Jeremy Meeks is still walking runways. In February 2026, he opened for HIGHRISK at Two Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills — twelve years after a police mugshot turned him into the most famous face on the internet. He’s single, he says he is celibate, and if he could, he’d have every tattoo on his body removed.
That last part is the one worth sitting with. Because of why he got them.
Updated September 2026
Does Jeremy Meeks regret his tattoos?
He does — and he says he only worked out the reason while he was sitting in solitary confinement.
“I had covered myself in tattoos because I was afraid to fail in life,” he said in 2026. “If I covered myself in tattoos, then that would just kill the shot of having to go fill out applications.”
Read that one more time. The face that made him one of the most recognisable men alive was, by his own account, a deliberate attempt to make himself unemployable. He was trying to close the door on himself before anyone else could.
Asked whether he’d go without them if he had the choice, he didn’t hesitate. Definitely.
What is Jeremy Meeks doing now?
Still modelling. That HIGHRISK show in February 2026 was his most recent runway appearance, and it got attention partly because he wore a Palestinian keffiyeh on the catwalk.
He’s also kept acting in independent films and TV movies, and in 2024 he published a memoir, Model Citizen.
And in 2025 he told an interviewer he’d been celibate for three years. His explanation was short: “I’m not being distracted.”
What was Jeremy Meeks actually convicted of?
This is where most write-ups go vague, so here it is properly.
He was arrested in Stockton, California on 18 June 2014, during a police operation called Ceasefire, and convicted in February 2015 on one federal count of being a felon in possession of a firearm — a .45 calibre pistol. He was sentenced to 27 months and released from FCI Mendota on 8 March 2016.
The word felon in that charge is doing a lot of work, and it points backwards. In 2002 he served two years in California state prison over a robbery and an assault on a 16-year-old, and he has acknowledged past gang membership. Without that, the 2014 charge doesn’t make any sense at all — and most profiles leave it out.
How did Jeremy Meeks become famous?
Stockton police posted his booking photograph on Facebook. Within days it had been shared hundreds of thousands of times, and somebody had christened him the “hot felon.”
He found out about all of it from inside a cell.
“I would say on the third day, that’s when just… floods and floods of letters from all over the world. I was probably getting 300 letters a day.”
The courtroom was no better. “Every time I went into the courtroom there was 100 reporters and everyone was fighting each other for better angles and the judge is screaming. It was like a zoo in there.”
He signed with White Cross Management in March 2015 — while he was still in prison.
Are Jeremy Meeks and Chloe Green still together?
No. They were together from June 2017 to August 2019, and the split was reported as amicable. They have a son, Jayden, born on 29 May 2018.
The relationship also began while Meeks was still married. He and Melissa Meeks, a nurse, married in 2008; photographs of him with Green on a yacht off Turkey in June 2017 ended it, and they divorced in 2018. They have a son, Jeremy Jr.
What happened to Jeremy Meeks growing up?
He’s summed it up himself, in a sentence that doesn’t need any help: “Both of my parents were heroin addicts. I was a heroin baby.”
What is Jeremy Meeks’ net worth?
Celebrity-finance sites put it at around $5 million. There’s no disclosed figure and no filing behind it, so treat it as exactly what it is — a guess.
How old is Jeremy Meeks?
He was born on 7 February 1984 in Tacoma, Washington.
What has Jeremy Meeks modeled?
More than most people assume. He signed with White Cross Management in March 2015, while he was still inside. He walked for Philipp Plein at New York Fashion Week in February 2017, and for Tommy Hilfiger in Milan in February 2018.
In 2019 a reported $15 million clothing-line deal with the German firm Fashion Concept GmbH was announced; the line launched in July 2020. A second collection, for Canon Mitchell, followed in January 2024.
What films has Jeremy Meeks been in?
A steady run of independent features and TV movies: Trigger in 2020, True to the Game 2 and 3, Secret Society in 2021, Dance for Me in 2023, and Love After Holidays, Beach Chain and Dutch II: Angel’s Revenge more recently.
None of them made him a film star. All of them kept him working.
What is Model Citizen?
His memoir, published in 2024 — Model Citizen: The Autobiography of Jeremy Meeks. It is where most of what he has said about his childhood and his time inside is set down in his own words.
Who is Melissa Meeks?
His first wife, a nurse. They married in 2008 and divorced in 2018, after photographs of him with Chloe Green on a yacht off Turkey ended the marriage. They have a son, Jeremy Jr.
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