Shakira

Shakira: Snapshot

Shakira: Five Fun Facts

1. Shakira, whose name means "woman of grace" in Arabic, credits her father's Lebanese heritage for her Middle Eastern-influenced dance moves. "I think it is something in my DNA," she tells PEOPLE. "I've been belly-dancing since I was 4."
2. Shakira's song "Whenever, Wherever," was inspired by her long-distance relationship with fiancé Antonio de la Rua, a Manhattan-based lawyer.
3. On the road, Shakira is known to keep an emergency stash of chocolate in her purse. "I like any kind," she tells PEOPLE. "American, Belgian, Swiss – I don't discriminate."
4. She's no light traveler. Shakira often brings seven bags of clothes on the road, even though she's usually found in one outfit. "I have a Styx T-shirt I wear every day," she tells PEOPLE. "The same with my Maharishi pants."
5. A six-ton metal statue of Shakira was erected in her hometown in Colombia. "Barranquilla is the big breast that fed and nurtured me as a human being, a woman and an artist," she tells PEOPLE of her homeland.

Shakira: Biography

1979

Early Trauma

Shakira's half brother is killed when a drunk driver hits the motorcycle he is riding. Just 2 at the time, the singer says that her first memory is learning of his death. "It made me very necrophobic," she tells Scottish newspaper The Herald. "For a long time I feared death in all its aspects."

1991

Hocus Pocus

Composing songs since she was 8, Shakira releases her first album, Magia (Magic), on Sony Colombia. The album and her 1993 release Peligro (Danger) are commercial disappointments, both selling fewer than 1,000 copies.

1994

Wonderwall

Shakira tries her hand at acting, joining the cast of the Colombian primetime soap El Oasis, on which she plays a rich girl destined for ill-fated romance. "I was a very bad actress," she told London's Observer newspaper. "But I had a lot of fun."

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