Jason Donovan (born 1 June
1968, Malvern
, Melbourne)
is an Australian actor and singer. In the UK he has sold
more than 3 million records, and his début album
Ten Good Reasons was the
highest-selling album of 1989 with sales of over 1.5 million
copies. He has had four UK No. 1 singles, one of which was
"
Especially for You", his 1988
duet with
Kylie Minogue. In more
recent years, he has returned to acting on television and in stage
musicals.
Biography
Jason Donovan is the son of Australian actor
Terence Donovan, who also appeared
in
Neighbours as
Doug Willis; and his mother is
Sue McIntosh. His half-sister is former
Neighbours star
Stephanie
McIntosh.
Donovan attended De La Salle
College, Malvern
. His partner since 1998 and the mother of
his children is Angela Malloch, a former stage manager. He has two
children, a daughter, Jemma (born 28 March 2000) and a son, Zach
(born 23 March 2001). Donovan and Malloch are to be married in
2009.
Neighbours
Donovan made his first television appearance at the age of eleven
on the Australian series
Skyways, playing a guest role. In
the episode his on-screen sister was played by later co-star
Kylie Minogue. He also featured in
I Can Jump Puddles
before reaching fame in
Neighbours as
Scott Robinson, replacing actor
Darius Perkins who had played the
role for the first year of the series. His character's most notable
story arc was his
onscreen romance
and wedding to Charlene Robinson (played by
Kylie Minogue).
In 1987 he won his first
Logie Award for
"Best New Talent" in 1987 and received a commendation in the
category "Performance by a Male Actor In a Series" from the
Television Society of
Australia's
Penguin Awards. In
1988 he was awarded the 'Silver Logie' for the "Most Popular
Actor."
In 2009, Donovan announced that he had been asked to return to the
show in 2010 to tie in with the show's 25th anniversary, but said
that he was unable to do so due to other work commitments.
1988-91: singing sensation
After leaving
Neighbours in 1988, Donovan followed Minogue
in signing a recording contract with
Mushroom Records in Australia, and with
PWL in the UK. His first single, "Nothing Can
Divide Us", was written and produced by
Mike
Stock,
Matt Aitken and
Pete Waterman (known as
Stock Aitken Waterman) and reached
number five in the UK, number one in Hong Kong and Japan, and the
top 40 in several other countries.
His second single, "
Too Many
Broken Hearts," reached number one in the UK. He released his
début album,
Ten Good
Reasons, in May 1989, which also reached number one (for
three weeks). His cover of
Brian
Hyland's "
Sealed With a Kiss"
entered the UK charts at number one, making Donovan the first
Australian male solo artist to ever hold both single and album
chart number one positions simultaneously. At that time, he was
also the youngest artist to
enter the charts at number
one, aged 21, though this record has since been surpassed by other
artists.
His duet of the song "
Especially for
You", with Minogue, was the fourth-highest selling single in
the UK that year, and 17th in Australia for 1989. Donovan and
Minogue dated for a time during this period. Between 1988 and 1992,
Donovan garnered 16 Top 40 hit singles in the UK.
1991–93: Joseph and "The Face"
Due to his celebrity status, Donovan started to experiment with his
acting ability outside of his
Neighbours envelope. In
1988, Donovan appeared as Happy Houston in the World War II drama
The Heroes, based on the historical novel by
Ronald McKie, for which he won the 1990
Logie Award for Most Popular Actor in a
Mini-Series. In 1990 Donovan appeared in his first feature film
Blood Oath (aka
Prisoners of the Sun).
With
questions about his ability to sing, and the break-up of his
relationship with Minogue due to her relationship with INXS singer Michael
Hutchence, in 1991 Donovan accepted the lead role in the
restaged London
Palladium
version of
Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, directed by
Steven Pimlott. Donovan had
his third solo UK #1 single with one of its tracks,
Any Dream Will Do, while the
production won the 1992
Laurence
Olivier Awards for set design and costume design. However,
Donovan later left the production citing "exhaustion" as the
reason, and he was replaced in 1993 by TV presenter
Phillip Schofield.
In 1992, Donovan launched a successful libel action against
The Face magazine who
had published allegations that he was gay. Donovan won £200,000 in
damages and the magazine had to pay a further £100,000 in costs,
but the action of his lawsuit made him appear homophobic to some
sections of the media and had the effect of alienating much of his
audience. Donovan tried to make amends and claimed that he did not
sue the magazine out of greed or because he was homophobic, but
because he had been accused of lying to his fans. He also came to
an agreement with the publishers of the magazine, which would have
closed down had they paid him the full amount he was awarded
(though this amount could well have been reduced upon appeal
anyway). Regardless, Donovan's career never recovered from his act
of litigation. Although he had been a mild drug user who had smoked
cannabis joints up until this
point, in the months after his libel action Donovan began using
cocaine . In a 2007 interview in the magazine "Marie Claire" and
also in his 2007 autobiography "Between The Lines: My Story Uncut",
Donovan admitted that suing
The
Face was the biggest mistake of his life.
