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Alanis Nadine Morissette (born June 1, 1974) is a singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress of dual Canadian and American citizenship. She has won twelve Juno Awards and seven Grammy Awards, and has sold more than 55 million albums worldwide. Morissette began her career in Canada, and as a teenager recorded two dance-pop albums, Alanis and Now Is the Time, under MCA Records. Her international debut album was the rock-influenced Jagged Little Pill, which is the best-selling debut album by a female artist in the U.S., and the highest selling debut album worldwide in music history. Alanis Morissette was one of the most unlikely stars of the mid-'90s. A former child actress turned dance-pop diva, Morissette transformed herself into a confessional alternative singer/songwriter, in the vein of Liz Phair and Tori Amos. However, she added enough pop sensibility, slight hip-hop flourishes, and marketing savvy to that formula to become a superstar with her third album, Jagged Little Pill.

Alanis was a collection of pop-oriented dance numbers and ballads that was successful in Canada, selling over 100,000 copies, and leading to a Juno Award for Most Promising Female Artist. However, no other country paid any attention to the record. In 1992, she released Now Is the Time, an album that closely resembled her debut. Like its predecessor, it was a success in Canada, even if it sold half of what Alanis did. Following the release of Now Is the Time, Morissette relocated to Los Angeles, where she met Glen Ballard in early 1994. Ballard had previously written Michael Jackson's hit "Man in the Mirror," produced Wilson Phillips' hit debut album, and worked with David Hasselhoff. Despite the duo's mainstream pop pedigree, they decided to pursue an edgier, alternative rock-oriented direction. The result was Jagged Little Pill, which was released on Maverick Records, Madonna's label.

On the strength of the single "You Oughta Know," Jagged Little Pill gained attention upon its release in the summer of 1995. Soon, the single received heavy airplay from both alternative radio and MTV, sending the album into the Top Ten and multi-platinum status. The second and third singles from Jagged Little Pill, "Hand in My Pocket" and "All I Really Want," kept the album in the Top Ten. In early 1996, she was nominated for six Grammys. Shortly after the nominations, Morissette released her fourth single, "Ironic," which proved to be her biggest crossover success. Morissette won several Grammy awards in 1996, including Album of the Year and Song of the Year. 

Her much-anticipated follow-up, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, was released in the autumn of 1998. An Unplugged set appeared a year later, and in 2002 Morissette released Under Rug Swept. So-Called Chaos followed in 2004, and a year later she took Jagged Little Pill on the road as an acoustic tour. That tour became Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, an album originally -- and tellingly -- sold exclusively through Starbucks outlets. Morissette and her fans had grown up. Collection, an 18-track retrospective of her work, followed in November 2005. 

According to RIAA and United World Charts, Alanis is defined as the biggest selling female rock artist in music. Morissette took up producing duties for her subsequent albums, which include Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, Under Rug Swept, So-Called Chaos and her upcoming release Flavors of Entanglement. Alanis became an American citizen in 2005.

Alanis Morissette was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the daughter of Georgia Mary Ann Feuerstein, a Hungarian-born teacher, and Alan Richard Morissette, a French-Canadian high school principal. Alanis has a twin brother, Wade, and an older brother, Chad. At the age of six, she began playing the piano and realized she wanted to express herself through the arts. In 1984, Morissette wrote her first song, "Fate Stay with Me", which she sent to a local folk singer, Lindsay Morgan, who recruited Morissette as his protégé.

At a New York City audition, Morissette landed a spot on Star Search, a popular American talent competition on which she used the stage name of Alanis Nadine, which consisted of her actual personal and middle names. Morissette flew to Los Angeles to appear on the show, but lost after one round. In 1988, Morissette signed a publishing deal with MCA Publishing, which helped to fund her record deal with one of its independent subsidiary labels.

