Céline Marie Claudette Dion, (born March 30, 1968 in Charlemagne, Quebec) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actress. Born to a large, impoverished family, Dion emerged as a teenage star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record. In 1990, she released the anglophone album Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world. Dion had first gained international recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest.[6][7] Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to Sony Records in 1986. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved worldwide success with several English and French albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in music history. However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion announced a temporary retirement from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer. She returned to the music scene in 2002 and signed a three-year (later extended to almost five years) contract to perform nightly in a five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.

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