Janet Jackson

Janet Damita Jo Jackson (born May 16, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, dancer and actress. Born in Gary, Indiana and raised in Encino, California, she is the youngest member of the Jackson family of musicians. Initially performing on stage with her family at the age of seven, Jackson began her career as an actress with the variety television series The Jacksons. She went on to star in other television shows including Good Times, A New Kind of Family, Diff'rent Strokes, and Fame.

Though Jackson is listed by the Recording Industry Association of America as the eleventh top-selling female artist in the United States with 26 million certified albums, Billboard magazine named her one of the top-ten selling artists in the history of contemporary music. She is ranked as the ninth most successful act in the history of rock and roll and the second most successful female artist in pop music history, having sold over 100 million albums worldwide. Amidst her recording career, Jackson has also starred in several feature films since the mid-1990s. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? (2007), for which Jackson won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, became her third consecutive film to open at number one at the box office, following Poetic Justice (1993) and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000).