Britney Spears or Britney Jean Spears in real life was born on December 02, 1981 in McComb, Mississippi and was raised in Kentwood, Louisiana by proud parents Lynne Irene who was a former elementary school teacher while her father, Jamie Parnell Spears worked as a building contractor. Spears’ has two other siblings namely Bryan and Jamie Lynn. Bryan works as a manager for the Spears’ family interest while Jamie Lynn is an actress and a singer. All of them are raised as Southern Baptists. Spears was an accomplished gymnast attending gymnastics class until she was nine and competed in state-level competitions. Her passion for the arts was seen in her as she actively joined local dance revues and at the same time she was singing in her local Baptist church choir.
At age eight, she decided to audition herself for Disney Channel’s The New Mickey Mouse Club and although Spears was too young to join the series, the producer of the show introduced her to a New York City agent where she spent three summers training at the NYC Professional Performing Arts School and she also appeared in a couple of off-Broadway productions including the play Ruthless! in 1991. The following year, she landed a spot on the popular talent show for TV Star Search where she got to win the first round of the competition but sadly lost during the finals. When Spears was eleven, she returned to the Disney Channel and got herself through as a Mouseketeer for the New Mickey Mouse Club in Lakeland, Florida. She was part of the show from 1993 to 1994 until she turned thirteen. When the show ended, she went back to Kentwood and attended High School for a year.
In 1997, Spears found herself part of the all-female pop group Innosense where she briefly joined the act for some time until on that same year she decided to record a demo solo and was signed by Jive Records. Her very first U.S. concert tour came when a group of American teen magazine publishers sponsored the event where she became an opening act for ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
1998 marked Britney’s rise to international stardom when she came out with her debut single “Baby One More Time” and the song instantly became a huge international success. It peaked on the number one slot on the Billboard Hot 100 with nine million copies sold worldwide. The United World Chart ranked her song as the 38th best song and second most charted song of all time while MTV included her hit single in their list of “100 Greatest Pop Songs” of all time. Aside from her record-breaking debut single, it was accompanied by a music video that featured a provocatively dressed Britney Spears wearing a midriff schoolgirl uniform. With the release of the album in January of 1999, it skyrocketed to number one on the Billboard 200 and was certified Diamond in the United States and has reached album sales of 25 million sold worldwide. She immediately became an overnight sensation with her brand of music coupled with her controversial image made her one of the biggest stars of 1999. In December of that same year, she won four Billboard awards including Female Artist of the Year and in January of 2000 she bagged the Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist at at the American Music Awards. Spears also was nominated for two categories at the Grammy’s for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Performance for “Baby One More Time” but lost both categories to Christina Aguilera and Sarah McLachlan respectively.
She then made a follow-up album entitled “Oops… I Did It Again” and debuted at number one in the U.S. selling more than a million copies during its first week of sales. Rolling Stone magazine gave it a 3.5 out of 5 by noting that the album as “fantastic pop cheese” and ‘Britney’s demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary”. She finished the year with two more Billboard awards under her belt and two Grammy nominations for the category of Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Her career success was included in the 2002 issue of Forbes Magazine ranking the phenomenal pop star as the world’s most powerful celebrity and it was in an appearance during the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards that she appeared along with Christina Aguilera while doing the song “Like A Virgin” for which Madonna joined in later and made headlines when the Material Girl locked lips with Spears in a very highly-publicized kiss.
Britney married her dance choreographer Kevin Federline in 2004 and announced on her website that she will be taking another break from her career and start a new family with his hubby, and it was also during this year that her first greatest hits collection entitled Greatest Hits: My Prerogative which included all of Spears’ hit singles and three previously unreleased songs. From 2005 to 2006, Spears gave birth to two sons namely Sean Preston and Jayden James Federline. News were beginning to circulate when rumors about an impending divorce and reckless motherhood issues when she cited an incident during an interview for Dateline when photos revealed Spears driving with her son sitting on her lap unrestrained she defended her side and told that she was in a hurry to leave the area when she saw a bunch of photographers swarming all around her and had no choice but to speed away. The ill-fated relationship saw its bitter end when Spears filed for divorce on November 7 citing irreconcilable differences. The two filed for both physical and legal custody of their two sons until a global settlement was reached and the divorce was finalized in July of 2007.
2007 saw the catastrophic downfall of a pop superstar when Spears was trapped in a web of scandals and lawsuits from being rumoured to have herself checked in a rehabilitation facility to getting her head shaved bald inside a salon and was once again locked in a bitter custody battle when ex-husband Kevin Federline filed full custody of Sean Preston and Jayden James and told that Spears was unfit to become a mother to their two children. Her biggest upset came on January 3, 2008 when police were called and confronted Spears when she declined to surrender their sons to Federline after a court order was issued giving the father full custody of their children. It led to a short standoff between Spears and the police at her home and the singer was later hospitalized at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after she appeared “under the influence of an unknown substance”. The troubled pop star is currently doing charity work for an animal rights organization.