MCA Records released Morissette's debut album, Alanis, in Canada only in 1991, and Morissette co-wrote every track on the album with its producer, Leslie Howe. By the time it was released, she had dropped her stage name and was credited simply as Alanis. The dance-pop album went platinum, and its first single, "Too Hot", reached the top twenty on the RPM singles chart. Subsequent singles "Walk Away" and "Feel Your Love" reached the top forty. Morissette's popularity, style of music and appearance, particularly that of her hair, led her to become known as the Debbie Gibson of Canada; comparisons to Tiffany were also common. During the same period, she was a concert opening act for rapper Vanilla Ice. Morissette was nominated for three 1992 Juno Awards: Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year (which she won), Single of the Year and Best Dance Recording (both for "Too Hot").

In 1992, she released her second album, Now Is the Time, a ballad-driven record that featured less glitzy production than Alanis and contained more thoughtful lyrics. Morissette wrote the songs with the album's producer, Leslie Howe, and Serge Côté. She said of the album, "people could go, 'Boo, hiss, hiss, this girl's like another Tiffany or whatever'. But the way I look at it ... people will like your next album if it's a kick-ass one." As with Alanis, Now Is the Time was released only in Canada and produced three top forty singles "An Emotion Away", the minor adult contemporary hit "No Apologies", and "(Change Is) Never a Waste of Time". It sold little more than half the copies of her first album, however, and was a commercial failure. With her two-album deal with MCA Canada complete, Morissette was left without a major label contract.

In 1993, after graduating from high school, Morissette moved from Ottawa to Toronto. Living alone for the first time in her life, she met with a bevy of songwriters, but the results frustrated her. A visit to Nashville a few months later also proved fruitless. In the hopes of meeting a collaborator Morissette began making trips to Los Angeles and working with as many musicians as possible.

During this time, she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard, and within ten minutes of meeting each other they had begun experimenting creatively. According to Morissette, Ballard was the first collaborator who encouraged her to express her emotions. The two wrote and recorded Morissette's third album, Jagged Little Pill, and by the spring of 1995, she had signed a deal with Maverick Records.

As Morissette later revealed, during her stay in L.A., a thief confronted and robbed her on a deserted street, although he did not take the writing and brainstorming notes in her purse; they were the scribblings that soon made up Jagged Little Pill. Morissette subsequently developed an intense and general angst, which manifested in random daily panic attacks, including on planes. She checked herself into a hospital and attended psychotherapy sessions, but with no improvement. She focused her inner problems on the soul-baring lyrics of the album for her own health.

Maverick Records released Jagged Little Pill internationally in 1995. The album was expected only to sell enough for Morissette to make a follow-up, but the situation changed quickly when a DJ from an influential Los Angeles radio station began playing "You Oughta Know," the album's first single. The song instantly garnered attention for its scathing, explicit lyrics, and a subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV and MuchMusic.

After the success of "You Oughta Know," the album's other hit singles helped send Jagged Little Pill to the top of the charts. "All I Really Want" and "Hand In My Pocket" followed, but the fourth U.S. single, "Ironic," became Morissette's biggest hit. "You Learn" and "Head over Feet", the fifth and sixth singles, respectively, kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 albums chart for more than a year. According to the RIAA, Jagged Little Pill is the best-selling international debut album by a female artist, with more than fourteen million copies sold in the U.S.; it sold thirty million worldwide, making it the second biggest selling album by a female artist, and the biggest selling debut album of all time, even though it was actually her third album. Morissette's popularity grew significantly in Canada, where the album was certified twelve times platinum and produced four RPM chart-toppers: "Hand In My Pocket," "Ironic," "You Learn," and "Head over Feet". The album was also a bestseller in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Morissette's success with Jagged Little Pill was credited with leading to the introduction of female singers such as Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks, Patti Rothberg, Shakira and, in the early 2000s, Avril Lavigne and Pink. She was criticised for collaborating with producer and supposed image-maker Ballard, and her previous albums also proved a hindrance for her respectability, particularly in her native country. Morissette and the album won six Juno Awards in 1996: Album of the Year, Single of the Year ("You Oughta Know"), Female Vocalist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Best Rock Album. At the 1996 Grammy Awards, she won Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song (both for "You Oughta Know"), Best Rock Album and Album of the Year.

