Faith Hill: Snapshot

Faith Hill: Five Fun Facts

1. At 16, Faith Hill had a gig at a Raleigh, Miss., "tobacco spit," where contestants aimed for a strategically placed spittoon. "They cleaned the stage off with towels, and then I went on," Faith Hill told PEOPLE.
2. Faith Hill's old-fashioned taste in television shows includes longtime fave Little House on the Prairie. "I cry every time I see one of those shows," she told Entertainment Weekly in 1994. "They teach you so much about morals."
3. The most influential moment in Faith Hill's professional path was sitting in the top row at an Elvis Presley concert in Mississippi in 1975. "When he walked out onstage he looked like a pea, but to me he was larger than life," she told PEOPLE. "I'm not sure what it was – his presence, the reaction of the people – but after that concert, I had to be a performer, pure and simple."
4. Faith Hill's first public performance was at a women's club luncheon when she was 10. She taught herself to play guitar several years later.
5. Faith Hill keeps it simple when ordering from the Nashville Baskin-Robbins: one scoop each of vanilla and chocolate.

Faith Hill: Biography

1967

Fall

The Very Beginning

Just an infant, Hill is adopted by Ted Perry, a factory worker, and his wife, Edna, a former bank teller in the small town Star, Mississippi. Hill won't meet her birth mother (and biological brother) until 1993, finding them after a three-year search. "The first time I met her I just stared at her," Hill tells PEOPLE in 1999. "I'd never seen anybody that looked anything like me. It was the awe of seeing someone you came from. It fills something."

late 1980s

Faith's Country Ambition

After a semester of junior college, Hill relocates to Nashville. "I really believed I'd just get on the Grand Ole Opry stage, start singin', and be on a bus travelin' the next day," she tells EW in 1994. She supports herself selling T-shirts, working as a receptionist, and packaging merchandise for Reba McEntire's company. In 1988, the 20-year-old (still Faith Perry at the time), marries music publishing exec Dan Hill, 29. In 1991, she signs a record deal with Warner Bros. before splitting with her husband in 1994. "I was young," she tells PEOPLE in 2000. "I just jumped in the fire way too soon."

1994

January

Out of the Gate

So much for starting slowly. Hill's first single, "Wild One," from her debut album Take Me As I Am, hits No. 1 on the Billboard country chart and stays there the entire month of January, making her the first female country singer to accomplish that feat in 30 years. She also makes PEOPLE's 50 Most Beautiful issue in 1995, 2000 and 2001.

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Faith Hill: Special Feature