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 First and foremost, Celine Dion is known for her brilliant
performance of the heart-wrenching song My Heart Will Go On, a love theme to
the Titanic, a James Cameron movie starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate
Winslet. Meanwhile, her career as a singer, songwriter, actress, and
entrepreneur had span for sixteen years before the Titanic came along in 1997.
Celine Marie Claudette Dion was born March 30, 1968 to
a large, impoverished family in Charlemagne, Quebec. The youngest of
fourteen
children, Celine Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken,
but,
by her own account, happy home in Canada. Music had always been a part
of the
family, as she grew up singing with her siblings in her parents' small
piano
bar called Le Vieux Baril. From an early age Dion had dreamed of being a
performer. Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world
after her
manager and future husband Rene Angelil mortgaged his home to finance
her first
record, La voix du bon Dieu (The Voice of the Good God), which later
became a
local number-one hit and made Dion an instant star in Quebec. Her
popularity
spread to other parts of the world when she competed in the 1982 Yamaha
World
Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, Japan, and won the musician's award for
«Top
Performer» as well as the gold medal for «Best Song» with «Tellement
j'ai
d'amour pour toi» (I Have So Much Love for You).
By 1983, in addition to becoming the first Canadian
artist to receive a gold record in France for the single «D'amour ou
d'amitie»
(Of Love or of Friendship), Dion had also won several Felix Awards,
including «Best
Female performer» and «Discovery of the Year». Further success in
Europe, Asia,
and Australia came when Dion represented Switzerland in the 1988
Eurovision
Song Contest with the song Ne partez pas sans moi (Don't Go Without Me)
and won
the contest by a close margin in Dublin, Ireland. However, American
success was
yet to come, partly because she was exclusively a Francophone artist.
Though
confident in her talent, Angelil realized that her image needed to be
changed
in order for her to be marketed worldwide. Dion receded from the
spotlight for
a number of months, during which she underwent dental surgery to improve
her
appearance, and was sent to the Ecole Berlitz in 1989 to polish her
English. In
1990, she released the Anglophone album Unison, establishing herself as a
viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of
the
world.
In 1993, Dion announced her feelings for her manager
by declaring him «the colour of (her) love» in the dedication section of
her
third Anglophone album The Colour of My Love. Eventually, Angelil and
Dion
married in an extravagant wedding ceremony in December 1994, which was
broadcast live on Canadian television.
As it was dedicated to her manager, the album's motif focused
on love and romance. It became her most successful record up to that
point,
selling more than six million copies in the U.S., two million in Canada,
and
peaking at number-one in many countries. The album also spawned Dion's
first
U.S., Canadian, and Australian number-one single The Power of Love which
would
become her signature hit until she reached new career heights in the
late
1990s. The Colour of My Love also became Dion's first major hit in
Europe, and
in particular the United Kingdom.
Dion's most successful single became the classically
influenced ballad My Heart Will Go On. Serving as the love theme for the
Titanic, the song topped the charts across the world, and became Dion's
signature song as well as winning the Academy Award and Golden Globe for
Best
Original Song. The song also gave Dion two Grammy Awards for «Best
Female Pop
Vocal Performance» and the most coveted «Record of the Year».
However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion
announced a hiatus from entertainment in order to start a family and
spend time
with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer. She returned to
the top
of pop music in 2002 and signed a three-year contract to perform nightly
in a
five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.
Whether in show business or grocery business, successful
individual must earn a lot - this is a law in the present day market
economy. It's
difficult to estimate the amount of money Celine Dion has earned thanks
to the
fact that 200 million copies of her albums were sold worldwide. In 2009,
Celine
Dion was named the 20th best-selling artist of the decade in the United
States
and the 2nd best selling female artist of the decade in the United
States,
selling an estimated 17.57 million albums. In June 2009, Forbes Magazine
reported that Celine Dion earned $100 million during 2008, second only
to
Madonna.
In December 2009, Celine Dion was announced to be the
best-selling solo touring act of the decade and the second best-selling
touring
act of the decade, only to the Dave Matthews Band. Dion grossed $522.2
million
during the decade, a large sum of that coming from her five year
residence at
Caesars Palace.
There is another principle in the world operating by
the rules of market economy - the one who makes a lot, spends a lot.
Celine
Dion, however, cannot be called a big spender, though she doesn't scrimp
and
save on her family. For instance, Dion Celine is very tolerant towards
the
gambling problems of her husband and producer Rene Angelil. Angelil is a
known
poker player and a gambler, who, according to journalists' rough
estimates, gambled
away a total of more than ten million dollars. His one-time gambling
record was
set in 1997, when he lost $4.5 million during one night.
However, Dion is very forgiving of her man's weakness:
first, as a producer, Angelil greatly contributed to her success and
deserves a
fair share of their high family income, and secondly, the diva has
vulnerability
herself - she likes shopping, and her footwear collection includes more
than 3
thousand pairs.
Nonetheless, Dion has an appetite not only for small
purchases, sometimes she wants something big. For instance, last spring
she was
rumored to contemplate bidding on the Montreal Canadiens, one of the
most
famous clubs in the National Hockey League. The market value of the club
is
roughly estimated at $330 million. Though these rumors were never
confirmed,
the mere fact that Dion can be seen as a bidder shows that her financial
position today is not shaken by the global crisis.
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