Later in 1996, Morissette embarked on an eighteen-month world tour in support of Jagged Little Pill, beginning in small clubs and ending in large venues. Taylor Hawkins, who later joined the Foo Fighters, was the tour's drummer. "Ironic" was nominated for two 1997 Grammy Awards Record of the Year and Best Music Video, Short Form and won Single of the Year at the 1997 Juno Awards, where Morissette also won Songwriter of the Year and the International Achievement Award. The video Jagged Little Pill, Live, which was co-directed by Morissette and chronicled the bulk of her tour, won a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Long Form.

During the tour, Morissette became disillusioned with the music industry and declared being tired of constant travelling, quick and superficial relationships and parties full of drugs subjects that made her consider ditching her career. She started practicing Iyengar Yoga for balancing, and after the last December 1996 show, she headed to India for six weeks, accompanied by her mother, two aunts and two female friends.

Morissette was featured as a guest vocalist on Ringo Starr's cover of "Drift Away" on his 1998 album, Vertical Man, and on the songs "Don't Drink the Water" and "Spoon" on the Dave Matthews Band album Before These Crowded Streets. She recorded the song "Uninvited" for the soundtrack to the 1998 film City of Angels. Although the track was never commercially released as a single, it received widespread radio airplay in the U.S. At the 1999 Grammy Awards, it won in the categories of Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and was nominated for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. Later in 1998, Morissette released her fourth album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, which she wrote and produced with Glen Ballard. Most of the tracks, including "Would Not Come" and "Unsent", challenged traditional song formulas: they included one-chord drone melodies and Morissette singing over letter-like prose texts some songs lacked choruses or took a long time to reach them.

Morissette contributed vocals to "Mercy" and "Innocence", two tracks on Jonathan Elias's project The Prayer Cycle, which was released in 1999. The same year, she released the live acoustic album Alanis Unplugged, which was recorded during her appearance on the television show MTV Unplugged. It featured tracks from her previous two albums alongside four new songs, including "King of Pain" (a cover of The Police song) and "No Pressure over Cappuccino", which Morissette wrote with her main guitar player, Nick Lashley. 

The recording of the Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie track "That I Would Be Good", released as a single, became a minor hit on hot adult contemporary radio in America. Also in 1999, Morissette released a live version of her song "Are You Still Mad" on the charity album Live in the X Lounge II. For her live rendition of "So Pure" at Woodstock '99, she was nominated for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance at the 2001 Grammy Awards. She also appeared in the hit HBO comedies Sex and the City and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and starred in the plays The Vagina Monologues.

In 2001, Morissette was featured with Stephanie McKay on the Tricky song "Excess", which is on his album Blowback. Morissette released her fifth studio album, Under Rug Swept, in February 2002. For the first time in her career, she took on the role of sole writer and producer of an album. Her band, comprising Joel Shearer, Nick Lashley, Chris Chaney and Gary Novak, played the majority of the instruments; additional contributions came from Eric Avery, Dean DeLeo, Flea and Meshell Ndegeocello. Shortly after recording the album, Morissette hired an entirely new band, featuring Jason Orme, Zac Rae, David Levita and Blair Sinta, who have been with her since.

Under Rug Swept debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, eventually going platinum in Canada and selling one million copies in the U.S. It produced the hit single "Hands Clean(Under Rug Swept)," which topped the Canadian Singles Chart and received substantial radio play; for her work on "Hands Clean" and "So Unsexy," Morissette won a Juno Award for Producer of the Year. A second single, "Precious Illusions," was released, but it did not garner significant success outside Canada or U.S. hot AC radio.

