Whatever Happened To 'Stacy's Mom' From Fountains Of Wayne's Music Video?

Fountains of Wayne's smash song "Stacy's Mom" was one of the biggest power pop hits of the early 2000s. The paean to teenage lust and longing continues to enjoy a huge listenership, with more than 56 million plays on YouTube at the time of writing. Tellingly, the 2003 song's iconic music video has had over 200 million plays. This was a time before social media ruled all, where music promotion came in the form of regular play on MTV (here's why the channel stopped playing music videos).

As The New York Times noted, at the height of Fountains of Wayne's fame, the video must certainly have been a contributing factor to the song's popularity. Filmed in the style of a classic coming-of-age comedy, it stars a teenage boy who, like the narrator of the song, develops an infatuation with his girlfriend's mother. In the video, the mother is played by New Zealand model and actress Rachel Hunter. Hunter became famous in the late 1980s as a model for magazines like Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitan, and her profile grew enormously in 1990 when she married rock superstar Rod Stewart. The couple had two children before divorcing in 2006, and during their marriage Hunter embarked on a career as a movie actress, making her debut in the 1998 romantic comedy "Just a Little Harmless Sex."

Hunter was arguably already an icon before the "Stacy's Mom" video. In his New York Times features, Fountains of Wayne bassist and songwriter Adam Schlesinger remembered the moment he saw her on-set. "It was 7 a.m., and there was Rachel Hunter doing a striptease on the kitchen counter," he recalled. Here's what she's been up to since then.

"Stacy's Mom" wasn't the first music video Rachel Hunter starred in. A year into her marriage to Rod Stewart, she was featured in the video for her husband's 1991 single "Broken Arrow." Nor would her work for Fountains of Wayne be her last. In 2006, she had a cameo in the music video for "Mojo" by Mike Patton side project Peeping Tom.

Hunter's music video career appears to have ended there, but her movie work continued, with roles in both Hollywood flicks and smaller independent productions. She featured in the Rob Schneider comedy "The Benchwarmers" in 2006 and the thriller-drama "Dead Write" in 2007. She kept acting into the 2010s, and also continued to work with Sports Illustrated, appearing in the two-hour special "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit: 50 Years of Beautiful" in 2014. Her last film role was in 2015, when she portrayed Lily Helms in the thriller "Her Infidelity." She has a total of 38 movie credits to her name, including Sports Illustrated appearances.

Rachel Hunter's career in television has been consistent in the years since she starred in the music video for "Stacy's Mom." In 2004, she appeared in several shows, including a cameo as herself on "The Tony Danza Show," as well as appearances on "On Air with Ryan Seacrest" and the reality TV show "The Real Gilligan's Island."

Reality TV comes with many rules and can be a difficult industry to break into, but it seemed to be a lucrative niche for Hunter. In 2005, she was a contestant on the 1st season of "Dancing with the Stars." Her biggest acting role of recent years has been as Shawna Rollins in the comedy-drama show "Gravity," which aired in 2010. Unfortunately, it was canceled after one season. She has since appeared as a judge on "RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under" and made several other TV appearances down the years (drag shows, by the way, are older than you realize).

More recently however, Hunter has become a star of social media, fronting her own YouTube channel: "Rachel Hunter's Tour of Beauty." The videos follow her traveling the world, exploring the beauty and longevity techniques of various vultures. She is also a popular figure on Instagram, where she promotes yoga and meditation retreats and workshops and has more than 150,000 followers at time of writing.