| Charlotte Church
Charlotte Church (born Charlotte Maria Reed on February 21, 1986 at Llandaff, Cardiff, South Glamorgan) is a Welsh former opera-singer. She introduced her aunt on ITV's Big Big Talent Show in 1998, was asked to sing and was heard by Jonathan Shalit, who then helped her to secure a record contract with Sony Classical at age 12. In recent years she has moved away from the classical field into pop music.
Church, who was raised Catholic by her Welsh-Maltese mother, Maria, had her first taste of stardom when she performed "Ghostbusters" at a holiday camp in Caernarforn at the age of 3, and had to be dragged from the stage when she refused to leave. Her big break came at the age of 11 when she sang "Pie Jesu" on the television show Talking Telephone Numbers in 1997, closely followed by her show-stealing performance on ITV's Big, Big Talent Show in 1998. This led to concerts at Cardiff Arms Park, Royal Albert Hall and the opening spot for Shirley Bassey in Antwerp.
Charlotte was then introduced to the Cardiff-based impresario, Jonathan Shalit, who later became her manager, and negotiated a record contract with Sony BMG. Her breakthrough album, Voice of an Angel, showcased her unique voice in a collection of arias, sacred songs, and traditional pieces that sold millions of copies worldwide and made her the youngest artist with a No. 1 selling album to date. She made a cameo appearance on the US CBS series Touched by an Angel.
Church later appeared on numerous PBS specials and television commercials, most notably in the acclaimed Just Wave Hello campaign for the Ford Motor Company. The song appeared on her self-titled second album, which included another array of operatic, religious, and traditional tracks.
In 2000, she released Dream a Dream, an album of Christmas carols. Church has been represented in the press as an opera singer; but she has never sung in any opera performances, only recordings (and those of excerpts, usually edited and engineered to fit her range). However, up until 2001, she had recorded only two pop (or classical crossover songs) - "Just Wave Hello" and "Dream a Dream."
In 2001, Charlotte Church added some pop, swing, and Broadway to her classical repertoire with her album Enchantment. That same year, movie-going audiences heard Church for the first time in the 2001 Ron Howard film A Beautiful Mind. Since Celine Dion was not available to perform the film's end title song, All Love Can Be (Dion was beginning her concert engagement in Las Vegas), composer James Horner enlisted Charlotte to handle the vocals, and the song was re-written to Church's vocal range. Charlotte also handled other vocal passages throughout the score.
In 2002, at the age of 16, Charlotte Church released a best-of album called Prelude, to mark her departure from classical music. The next year, she made her on-screen debut in the Craig Ferguson film I'll Be There.
Church provoked some controversy with remarks on the September 11, 2001 attacks and by saying that agents were turning her down because of her weight. There was more controversy when she was awarded the Rear of the Year title in 2002 at the age of 16.
In March 2005, a topless photograph of Church was rumoured to have been stolen from the mobile phone of her boyfriend Gavin Henson, a Welsh International Rugby player, when he lost his phone on a night out in Cardiff. In interviews, Church said she was in her bra, not nude, in the picture. She said that a topless picture of her circulating around the Internet was a fake.
Recently, her ex-boyfriend Steven Johnson demanded Charlotte pay him £3m from her fortune to stop him from releasing his tell-tale book. His father promised the book would "hang the Church family" by revealing salacious details of Steven and Charlotte's sex life. Charlotte has yet to respond to this. Previously, her other ex had also sold stories of his relationship with Charlotte to the tabloids.
In 2005 she issued her first pop album Tissues and Issues and the first three singles have all been successful with "Crazy Chick" reaching #2, "Call My Name" reaching #10 and "Even God Can't Change the Past" reaching #17.
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