Belinda Carlisle's Biography

Who is Belinda Carlisle?

She told The Times:

"My father is half Native American and my mother half Irish, but I've always felt that in past lives I've been French and Italian."

Belinda Carlisle's father was Walt Carlisle, a contractor, and her mother was Joanne, a housewife.

Together with Jane Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey, Gina Schock and Kathy Valentine, Belinda Carlisle formed the Go-Go's.

The Go-Go's first album, Beauty and the Beat, sold more than two million records, but this fact disguises the band's unglamorous start:

The Times had a revealing account of the early days of the Go-Go's and Belinda Carlisle's life:

"Back when she was in the Californian punk girl band the Go-Gos, touring Britain supporting Madness and the Specials, she was so poor that she ate the other bands' leftovers and got drunk on cough syrup: 'We had Benylin parties.' In London the Go-Gos shared a house in Belsize Park with various LA models and played some tough shows. 'This was the late Seventies, with the skinheads and National Front all turning up. There would be all sorts of fights, a lot of bloodshed. We were five little girls from LA; we had never seen anything like that. And the audience would spit on you even when they liked you, they'd gob on you. I remember just being covered in snot. Being an all-female band was very unusual, you had a hard time on stage. But it was enormous fun.'"

Beauty and the Beat made the Go-Go's the first all-female band, who wrote their own music and played their own instruments, to make a No. 1 album.

In the mid-1980s Belinda Carlisle went solo. Her second album, Heaven on Earth featured the hits Circles In The Sand, I Go Weak and Mad About You.

Several other albums followed.

Belinda Carlisle is a devout Buddhist, who chants twice a day.

Together with her husband, Morgan, who is James Mason's son and worked for Ronald Reagan, Belinda Carlisle has five dogs, two turtles and a parrot named Humbert Humbert after James Mason's role in Lolita.

On 3 September 2009, the BBC reported that Belinda Carlisle was joining the London cast of the musical Hairspray, playing TV station controller Velma Von Tussle.

In Dancing with the Stars season 8, Belinda Carlisle partnered Jonathan Roberts, however they were the first couple to be eliminated from the show.

In 2017, Belinda Carlisle, aged 59, released her first album in a decade, Wilder Shores, which is based on the yoga chants she credits with helping her get over her addiction to cocaine.