Céline Marie Claudette Dion, OC, OQ (born March 30, 1968) is a Canadian singer, and occasional songwriter and actress. Born to a large, impoverished family in Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record. 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.
Dion first gained international recognition in the 1980s after she won the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest. Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to Sony Records in 1986. With the help of her husband, she achieved worldwide success with several English and French albums, ending the decade as one of the most successful artists in pop music. However, in 1999, at the height of her success, Dion announced a temporary retraction from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer. She returned to the music scene in 2002 and signed a four-year contract to perform nightly in a five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas
The youngest of fourteen children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse Tanguay, Céline Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken, but, by her own account, happy, home in Charlemagne. 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; In a 1994 interview with People magazine, she recalled, "I missed my family and my home, but I don't regret having lost my adolescence. I had one dream: I wanted to be a singer."