SHANIA TWAIN

Shania Twain Profile

Name: Shania Twain

Birth Name: Eilleen Regina Edwards

Height: 5' 4''

Sex: F

Nationality: Canadian

Birth Date: August 28, 1965

Birth Place: Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Profession: singer

Education: High School

Husband/Wife: Robert John Mutt Lange (music producer; married on December 28, 1993)

Father: Clarence Edwards

Mother: Sharon Twain (killed in a 1987 car accident)

Sister: Jill (older), Carrie Ann (younger)

Brother: Mark, Darryl

Step Father: Jerry Twain (killed in a 1987 car accident)

Shania Twain Biography

Shania Twain, OC (born Eilleen Regina Edwards, August 28, 1965, Windsor, Ontario) is a Canadian singer and songwriter in the country and pop music genres. Her third album Come on Over is the biggest-selling album of all time by a female musician, and the best-selling album in the history of country music. She is the only female musician to have three albums certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, and is also the best selling artist in Canada, with all three of her studio albums being certified double diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Twain has achieved both critical and financial success, having received five Grammy awards, 27 BMI Songwriter awards, and sold over 70 million albums worldwide to date.

Twain is the daughter of Sharon and Clarence Edwards, who divorced when she was two. Her mother then moved Eilleen and her sister Jill to Timmins, Ontario where her mother met and married Jerry Twain, a native Ojibwa Indian. He then adopted Eilleen, and her name was changed to Eilleen Twain. She has in the past referred to herself ancestrally as an Ojibwa Indian, but her background is Irish and French.

One of five children, Eilleen Twain had a hard childhood in Timmins, Ontario. Her parents earned little, and there was often a shortage of food and money in the household. In the remote, rugged community she learned to hunt and to chop wood. Twain began to earn money by singing in local clubs and bars from a very young age to support her family. She was singing in bars at the age of just eight to try to make ends meet often earning twenty dollars, between midnight and two in the morning when the bar had closed but the people remained. Although she has expressed a dislike for singing in such a smoky atmosphere at such a young age, Shania believes that this was her performing arts school on the road to becoming a successful singer. At one point, while Jerry was at work, her mother drove the family 425 miles to a Toronto homeless shelter for assistance (source: Shania's interview in Readers Digest).

At the age of thirteen, Eilleen Twain was invited to perform on CBC television's Tommy Hunter Show. While attending Timmins High and Vocational School in Timmins, Ontario, she was the singer for a local band called "Longshot" which covered Top 40 music.

In 1984, she sang a duet performance on an album by Canadian musician (and present-day CKTB radio personality) Tim Denis.

When her mother and adoptive father died in a car accident on November 1, 1987, the 22-year-old Twain put her musical career on hold and took care of her family. She and her half-brothers Mark and Darryl, and sister Carrie-Ann moved to Huntsville, Ontario, where she supported them by performing at the nearby Deerhurst Resort.