Brian, on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia. Together since 1996, Bob and Brian were legally married after Canada equalized the marriage laws in 2003.