Courtney Love

Courtney Love

Date of Birth: July 9, 1964

Born in San Francisco and raised in Oregon, Courtney Love is best known as the flamboyant and controversial leader of the group Hole and for her marriage to Kurt Cobain, the late leader of the group Nirvana. The daughter of therapist Linda Carroll and Grateful Dead biographer and publisher Hank Harrison, she spent time living off a trust fund from her maternal grandmother, using the money to see the world.

Love eventually returned to San Francisco to launch a singing career with various local bands, including one that would become Faith No More. Love made her screen debut in Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy (1986 )and then appeared in another punk rock movie, Straight to Hell (1987). It was not particularly successful and Love's career stalled, leading her to Minnesota where she established her music career. When her trust fund ran out, Love attempted to support herself as an exotic dancer, first in Los Angeles, where she failed because club owners considered her too pudgy, and then in Alaska where lonely men were less discerning.

Upon her return to Los Angeles, Love founded the band Hole and in 1989, released their debut album. Around this time, she met Kurt Cobain, and in 1992, they married. During this time, the couple gained a reputation for their alleged use of alcohol, heroin and other illegal drugs. She found herself in the midst of a maelstrom of negative press after Vanity Fair reported that Love had used heroin during her pregnancy. Both Love and Cobain denied the allegations and though their daughter Frances Bean was born healthy, there was a struggle with the Washington State Child Protective Services over whether or not the couple should keep the child; the couple prevailed.

In the spring of 1994, around a year following his daughter's birth, Cobain committed suicide. As is typical when cult figures die, "conspiracy theories" circulated that he was murdered and that Love was involved, but there has been no hard evidence discovered to support such allegations.

Love returned to films in 1996 and made quite an impression as the tragic, drug-addicted wife of pornography tycoon Larry Flynt in Milos Forman's The People Vs. Larry Flynt for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination for best actress. Working with Forman again, Love appeared in Man on the Moon(1999), the story of comedian Andy Kaufman.

Filmography:

Trapped (2002)
Mayor of Sunset Strip (2001)
Last Party 2000 (2001)
Julie Johnson (2001)
Darker Saints (2000)
Beat (2000)
Clara Bow: Discovering the It Girl (1999) (voice)
Man on the Moon (1999)
200 Cigarettes (1999)
The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
Feeling Minnesota (1996)
Basquiat (1996)
Tapeheads (1988)
Straight to Hell (1987)
Sid and Nancy (1986)