Later in 2002, Morissette released the combination package Feast on Scraps, which includes a DVD of live concert and backstage documentary footage directed by her, and a CD containing eight previously unreleased songs from the Under Rug Swept recording sessions. Preceded by the single "Simple Together," it sold roughly 70,000 copies in the U.S. and was nominated for a Juno Award for Music DVD of the Year. In late 2003, Morissette appeared in the off-Broadway play The Exonerated as Sunny Jacobs, a death row inmate freed after proof surfaced that she was innocent.

Morissette hosted the Juno Awards of 2004 dressed in a bathrobe, which she took off to reveal a flesh-coloured bodysuit, a response to the era of censorship in the U.S. caused by Janet Jackson's breast-reveal incident during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show. Morissette released her sixth studio album, So-Called Chaos, in May 2004. She wrote the songs on her own again, and co-produced the album with Tim Thorney and pop music producer John Shanks. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 chart to generally mixed critical reviews, and it became Morissette's lowest seller in the U.S. 

The lead single, "Everything", achieved major success on adult top 40 radio in America and was moderately popular elsewhere, particularly in Canada, although it failed to reach the top forty on the U.S. Hot 100. Because the first line of the song includes the word asshole, American radio stations refused to play it, and the single version was changed to include the word nightmare instead. Two other singles, "Out Is Through" and "Eight Easy Steps", fared considerably worse commercially than "Everything", although a dance mix of "Eight Easy Steps" was a U.S. club hit. Morissette embarked on a U.S. summer tour with long-time friends and fellow Canadians Barenaked Ladies, working with the non-profit environmental organization Reverb

Morissette released the greatest hits album Alanis Morissette: The Collection in late 2005. The lead single and only new track, a cover of Seal's "Crazy," was a U.S. adult top 40 and dance hit, but it achieved only minimal chart success elsewhere, as did the album. A limited edition of The Collection features a DVD including a documentary with videos of two unreleased songs from Morissette's 1996 Can't Not Tour: "King of Intimation" and "Can't Not." (A reworked version of "Can't Not" had also appeared on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.) The DVD also includes a ninety-second clip of the unreleased video for the single "Joining You." Morissette contributed the song "Wunderkind" to the soundtrack of the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

2006 marked the first year in the recorded history of Morissette's musical career that she had not a single concert appearance showcasing her own songs, with the exception of an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in January when she performed "Wunderkind". On April 1, 2007, Morissette released a tongue-in-cheek cover of The Black Eyed Peas's selection "My Humps," which she recorded in a slow, mournful voice and accompanied only by a piano. 

The accompanying YouTube-hosted video, in which she dances provocatively with a group of men and hits the ones who attempt to touch her "lady lumps," had received nearly five million views by April 13. Morissette did not take any interviews to explain the song, and it was theorized that she did it as an April Fools' Day joke. Black Eyed Peas vocalist Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson responded by sending Morissette a buttocks-shaped cake with an approving note.

On June 4, 2007, Morissette performed the "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "O Canada", the American and Canadian national anthems, in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Ottawa Senators and the Anaheim Ducks in Ottawa, Ontario.

Morissette performed at a gig for The Nightwatchman, a.k.a. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame, at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles on April 24, 2007. There, she said that she and producer Guy Sigsworth had been "sequestered in London and L.A. over the last few months writing a bevy of new songs". Accompanied by Sigsworth on piano, Morissette played a new song, "Not as We". You can view a song at the performance on her website: www.alanis.com under "videos."

On September 14, 2007, an interview with Guy Sigsworth, who is collaborating/co-producing Alanis' new album Flavors of Entanglement, was posted on Alanis' official MySpace page describing the forthcoming album. Throughout the interview it was revealed that 25 songs were written for the album and although 13 have been chosen for the final cut, 8 more are in the process of being written.

"Underneath" is the second song known to be written and recorded during the 2007 sessions. The song had an unofficial premiere on September 15, 2007 at The Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, at the Elevate Film Festival. The purpose of the festival was to create documentaries, music videos, narratives and shorts - regarding subjects to raise the level of human consciousness on the earth.