Now no longer signed to PWL, who had released his first two albums
and a "greatest hits" compilation, Donovan moved to
Polydor Records. The year after his libel
action against "The Face", he released his third album,
All
Around The World (1993). However, the album was not a success
and failed to make the UK Top 20 (all of Donovan's albums up until
then had been Top 10) and was not even released at all in his
native Australia. Donovan was subsequently dropped by his new
record company, effectively marking the end of his career as a pop
star.
1995–99: Drugs
By 1995, Donovan later admitted that he had a serious drug problem,
taking around two grams of cocaine a day.
In late 1995, he
attended model Kate Moss's 21st birthday
party at The Viper
Room
in Los Angeles, where he suffered a drug-induced
seizure. Saved by Hutchence, Donovan was admitted to the
local emergency room.
In 1996, Donovan starred in the natively produced Australian film
called
The Last Bullet with
Koji Tamaki, directed by
Michael Pattison which was set in World War
II on the Pacific island of Borneo in the last days of 1945.
In 1998 Donovan took the lead role in the UK touring production of
Rocky Horror Show, where
he met stage manager Angela Malloch. After the pair started a
relationship, Angela became pregnant and gave Donovan an
ultimatum.
In various articles in late 1999, Donovan admitted that he still
used cocaine, saying:
I still have a joint and I still take
coke, but not as much as I did two years ago.
2000-05: Fatherhood
Donovan's daughter, Jemma, was born in March 2000. Since then, with
his drug problems now under control, he continued to act on stage
and television, and had a role in the medical-legal television
drama
MDA (2003-05), on
Australia's
ABC network. Since 2003,
Donovan has also lent his voice to the
Buzz! series of quiz video games.
In late
2004, he was headlining in the stage musical Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang at the London Palladium. He finished his original run on 13 March
2005, but was then invited back from June onwards to play in the
final two months of the show, until its closure on 4 September
2005. Following this, he has toured the UK performing a few gigs
and returned to the stage in January 2006 to star in a UK tour of
Stephen Sondheim's
Sweeney Todd. After this, he
returned to Melbourne to star in
David
Eldrige's Australian transfer of the London drama
Festen, before continuing with his intention to make a
comeback as a
folk rock singer.
2005: Virgin Mobile viral marketing
In 2005, Donovan's mobile phone number was circulated around the
web in Australia, due to an image that was taken in Sydney. It
appeared that Donovan was trying to sell his car, and unwittingly
released his mobile phone number to the public. From 10 September,
his answering machine had a special message on it, because he was
frustrated by the number of calls he was receiving for no
particular reason.
Virgin placed
advertisements in several high-profile Australian newspapers,
urging people not to call Donovan, one of their customers. Virgin
Mobile has since admitted the photos were all part of a marketing
ploy. Virgin also ran TV advertisements showing Donovan answering
prank calls, asking the viewer not to call him, then displaying his
number.
2006: I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!
Donovan took part in
I'm a
Celebrity... Get Me Out of
Here! in 2006 and finished in 3rd place. While in the
jungle, he became good friends with
David
Gest and
Matt Willis. Donovan also
took part in many Bushtucker Trials, which included wearing a
helmet full of insects and playing a giant game of
Operation. Donovan lost out on the King of
the Jungle Crown to Matt Willis. However, during an interview on
"The Steve Wright Show" on BBC Radio 2 (January 2008), he claimed
that his appearance on
I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out
Of Here! had revitalised his career.
2007-09: Return to Soap Operas and Singing
Donovan performed a medley of songs from
Joseph along with
other actors who have played the eponymous role (
Donny Osmond and
Lee
Mead) at the
Concert for Diana
in July 2007.
In early 2008, Donovan appeared in ITV's post-watershed soap opera
Echo Beach as Daniel
Marrack. However the series was cancelled after 12 episodes. He
also presented
Sunday Night with Jason Donovan, a
programme on
The One Network of UK
local radio stations.
On 25
September 2008, Donovan performed in the canteen at the head
offices of Tesco
in Welwyn
Garden City, Hertfordshire. He was promoting his forthcoming
album,
Let It Be Me, which was released on 10 November
2008. The album, his first for 15 years, reached no. 28 in the
UK.
In 2009,
Donovan performed as Tick (Mitzi) in the London stage musical
production of Priscilla Queen of
the Desert at the Palace Theatre
. He is currently also the host of the radio
show "Sunday Night with Jason Donovan", Sundays from 7pm to 10pm on
Heart 106.2, London. Recently he was
confirmed as playing the role of The Artilleryman in the 2010-2011
stage show
Jeff
Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.
Discography
Singles
Albums
References
-
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s14/neighbours/news/a186246/neighbours-asked-jason-donovan-to-return.html
- Donovan, Jason - "Between The Lines: My Story Uncut" (2007)
HarperCollins Publishing (ISBN 978-0007261475)
- The Last Bullet (1995) (TV)
- [1]
- Chartstats.com - Jason Donovan UK chart
details
- Irish chart details
External links
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