Friday, February 24th, 2012

Britney Spears

Best known for her sultry image as a pop superstar, Britney Spears actually

began her youthful career as an actress -- the singing came later. Spears was born December 2, 1981, in Kentwood, LA. A small eight years later, she was auditioning for “The Mickey Mouse Club”, although she wouldn't be added to the cast for another three years. She spent summers schooling at New York's Off-Broadway Dance Center and the Professional Performing Arts School, and earned a role on the off-Broadway play Ruthless in 1991. A year later, she became a Mouseketeer, and was part of the show from the time she was 11 until she was 13.

After returning home for a short time to become a "regular" high-school student, she was signed to the Jive record label, and finished recording her first album in 1998. Released in 1999, “...Baby One More Time”, was a smash hit, and with her stunning good looks, rocketed her to superstardom. She followed up with, “Oops!...I Did It Again”, the following year, and then, “Britney”, in 2001.

In February of 2002, she starred in her first major motion picture, “Crossroads”, bringing her back to her roots in acting. Playing a young woman named Lucy who embarks on an adventurous road trip with three friends in search of a mother who abandoned her at a young age, Britney tied-in the release of the film with several singles from her 2001 album, “Britney”. Though her fan base showed up in boatloads, that wasn’t enough to make, “Crossroads”, a hit, and critics not surprisingly attacked the film as sentimental and exploitive. Her debut did not go ignored by the annual Razzie Awards; however, she shared a trophy with her idol Madonna for Worst Actress of 2002.

That wasn't all she shared with the idol. The next year, Madonna passed the provocation torch to the young pop star when the two locked lips on the MTV Video Music Awards show. The stunt was well-timed to announce the arrival of her next album, “In the Zone”, which produced numerous hits; less promising was her made-for-TV project, “Brave New Girl”, a semi-autobiographical mother-daughter bonding tale written by her and her mother, Lynne, in which Britney made a cameo and took on production duties.

Her image took one of its first hits when she agreed to a warts-and-all confessional reality show called, “Chaotic”, in 2005; Chronicling the 2004 romance and eventual marriage of her boyfriend/backup dancer Kevin Federline. In the two years that followed, her increasingly erratic behavior prompted many fans to answer with a resounding "no." After a stream of embarrassing paparazzi shots, stints in rehab and a divorce and bitter custody battle with Kevin, all of her fans were left wondering if their idol would reclaim her stature as either a recording artist or performer.