SHANIA TWAIN
Born: August 28, 1965 Height: 5' 4"
Born Eilleen Regina Edwards, Shania Twain and her four siblings were reared in Timmins, Ontario , by her mother Sharon and adoptive father Jerry Twain. By the time she was 8, she was playing guitar, writing songs, and performing publicly. Upon graduating, Shania headed to Toronto to pursue music more seriously. In 1987, Twain's world was shattered by tragedy when both her parents were killed in a car crash. Returning home to care for her younger siblings, she began supporting the household by singing and dancing at Ontario's Deerhurst Resort, where the experience of combining music with theatrical performance helped her develop a feel for showmanship that would later be put to good use. She continued to write during this period, and her first manager eventually succeeded in persuading a representative of Mercury Records in Nashville to listen to her demo tape.
Impressed by Twain's compositional skills, the executive signed the young singer, who was then still known as Eileen. In a bittersweet twist of fate, her first album featured only one of her original songs. Released in early 1993, the self-titled debut garnered little attention. However, after seeing her midriff baring video for the song "What Made You Say That," veteran rock producer Robert "Mutt" Lange determined he had to meet the woman behind the navel. Lange began work with her on her second album in late 1993. In December of that year, the pair got married.
Her album
The Woman in Me (1995), brought her fame and her 1997 album
Come On Over, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and is the ninth best-selling album in the U.S. Her fourth album,
Up!, was released in November 2002. To date it has sold 20 million copies worldwide. Sometimes referred to as "The Queen of Country Pop", Twain has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide and is ranked 10th best-selling artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era. She was also ranked 72nd on Billboard's "Artists of the decade" (2000–10). Most recently, Twain has her own TV series,
Why Not? with Shania Twain, that premiered on the OWN in 2011. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Twain and Lange divorced after Lange allegedly had an affair with Twain's best friend, Marie-Anne Thiébaud. Twain's married Frédéric Thiébaud (the ex-husband of her former best friend), an executive at Nestlé. Twain is a long-time vegetarian and in 2001, was voted PETA's very first Sexiest Vegetarian Alive.
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