American singer and Academy-Award nominated actress who was one-third of the elegant Supremes trio in the ’60s and went on to become a superstar stylist on her own.
Born the second of six children to Fred and Ernestine in the Brewster-Douglass housing projects of Detroit, Michigan, she had a poor but happy childhood in a musically-inclined family. During her early teens, she began singing more formally with several girls from her neighborhood. Their group became the Primettes, created by a local manager who wanted them to appear with his local male singing group, the Primes, later the Temptations. Motown’s Berry Gordy saw them in 1961, and signed the group which included Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Ross, and they became the Supremes. The trio scored No. 1 hits in 1964 with “Where Did Our Love Go” and “Baby Love.” In total, the group’s nine-year career achieved 14 number-one hits.
In the late ’60s, Ross’ drawing power was such that Motown changed the group’s name to Diana Ross and the Supremes. Ross made her final appearance with the Supremes before doing solo in 1970. Her first solo album, “Diana Ross,” and first solo single “Reach Out and Touch” made the top 20. She won a Grammy in 1970.
She was nominated for an Academy Award for her starring role as Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues,” in 1972. The album for the movie topped the charts the following year. In 1975, she starred in “Mahogany” which got mixed reviews. In 1978, she starred as Dorothy in the movie version of the Broadway musical, “The Wiz,” a black version of “The Wizard of Oz.” The project was a disaster, and helped derail her movie career.
Ross left Motown for RCA and EMI/Capital Records, immediately producing hits such as “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” and “Muscles,” which was written by Michael Jackson. Her last Top 10 hit was in 1985, “Missing You.”
An unauthorized biography about her by Randy Taraborrelli came out in 1989, entitled “Call Her Miss Ross,” detailing her temperamental ways. She published her memoir, “Secrets of a Sparrow” and made a TV movie “Out of Darkness” in 1994.
Ross released her first new album in four years, “Every Day is a New Day,” in mid-1999, and starred in an ABC movie, “Double Platinum” which aired on 16 May 1999.
An affair with Gordy produced her oldest daughter, Rhonda Ross Kendrick. In April 1971 she married white Hollywood P.R.. agent Bob Silberstein and the couple had two daughters, Tracee in 1973 and Chudney in 1976. Silberstein became unhappy with her professional dependence on Gordy and they separated May 1976, divorcing the following March. She had relationships with Ryan O’Neal and Kiss star Gene Simmons before her marriage to white Norwegian shipping millionaire Arne Naess on 1 February 1986. She gave birth to two sons in the next two years. The couple had a 13-year “commuter marriage” when, on 24 April 1999, Naess announced that they had separated.
Ross is super-thin, super-rich and super-talented. She’s an all-out athlete, non-stop-active and a designer of all her own clothes.
On 30 December 2002, the singer-actress, aged 58, was busted in southern Arizona for investigation of drunk driving. After taking a breathalyzer test, Ross was shown to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 – more than twice the legal limit – when the vehicle she was driving was stopped at 12:30 a.m. in Tucson.
The star faced three charges, including driving under the influence, driving with a blood-alcohol content over 0.08 and driving with a blood-alcohol level of more than 0.15, known as extreme DUI, Reuters reported. Ross pleaded guilty to driving under the influence on 9 February 2004 in Tucson and was sentenced to two days in jail, which she served in Connecticut. Two more serious charges were dropped when she accepted a plea deal. In addition to her jail time, she had to undergo alcohol-abuse counseling and submit to one year of unsupervised probation. However she was forced to spend another two days in an Arizona prison when it was learned that the Connecticut low-security prison she stayed in allowed her to come and go during her jail time.
At age 78, Ross closed the show outside Buckingham Palace, the Platinum Party at the Palace on 4 June 2022 in celebration of the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.
Link to Wikipedia biography