Celine Dion first met her future husband in 1980 when she was 12 and he was 38. Rene Angelil was, at that time, her manager. Angelil mortgaged his home in order to finance her first album. The two were wed in 1994.
Celine Dion is French-Canadian, born and raised in the small Quebec town of Charlemagne. The music she released in the '80s is all in her native French; she didn't start learning English until she was a teenager.
She released her first album in 1981 when she was just 13. Over the next few years, she built a huge following in Canada and France, then became famous throughout Europe when she won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest representing Switzerland. She didn't release music in English until her 1990 album Unison when she was 22.
Her most famous song is "
My Heart Will Go On" from the movie
Titanic, but she's contributed to other soundtracks as well, including the
title song to Beauty And The Beast (a duet with Peabo Bryson), "When I Fall in Love" for
Sleepless in Seattle, and "
Because You Loved Me" for
Up Close and Personal. In 2018 she contributed "Ashes" to the
Deadpool 2 soundtrack. That one comes with a
music video where Deadpool watches her perform the song, then asks her to sing it again but "phone it in" because it's too good for the movie. She declines the request.
In 2009 Dion pressed charges against a man who was reportedly stalking her. One evening the man followed her to her home and demanded to see her. He refused to leave and eventually the police were called in and the man was committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Her 1996 album
Falling Into You took her to a new level of stardom, selling at least 30 million copies around the world and earning critical acclaim as well. The album includes the hits "
It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and "
Because You Loved Me," and incorporates many unusual musical elements, such as African chanting and Spanish guitar.
In 2002 Dion announced a three-year commitment to The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The show was billed as an "entertainment extravaganza" and was titled A New Day... The wildly successful show combined music, dance and other types of performance. Because of its success, A New Day... continued for an additional two years, ending on December 15, 2007 after a five-year run. It revitalized and revolutionized the Las Vegas entertainment scene, and many artists followed Dion to do successful residencies.
She doesn't write her own songs, preferring to focus on the performance. This isn't a problem because many top songwriters pitch her their tunes knowing that if she records one, it will get sung with her signature conviction and provide a nice payday. She's recorded songs by famous writers like Diane Warren and Jim Steinman, and many by writers you probably haven't heard of like Edgar Bronfman and Paul Bliss.
Celine Dion's husband René Angélil died from throat cancer on January 14, 2016. Two days later, the singer lost another close family member when her brother Daniel passed away aged 59 after battling brain, tongue and throat cancer.
Celine Dion is the youngest of the 14 children to Thérèse (née Tanguay), a homemaker, and Adhémar Dion, a butcher. She was raised in a poverty-stricken but, by her own account, happy home, at one point sleeping in a drawer.
Many of her band members and backup singers have been with her for decades, including her music director Claude "Mégo" Lemay and guitarist André Coutu. "If you want to go fast, go alone," she says. "If you want to go far, go together."
Celine Dion stood near the open casket of her deceased husband for seven hours to greet and comfort complete strangers who had arrived to pay their respects at the public visitation held on the eve of Rene Angelil's funeral. She was only expected to stay for 30 minutes.
In December 2022, Dion revealed that she had been diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome. The rare neuralgic disorder primarily affects the brain and spinal cord and is characterized by progressive rigidity and stiffness. Dion said it causes difficulties when she walks and prevents her from using her vocal cords to sing the way she used to.
She's really into shoes, with thousands in her collection stored in high-tech closets. Even her casual shoes are fashion-forward.
The first signs of Stiff Person Syndrome came in 2004 when her voice started spasming. She controlled it with medication, but eventually it affected her performances. In her 2024 documentary I Am: Celine Dion, she explains how when her voice would give out, she would either fake a technical problem or point the microphone at the crowd and have them sing while she recovered. She had to cancel some concerts because of her vocal issues but made up reasons why (illnesses, usually) because she didn't want to reveal her condition.
Her 2024 documentary I Am: Celine Dion includes a striking scene where she falls into crisis, weeping and unable to move as she's overcome by spasms caused by Stiff Person Syndrome. Fans were shocked when just months later, Dion sang in public for the first time in four years when she performed from the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Olympics. In the documentary we see her trying to sing but coming nowhere near her standards, but she delivered her Olympic performance with full force, thrilling the crowd and giving fans hope for a comeback.
Here's an easy way to remember how to spell her name: The vowels are E-I-E-I-O, like in "Old MacDonald Had A Farm."
