They’re not exactly your grandfather’s orthotic inserts. On the other hand, maybe they are.

For generations, such well-known companies as Dr. Scholl’s have offered various lifts to stick inside your shoes for comfort and to give you a little height.

Now a Manhattan Beach mortgage banker-turned-model is trying to make it all hip. Derek White, 32, who retired from the mortgage business to pursue modeling and acting in 2007, got the idea for LiftKits at a Miami fashion show where he noticed another model stuffing his shoes.

The result: MyLiftKits.com, an online company through which White and two partners have sold more than 10,000 pairs of $15 to $25 polyurethane shoe inserts since early this year.

The trick, according to his business partner Matthew Gaffney, 31, is marketing an old product with a “Hollywood approach,” he said. “We just wanted to give it a sexy image.”

The campaign began with a Web site bearing slick photos of attractive young people using the inserts. Then the lifts were given away at swag suites in the lead up to this year’s Oscars. Since then, the publicity has taken off, with mentions in gossip magazines and celebrity blogs, and even a piece on an upcoming episode of “The Tyra Banks Show.”

Among celebrities using the insoles, White claims, are A.J. Buckley of “CIS: New York,” Rex Lee of “Entourage” and Miami Dolphins quarterback Nate Jones. But though a gossip magazine recently added actor Tom Cruise to the list, White was quick to deny.

“We’ve never spoken to him,” he said. “We’ve never sent him an insole, though we’d sure like to.”