Victoria Beckham (nee Adams) rose to fame in the mid 1990s as a member of the groundbreaking girl group the Spice Girls. Known more for her aloof demeanor and penchant for little black Gucci dresses (hence the nickname Posh Spice) than for her vocal talents, she was often referred to as "the one who can't sing". With the release of her first solo album in September 2001, entitled VB, Beckham hoped to silence some of her critics. In the grand tradition of Spice Girl solo offerings, VB tanked pretty badly. She has also written a lengthy autobiography entitled Learning to Fly, and is married to professional soccer (football) player David Beckham, with whom she has two children (Brookyln and Romeo).

Victoria was born on April 17, 1974 in Hertfordshire, UK. She was raised in an upper-middle class household, along with younger sister Louise and brother Christian. At eight years of age, Victoria went to see Fame with her mother, and left the theatre with an overwhelming desire to be a performer. She demanded her mother send her to the arts school from the movie, and since that wasn't exactly possible, Victoria settled for dance lessons instead. Although Victoria enjoyed dance lessons a great deal, the same couldn't be said for her scholastic endeavours. Her parents' Rolls Royce, her social inadequacies, and her spotty complexion all conspired to make young Victoria somewhat unpopular among her classmates, and she had to work extremely hard at her studies just to keep up with her peers. Musical theatre and dance were just about the only things she enjoyed, and nearly every night Victoria would immediately head to dance lessons right after school. Her weekends were often spent at the theatre watching musicals with her dance teacher, Christine Shakespeare.

After graduating from high school, Victoria finally achieved her goal of attending an arts school when she was accepted into Laine Theatre Arts, her top choice for college. Although she was living the life of a character from her favorite movie, she found herself miserable. College, she discovered, was exactly like high school, only with the added misery of living away from home. Victoria took her mind off her troubles by squeezing her zits and indulging in her favorite foods, and soon developed a bit of a weight problem. The principal at Laine's, Betty Laine, once told the future Spice Girl that she was "so fat I'm going to have to fly you in. I'm going to have to get you in on a crane because you're such a roly-poly."

After graduating from Laine's, Victoria embarked on a career in musical theatre, and was able to use her dance background in a number of roles. As an actor, she attended numerous auditions, and was rejected about as often as she got hired. After spotting an ad in Stage magazine looking for singers to be part of an all-girl pop band, Victoria decided to attend the audition, despite already being a member of a manufactured pop band called Persuasion. Again, she was accepted into the group, along with Geri Halliwell, Melanie Chisholm, Melanie Brown, and Michelle Stephenson, who was later replaced by Emma Bunton.

Although the Spice Girls found themselves under massive pressure from Bob and Chris Herbert, the father and son team of producers who had organized their audition, they decided to hold off on signing a contract. They went about finding themselves a manager, and decided on Simon Fuller, who had previously managed Annie Lennox. Fuller advised them to forget about signing a contract with the Herberts, and under Fuller's guidance the Spice Girls signed with Virgin Records on June 13, 1995.

As the possibly of stardom loomed ahead for Victoria, she became extremely concerned about her appearance. While she had previously been watching her diet in order to drop a couple pounds, she adopted new, borderline anorexic eating habits at the suggestion of her bandmate, Geri Halliwell. When the Spice Girls left Britain for Japan to embark on their Asian tour, Victoria was thoroughly disgusted by the food there, and stopped eating entirely. To her delight, the weight seemed to be melting off. When she returned home, her mother burst into tears upon seeing her daughter's emaciated figure, and her father worriedly enquired if she'd been ill. At their urging, she agreed to see a doctor.

Her weight loss, along with her spotty complexion and irregular period led the doctor to believe that Victoria had polycystic ovaries. After Victoria saw a specialist, the doctor's suspicions were proven to be correct. Her sort of condition, although not life-threatening, was the sort of hormonal problem that went undiagnosed in a lot of people, along with being a leading cause in infertility.

On February 24, 1997, after the Spice Girls had already notched several chart-toppers in both Britain and America, Victoria accompanied Simon Fuller to a Manchester United game. It was there where she met David Beckham, and was immediately attracted to him. After a series of clandestine dates, they were engaged on January 25th, 1998, and married on July 4th of the following year. Their first son, born on March 5th, 1999 is Brooklyn Beckham (tackily named after his place of conception, or so the story goes), and they recently welcomed a second child, Romeo Beckham on September 1st, 2002.


sources: Learning to Fly by Victoria Beckham
www.imdb.com

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