Amy Winehouse: Snapshot
- Name
- Amy Winehouse
- Birth Date
- 09/14/1983
- Birth Place
- London, England
Back to Black – a brutally honest retelling of her breakup with then-boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil – has sold more than 3.3 million copies, powered by confessional songs like "Rehab." But in 2007, the brilliant Brit was hospitalized for a drug overdose, checked into – and out of – rehab, and got busted for drug possession. She reunited with and married Fielder-Civil, only to have him hauled off to jail.
In January 2008, after being caught on camera allegedly doing drugs, Winehouse entered rehab. Weeks later, she won five Grammys, including Best New Artist and Record of the Year for "Rehab." As famed musician Elton John said, "The only thing that's going to stop Amy is herself."
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Amy Winehouse: Five Fun Facts
- As a kid, Amy Winehouse wanted to be a roller-skating waitress.
- At age 10, Amy Winehouse and her best friend formed a rap duo inspired by Salt-n-Pepa. The name? Sweet 'n Sour. "I was sour, of course," she told the London Observer.
- Amy Winehouse got her first tattoo, a small Betty Boop on her back, at age 15. At that point, she told Rolling Stone, "My parents pretty much realized I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really."
- Just how high is Amy Winehouse's trademark beehive? "On a good day, easily six [inches]," she told Entertainment Weekly.
- Not surprisingly, Amy Winehouse has strong opinions when it comes to cocktails. Her favorite is the Rickstasy: three parts vodka, one part Southern Comfort, one part banana liqueur and one part Bailey's.
Amy Winehouse: Biography 
- 1983
Amy Winehouse has Arrived
Cab driver Mitch Winehouse and his pharmacist wife Janis welcome their second child Amy into their North London home. When the Winehouses split, a nine-year-old Amy and her older brother Alex live mostly with their mother in Southgate – a London suburb best known for housing the Priory, a celebrity-friendly rehab hospital. "She was always very self-willed," her father Mitch tells Rolling Stone in 2007. "Not badly behaved but...different."
- 1996
Too Cool for School
At 12, Winehouse wins a space in the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School, but is expelled long before graduation. (The final straw? Getting her nose pierced). "She was very bright but she was always messing around," mom Janis tells London's Daily Mail in 2007. By 16, Winehouse – who later tells Interview, "I'm not very ambitious at all" – lands a deal with Simon Fuller's (the man behind American Idol) management company. She eventually signs with Island Records.
- 2003
The Amy-Blake Rollercoaster
Winehouse meets Blake Fielder-Civil (left), a part-time gofer on music video sets, at a local bar. She promptly has his name tattooed above her heart, and the two begin a tempestuous, on-and-off romance. During one particularly prolonged hiatus, he reconciles with an old flame and a heart-broken Winehouse writes the bulk of her 2007 breakthrough album, Back to Black. It was a time of extreme creativity, but Winehouse admits she was also attempting to drown her sorrows in booze.
Photo Credits
Top Left: Mark Allan/WireImage
BIOGRAPHY (top to bottom): Splash News Online; Splash News Online; INF
