Shania Twain was born as Eilleen Regina Edwards in 1965, the second of three daughters to Clarence and Sharon Edwards. When she was six, her mother remarried Jerry Twain, a full-blooded Ojibwa native from Timmins, Ontario, who adopted her as his own, making her 50% native in the eyes of the law. She began her singing career in bars as a child after hours, and, at 13, appeared on "The Tommy Hunter Show" (1965).

When she was 22, her parents were killed in a car accident, and she became the legal guardian of her half-brothers (Mark, then 13, and Darryl, then 14) and sister, putting her musical career on hold to raise her family. In 1991 she changed her name to Shania (meaning "I'm on my way" in Ojibwa, it was the name of a co-worker), and signed a contract with Mercury Nashville that same year. Her first album was a flop, but her second album, which she produced with her future husband Robert John Lange, was a huge hit.

"I don't want my body to be a distraction from my talent or my brain."

"I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that's making me successful. "

"Writing is very much a playground - an artistic playground. It's the most fun thing I do."