Celebrity Biographies
Beyonce Knowles
That a superstar of the song succeeds in the cinema seemed a privilege reserved for great myths like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. Beyoncé Knowles has also achieved it, an artist of unusual talent and striking beauty, who is not content with being one of the best-selling and most recognized singers on the American music scene, has revalidated her success on the big screen, especially with Dreamgirls .
Born on September 4, 1984, in Houston (Texas), Beyoncé Giselle Knowles owes her curious first name to the maiden name of her mother, the designer Tina Beyoncé. Her passion for her music comes from her father, Matthew Knowles, a major music producer. Deeply religious, Beyoncé belongs to the Methodist denomination, and began her career as a singer in the Church choir. Her pastor and spiritual advisor, Rudy Rasmus, has always been very close to her and her family. In school, Beyoncé was already winning awards for singing songs. When she was a teenager she enrolled in the High School for Performing and Visual Arts. It was then that her father realized that she had a chance to succeed in the world of music, and that the girl took her vocation seriously, so she decided to boost her career, taking advantage of his contacts in the industry. He ended up being the architect of the formation of the Destiny’s Child group, along with three other girls, including one of his cousins. From their first single, ‘No, no, no’, the group was a hit until they announced their separation in 2005. Earlier, Beyoncé took advantage of a break in the group’s activity to release ‘Dangerously in Love’, her solo debut, which became in one of the great successes of the year and earned her five Grammy Awards.
From the beginning of her career, Beyonce Knowles was very clear that she wanted to combine music with the screen, and she tried to get signed as an actress. She achieved it in 2001, when she became the protagonist of the telefilm Carmen: A Hip Hopera , the story of a humble woman, an aspiring actress. She made her film debut with Austin Powers in Goldmember, a crazy comedy where she was Foxxy Cleopatra, singer and former girlfriend of the famous spy played by Mike Myers . She was also a singer, in this case from a nightclub, in The Fighting Temptations , starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., and a pop star in The Pink Panther (2006) , a goofy take on the Blake Edwards classic., where his role was quite secondary.
But Beyoncé’s big role was in Dreamgirls , a musical directed by Bill Condon about low-income women making their way in the world of music. It was adapting a Broadway musical loosely inspired by the story of the mythical black ensemble The Supremes. Beyoncé was given a complex role – the soloist Deena Jones – very similar to the very famous Diana Ross , and sang on-screen musical themes such as ‘Listen’, composed by herself. The film won two Oscars in the categories of sound mixing and supporting actress, which went to her co-star Jennifer Hudson . Next, Beyoncé played a real artist, Etta James, in the film Cadillac Records ., about a famous record label. And she completely changed register in the mediocre thriller Obsessed , a sort of African-American version of Fatal Attraction , which swept the US box office.
Since 2008, Beyoncé has been married to the popular rapper Jay-Z, with whom she monopolizes pages of gossip magazines in the United States.