Anna-Marie Goddard, Miss January 1993, 40th Anniversary Playmate

Anyone who doesn't believe in fairy tales should meet Anna-Marie Goddard. Ten years ago, our 40th Anniversary Playmate was not smiling from the pages of a glossy magazine. She was minding cattle in the barn behind her home in Ysbrechtum, Holland, population 300. Those cows used to peer through the windows of the house each morning, waiting for the girl who milked them to wake. And young Anna-Marie, then 13, didn't mind. She lived in Friesland, a northern province of the Netherlands, not thrill-a-minute Amsterdam. Anna-Marie knew about faraway places, of course. She loved American movies and joked to her mother about getting married in Las Vegas someday. But Frisians tend to stay in Friesland, a place so suspicious of the wider world that its legendary hero was Grutte Pier, a Teuton who chopped the heads off outsiders who dared to venture north. "Even today most Frisians aren't very cosmopolitan," says the one who this month becomes the most famous Ysbrechtumian ever. "I don't know why I was different, but I was. And it was always cloudy in Friesland. It rained all the time, and the people were so conservative. I had to get out, to see more of the world." Anna-Marie sent her picture to a Belgian fashion magazine when she turned 17 and her career was launched. A little scared, she took a train to Ghent, Belgium, then moved on to modeling jobs in Madrid, Milan and Munich. In Munich she met American screenwriter and model Collin Goddard. It was--what else?--"love at first sight," says Anna-Marie. So they ran off to get married. Where? "In Las Vegas, at a place called the Little Chapel of the West. My mother couldn't believe it. My joke had come true." Living happily thereafter in a house overlooking the Pacific in southern California, and working throughout the world, she caught the eye of Playboy's West Coast Photo Editor, Marilyn Grabowski. Anna-Marie's test shots convinced us that this no-longer-provincial Dutch girl was something special. Perhaps her European roots made her seem utterly, naturally sensual. "We are not so uncomfortable about sex as you are in America," Anna-Marie says, smiling. "Europeans are more open. Even in conservative Friesland, people don't worry about nudity and sex. And because we're a more sexually free society, there's not this kind of crazy curiosity. Even as kids, we know all about sex, so it seems normal to us. A teenage girl goes to the doctor and gets birth control pills. That's what I did when I was 16. It doesn't mean you have to jump into bed with a boy right away." We saw the uninhibited Anna-Marie as someone who was extraordinary enough to be even more than Playmate of the Month. As our 40th Anniversary Playmate, a title she "hoped for so hard I was staying up at night thinking about it," Anna-Marie Goddard represents the Playboy ideal. "I am honored and excited," she says. So is her mother back home. Mom's reaction to the news that her daughter would pose for Playboy was, "Did you get to meet Hugh Hefner?" The proud daughter responded, "Yes, and he says hello."

Playmate Data Sheet

Name: Anna-Marie Goddard

Bust: 36 C

Waist: 24

Hips: 35

Height: 5'9"

Weight: 124

Birth Date: 1-13-70

BirthPlace: Ysbeechtum, Holland

Ambitions: To be very happy, make life as good as it can get, because you only live once!

Turn-Ons: My husband and my dogs, meeting Americans who know something about Holland!

Turnoffs: People who think they can buy me, liaks, jake smiles, pushy sales people.

What I like about America: Fat-free foods, all-night stores, friendly, open people-all in a land where you can succeed if you have enough ambition.

What I miss about Europe: Its history, culture, narrow streets, tiny villages without M'Donald's.

Most Romantic Moment: Running away to get married. in Las Vegas.

In my Heart of Hearts: I'm still a smalltown girl.

"I love the U.S. I've driven coast-to-coast four times just to see its beauty. There is so much to see," says Anna-Marie Goddard. Such a fan of Americana that she recognized our heads of state on Mount Rushmore--"Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, of course"--she's now something of an American institution herself: our Anniversary Playmate. "Surprising, isn't it? Maybe it is true that anything can happen here."

"I am not an expert about men," says Anna-Marie. "But I've met Italians who only want a woman to look pretty. A Spanish man can be more romantic. American men tell you their life stories, but there's something I like about them."