Name at birth: Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson

Katy Perry's not-quite-naughty single "I Kissed a Girl" was a big summer hit in 2008 and made the vampish singer a star. Lyrics like "The taste of her cherry Chapstick / I kissed a girl just to try it / I hope my boyfriend don't mind" won Perry fans, critics, and plenty of lucrative attention; The Times called the song a "lipgloss-lesbian anthem." The middle child of two evangelical ministers, Katy Perry sang in her parents' church until she was 16, when she got a GED, left high school, and began chasing a music career in Nashville. Her 2001 gospel rock album, Katy Hudson, was a flop. But she moved to Los Angeles, changed her stage name to Katy Perry and her style to straight pop, and began perfecting a wide-eyed enthusiasm that was one-third Betty Boop and two-thirds Bettie Page. (Blender magazine has called her style "thrift-store bombshell.") Perry had a modest hit with the 2007 EP Ur So Gay. That set the stage for her multi-platinum 2008 album One of the Boys, with the hits "Hot n Cold" and "Thinking of You" as well as "I Kissed a Girl," which won Perry a Grammy nomination for best female pop vocal performance. She released an MTV Unplugged album in 2009, and her 2010 single, "California Gurls" (featuring Snoop Dogg), shot to the top of the charts in just four weeks.

Katy Perry married British comedian Russell Brand on 23 October 2010; they were married at the Aman-e-Khas resort in a tiger preserve in India's Ranthambhore National Park. He filed for divorce on 30 December 2011... Her stage name, Perry, is her mother's maiden name; she adopted it, she has told reporters, because her real name is too close to that of actress Kate Hudson... Katy Perry has a tattoo reading "Jesus" on the inside of her left wrist... Perry writes many of her own songs; she also plays the guitar... Katy Perry previously dated Travis McCoy, the singer for the hip-hop band Gym Class Heroes.