Paula Abdul

Paula Abdul grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California. At age eight, she began dancing lessons. She went to Van Nuys High School, where she was the class head cheerleader and president. She graduated in 1980, and started the college process at Cal State Northridge to major in radio and TV. After joining the L.A. Lakers cheerleaders, she became head cheerleader/choreographer after only a few months, eventually dropping out of college to dance and choreograph full-time. The Lakers enlisted The Jacksons to choreograph their 1984 "Torture" video, the first in a lengthy list of movies and videos she choreographed. She branched out into singing through her first album, "Forever Your Girl" which was not a huge success until her hit single "Straight Up" exploded onto the charts in December 1988 . Since then, she has been a popular artist and singer ever since. This was made even more popular by her stint as an judge on the hit show American Idol (2002). Her father, Harry Abdul, is Sephardic Jewish from Syria. Her mother, who is also Jewish was born in Canada. Her parents resided in Canada, Syria, Brazil and Syria. This has led to many different stories about her religion and nationality in the media. She is the daughter of Harry Abdul, a former Brazilian livestock trader and Lorainne Abdul, a former assistant to Billy Wilder in film direction. Since the age of seven, she sang and danced in local musical theatre troupes while traveling throughout America. She was enrolled in tap dance classes too, which is how she received a scholarship to tap dancing classes. Later in her life, she attended Cal State-Northridge College where she pursued a degree in Broadcast radio. She was a candidate for the Los Angeles Lakers NBA cheerleading team. The result was getting paid $50 per match during her freshman year.