Early 2008 saw Morissette participating in a tour with Matchbox Twenty and Mute Math as a special guest. She has stated that the fall would find a place for a formal North American headlining tour. In the meantime she will be promoting the release of 'Flavors of Entanglement' internationally by performing at shows, festivals and making TV and Radio appearances. 'Flavors of Entanglement' will be released on June 2 internationally and June 10 in the United States.

In 1986, Morissette had her first stint as an actress: five episodes of the children's television show You Can't Do That on Television. Using money she saved from that role, she released "Fate Stay with Me" as a single via a label she founded with Morgan. A limited number of copies were pressed, and it received little airplay. She appeared on stage with the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society in 1985 and 1988. During her high school years, Morissette attended Immaculata High School and Glebe Collegiate Institute in Ottawa.

In 1993, she appeared in the film Just One of the Girls starring Corey Haim, which she called "horrible". In 1999, Morissette delved into acting again, for the first time since 1993, appearing as God in the Kevin Smith film Dogma and contributing the song "Still" to its soundtrack. Smith, a fan of Morissette's, asked her to be in the film several times. She had to turn down the female lead, and by the time her schedule allowed her to participate in the film, only the role of God, which involves virtually no dialogue and only an appearance at the very end of the film, was left.

In April 2006, MTV News reported that Morissette would reprise her role in The Exonerated in London from May 23 through the May 28. She expanded her acting credentials with the July 2004 release of the Cole Porter biographical film De-Lovely, in which she performed the song "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)" and had a brief role as an anonymous stage performer.

In 2006, she guest starred in an episode of Lifetime's Lovespring International as a homeless woman named Lucinda, and three episodes of FX's Nip/Tuck, playing a lesbian named Poppy. It was announced on Morissette's website that she will be starring in a film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Radio Free Albemuth. Morissette will play Sylvia, an ordinary woman in unexpected remission from lymphoma. She said she was a "big fan" of Dick's books, which she called "poetic and expansively imaginative", and said she "feels blessed to portray Sylvia, and to be part of this story being told in film."

During 1993, Morissette dated Dave Coulier of television's Full House fame. Between the ages of fourteen to eighteen, Morissette suffered from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, which were catalysed by "hardcore" professional pressure and managerial demands from her work towards making her first album. She recalled returning to the studio to re-record some vocals, only to be told that the person who summoned her there wanted to discuss her weight, and that she couldn't be successful if she was fat. She lived on a diet of carrots, black coffee and Melba toast, and her weight fluctuated by fifteen to twenty pounds. She subsequently began therapy, which she called "a long process to un-program my brain. I try to remember, whatever my body is, it's perfect the way it is."

By mid 2004, Morissette had become an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church, a religious organization that offers anyone semi-immediate ordination as a minister free of charge. In June, Morissette announced her engagement to actor, and fellow Canadian, Ryan Reynolds. During that time, she gave an interview to British newspaper The Mirror in which she discussed her past homosexual relationships, having dated a twenty-nine year-old man at age fourteen and, briefly, her experiences with drugs. In the article, she was quoted as saying: "My addictions were work and food. I smoked pot once in a while, but I'm too much of a control freak to be a drug person."

In February 2005, Morissette became a naturalized citizen of the United States while maintaining her Canadian citizenship. Morissette refers to herself as a Canadian-American. The same month, she made a guest appearance on the Canadian television show Degrassi: The Next Generation with Dogma co-star Jason Mewes and director Kevin Smith.

In a Rolling Stone interview she revealed that she was going to spend 2006 working on a memoir. She said of her book, "it will be all the wisdom I've accrued in the thirty-one years of my life A lot about relationships, fame, travel, body-image issues, spirit with a lot of self-deprecating humor peppered throughout, 'cause I just can't help it."

In June 2006, People magazine reported that Morissette had split from her fiancé, Ryan Reynolds, but neither party confirmed the report. The following month, a source said that they were together, Contact Music reported that their split was a "rumour", and they were pictured holding hands in Los Angeles. In February 2007, representatives for Morissette and Reynolds announced that they had mutually decided to end their engagement.

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