Lilly Becker, the 49-year-old Dutch model and former wife of tennis champion Boris Becker, appears topless in the October issue of German Playboy and described the shoot as the start of a new phase in her life.
Becker posed in an off-the-shoulder semi-sheer lace bodysuit for some images and went nude in others, styling her hair straight with smoky-eye makeup for the cover shoot. She told the magazine the timing felt right, saying, "I'm 49 now; I wouldn't have wanted to do it in my fifties. The timing was just right. I thought, f**k it, I look good." She added that her forties had been "learning years," noting she left her marriage, raised her son largely on her own and lost some naiveté, but maintained her energy.
Becker moved from London to Düsseldorf this year with her 15-year-old son, Amadeus. She gained renewed public attention in February when she won the German edition of I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! and received the show's "Queen of the Jungle" title, taking home €100,000. Playboy highlighted that victory in an Instagram post announcing her as the magazine's October cover star.
Becker and Boris Becker were married for nine years and have one son together. The couple confirmed their split in May 2018 after a bitter divorce process. The former world No. 1 was declared bankrupt in 2017 and later jailed in 2022 after German authorities found he had concealed assets and loans to avoid repaying creditors.
Boris Becker served eight months of a two-and-a-half-year sentence before being extradited to Germany and released in late 2022. He remarried in 2024 to Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro. Reports noted their wedding was attended by the two sons from his first marriage, while Amadeus and Becker's daughter Anna Ermakova were not present. Lilly Becker has previously said her son was not invited and expressed disappointment about the lack of communication.
In interviews about the Playboy shoot, Becker framed the decision as personal and celebratory, saying she had "worked hard and fought hard throughout my forties" and wanted to "end it with a bang." She discussed gaining strength through life experience, contrasting her wilder twenties with greater wisdom in later years.
Playboy's October issue featuring Becker follows a period in which she returned to public life through reality television and media appearances. The magazine's announcement on social media noted that her television win had made her popular with millions of viewers and suggested the magazine appearance would broaden her audience further.
Becker's Playboy spread and accompanying interviews arrive amid ongoing public interest in the former couple's post-divorce lives, including financial and legal developments involving Boris Becker and family relationships. Lilly Becker's comments positioned the shoot as a personal milestone and a deliberate step toward enjoying a new chapter after years of public scrutiny and private challenges.