Synopsis
Born on March 30, 1968, in Charlemagne,
Quebec, Canada, singer Celine Dion had recorded nine French albums and won
numerous awards by the time she was 18. She recorded her first English language
album, Unison, in 1990. Dion's real breakthrough into pop music stardom
came in 1992, when she recorded the theme to Disney's hit animated feature Beauty
and the Beast. She went on to record several hits, including four No. 1's:
"The Power of Love," "Because You Loved Me," "My Heart
Will Go On" and "I'm Your Angel."
Celine Marie Claudette Dion was born
on March 30, 1968, in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada. The youngest of 14 children
of Adhemar and Therese Dion, she grew up in a close-knit musical family. Her
parents formed a singing group, Dion's Family, and they toured Canada when Celine
was still an infant. They later opened a piano bar, where the 5-year-old Celine
would perform to the delight of customers.
At the age of 12, Celine Dion
recorded a demo tape of a song she had written with her mother. They sent the
tape to the manager and producer Rene Angelil, who handled the career of
popular French singer Ginette Reno. After hearing the tape and inviting Dion to
perform for him in person, Angelil signed her immediately under the condition
that he would have complete control over her career. He mortgaged his own home
to finance her debut album, La Voix du bon Dieu (The Voice of God).
By the age of 18, Dion had recorded
nine French albums and won numerous Felix and Juno awards (the Canadian
equivalent of a Grammy Award). In 1988, she won the Eurovision Song Contest in
Dublin, Ireland, and her performance was broadcast live in countries throughout
Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Japan. After this taste of international
acclaim, she began looking to the south, and American stardom.
Dion recorded her first English
language album, Unison, in 1990. Like most of her English language
albums, it was a collaboration with the songwriter-arranger-musician David
Foster. Driven by the Top 5 single "Where Does My Heart Beat Now," Unison
sold more than 1 million copies worldwide.
Dion's real breakthrough into pop
music stardom came in 1992, when she recorded the theme to Disney's hit
animated feature Beauty and the Beast, a duet with Peabo Bryson. The
song ("Beauty and the Beast") made it to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot
100 and won both a Grammy and an Academy Award. It was featured on her second
English album, Celine Dion, which became her first gold record in the
United States and sold more than 12 million copies internationally. The
undeniable success of her self-titled effort, also including the hit "If
You Asked Me To," which made it to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No.
1 on the adult contemporary chart, allowed Dion to launch her first headlining
tour in the United States.
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Celine Dion quickly capitalized on
her newfound fame, releasing the top-selling The Colour of My Love in
1993. The album showcased the romantic power ballads that Dion had become known
for, including "When I Fall in Love" (featured on the soundtrack for
the hit film Sleepless in Seattle) and "The Power of Love,"
her first single to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1994, Dion happily merged her
personal and professional life when she married Angelil, who is 26 years her
senior. Angelil and his second wife had divorced in the 1980s, and, around this
same time, he and Dion had begun a romantic relationship. Engaged in 1991, the
couple tied the knot at Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica, in an elaborate
ceremony that was celebrated throughout Canada.
Dion's international stardom was
solidified by her performance of "The Power of the Dream," at the
1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. That same year, her album Falling
Into You, including the No. 1 hit "Because You Loved Me" (from
the soundtrack to Robert Redford's sentimental 1996 film, Up Close and
Personal), won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best pop album. The
following year, however, would hold even greater glory for Dion, with the
release of the blockbuster film Titanic (1997), co-starring Leonardo
DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, for which Dion sang the theme song, "My Heart
Will Go On." By the time the film had raked in a record number of Oscar
nominations (it won 11, including the award for best song), Dion's ballad had
become ubiquitous on radio stations around the world.
Included on both the Titanic
soundtrack album and Dion's own Let's Talk About Love (1997), "My
Heart Will Go On" propelled to the No. 1 slot on the Billboard Hot
100—marking the singer's third No. 1 hit—and sold a combined 50 million records
worldwide. Let's Talk About Love also featured collaborations with the
likes of Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, the Bee Gees and Bryan Adams.
Dion received the National Order of
Quebec, her province's highest honor, in April 1998. Later that year, she
appeared alongside Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan and Shania
Twain on the high-profile televised concert Divas Live (1998) on VH-1.
While touring relentlessly and
recording several albums (including S'il Suffisait d'Aimer and a holiday
album, These Are Special Times, both released in 1998), Dion was
well-rewarded at the Billboard Music Awards in late 1998, where she won six
awards, including for artist of the year and album of the year, for 1997's Let's
Talk About Love. Her extensive 14-country tour, which began in the summer
of 1998, culminated in a gala concert in Montreal on December 31, 1999, in
honor of the new millennium. Dion scored her fourth No. 1 hit with "I'm
Your Angel," a duet with R&B singer R. Kelly featured on These Are
Special Times.
In the first months of 2000, Dion
announced that she was taking time off from her career in order to focus on her
family. She and Angelil had been trying to have children for years, and
eventually decided to use in vitro fertilization to conceive. In May 2000, Dion
underwent two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York in order to
improve her chances of becoming pregnant.
Her efforts were successful, and on
January 25, 2001, Dion gave birth to a boy, Rene-Charles. She has revealed in
interviews that she had stored another fertilized egg in the fertility clinic
and planned someday to give her son a sibling. On October 23, 2010, at age 42,
Dion gave birth to twin boys. Angelil, who was diagnosed with skin cancer in
1999, is now in remission.
