Bio
Kylie Minogue, OBE is an Australian pop singer-songwriter and occasional actress who rose to prominence in the late 1980s through her role in the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a pop artist in 1987.
Minogue was born in Melbourne, Australia, the first child of Ron Minogue, an accountant of Irish ancestry, and Carol Jones, a former dancer from Maesteg, Wales.
Her sister, Dannii, is also a pop singer, and her brother, Brendan, works as a news cameraman in Australia.
The Minogue sisters began their careers as children on Australian television, and from the age of 12 Kylie appeared in small roles in soap operas such as The Sullivans and Skyways, before being cast in one of the lead roles in The Henderson Kids.
She gave her first singing performance in 1983, on the weekly music programme Young Talent Time which featured Dannii as a regular performer. Dannii's success in this program overshadowed Kylie's acting achievements, until Kylie was cast in the soap opera Neighbours in 1986.
In Neighbours Minogue played the character of Charlene Mitchell, a female garage mechanic. As stated in The Guardian, "Her appeal at first lay in her unapologetic ordinariness... she played an oil-smudged mechanic with no desire to better herself. Charlene was happy to spend her life grappling with the intestines of greasy cars."
A story arc that created a romance and eventual marriage between her character and that played by Jason Donovan culminated in a wedding episode in 1987 that attracted a large audience of 20-million viewers.
Her popularity in Australia was demonstrated when she became the first person to win four Logie Awards in one event, including the "Gold Logie" as the country's "Most Popular Television Performer", with the result determined by public vote.
During a Fitzroy Football Club benefit concert with other Neighbours cast members, Minogue performed "Locomotion" and was signed to a recording contract with Mushroom Records in 1987.
Released as a single, and retitled "The Loco-Motion", the Australian recording spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian music charts, and was the highest-selling single in Australia for the 1980s.
Its success resulted in Minogue traveling to London with Mushroom Records executive Gary Ashley to work with Stock, Aitken & Waterman.
To date she has released nine albums, seven live concert DVD's, in addition to the Greatest Hits double album and video package, live album and video and 43 singles throughout the world, all of which have been hits.
Kylie has been the guest of Royalty in Britain and Europe, and the subject of several invitations for Royal Command Performances as well as the Lennon Memorial Concert in Liverpool in 1990.
September 2001 saw the Kylie phenomenon reach fever peak with the release of her global smash hit Can't Get You Out Of My Head from the multi-platinum selling album Fever.
The album sold over six million copies worldwide and generated a further three smash hit singles In Your Eyes, Love At First Sight and the song which won her, her Grammy Come Into My World.
Kylie garnered a host of major awards including Top of The Pops Awards for Best Tour for On A Night Like This and Top Song for Can't Get You Out Of My Head, three Italian Dance Music Awards for Best International Artist, Best Song and Best Video, an NME Award for Best Pop Act, and Showbusiness Personality of The Year at the Variety Club of Great Britain Awards.
Kylie stole the show at the 2002 Brit Awards with a performance of Can't Get You Out Of My Head and won two major awards for Best International Female and Best International Album.
At the World Music Awards in Monaco, Kylie delivered another show stopping performance to a world-wide audience of a billion people and was honoured as Best Selling Australian Artist of The Year.
She has embarked on five sell-out world tours, including the critically acclaimed Showgirl The Greatest Hits - concert which was unfortunately cut short in Australia short when Kylie was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She was interviewed by Cat Deeley, one of the foremost television presenters in the UK and the host of the American reality television competition So You Think You Can Dance, in 2006. The interview - entitled Kylie: The Interview - aired in the UK on Sky One on 16 July, 2006.