Alanis Morissette FAQ and Facts

This page contains interesting little tidbits about Alanis, gathered from various sources across the Internet. Some facts might appear more than once due to the different sources.

1. Alanis Nadine Morissette and her twin brother, Wade, were born June 1, 1974, in Ottawa, Canada. Wade is 12 minutes older than Alanis, and the twins have another brother, Chad, who's two years older.
2. She is a fitness buff who competed in a triathlon in 1997. She swam a quarter mile, biked five and a half miles, and ran three miles in 1 hour, 10 minutes.
3. Her hospitality rider for concert venues requires that she have fresh fruit, one quart of fresh-squeezed orange juice, four bottles of Gatorade, six Dannon yogurts with fruit, one bag of corn chips with salsa, an electric kettle, a box of Throat Coat tea, six bottles of Evian water, fresh ice, a bottle opener, 10 large plastic Solo cups, ceramic coffee mugs and candles.
4. Her most famous detractor is Hole lead singer Courtney Love, who considers her a sellout. After the 1996 Grammys, Love was heard shouting to Alanis' reps, "Tell Alanis she sucks!"
5. On things she has in common with Madonna: "We're both aggressive women, and we've both had to deal with men who may have difficulty responding to us because we demand a lot from them and don't want to be dominated or seduced in the typical ways."
6. Her parents are both schoolteachers: Alan, a native French Canadian, and Georgia, who fled to Canada after escaping Hungary during an anti-Communist uprising in 1956. The two met as 12-year-olds on a playground, when Alan reportedly approached Georgia and told her he was going to marry her someday. Nine years later, he did.
7. Between the ages of three and six, Alanis grew up in West Germany, where her parents taught the children of military personnel.
8. She saw the film Grease when she was four years old and wandered around the house for days singing songs from the soundtrack. She says that was her first memory of wanting to perform in front of people.
9. She wrote her first song at age nine, a pop tune called "Fate Stay with Me."
10. At age 10, she joined the Canadian cast of You Can't Do That on Television, which later aired on Nickelodeon.
11. The kiddie sketch-comedy show's cast members were routinely "slimed" (drowned in buckets of green goop) whenever they said the words "I don't know." Which adds a comic veneer to her first hit single, "You Oughta Know."
12. When she began appearing on the show, Alanis was deluged with hate mail. It seems the girls in the audience were jealous because her character on the show was in a love triangle with two male costars, both of whom were teen heartthrobs.
13. With the money she earned on television, Alanis started her own record label (Lamor Records) and by the time she turned 11 had already written and recorded her first song, "Fate Stay with Me."
14. She appeared on the talent show Star Search in 1989 (where she performed a version of the Osmonds' "One Bad Apple") but lost to a singing cowboy named Chad.
15. Her favorite food: steamed spinach.
16. Her favorite drink: Baileys on ice.
17. Her favorite movie: Forrest Gump.
18. Her favorite musicians: Annie Lennox, ABBA, Radiohead, Tori Amos, Foo Fighters, George Michael, Bob Dylan, Jane's Addiction, Seal, Björk, John Lennon and David Bowie.
19. Her favorite reading material: anything but newspapers and magazines. She has been quoted as saying that "90 percent of what is written in magazines and newspapers" isn't true.
20. Also, nix on the Web--she considers the Internet the Antichrist. (no longer true, she has her own website and participated in several online chats, ed.)
21. Her official Website features her poetry and is frequently updated.
22. Though scads of Websites offer shrines to the singer, the Internet also has fueled most of the enduring unfounded Morissette rumors. Among them: the singer was about to disclose she is a lesbian; she had overdosed on drugs; and she had ghost-written songs for the Spice Girls.
23. Speaking of the Antichrist, Chicago deejay Lou Brutus slapped that label on Alanis, inviting listeners to join PUSMAC: People United to Stop Morissette the Antichrist. Members received a membership card and a certificate that stated they would "refrain from being 'Ironic,' going down on people in theaters and thinking of Alanis Morissette while f***ing anyone."
24. Before releasing her debut Canadian album, she fronted a cover band called the New York Fries. The group performed covers of hits from rockers Pat Benatar, Blondie, Richard Marx, Cheap Trick and the B-52s.
25. She made her feature-film debut in the 1993 Corey Haim bomb Just One of the Girls.
26. She'll hit the big screen again in Kevin Smith's upcoming Dogma, playing God in a comic update of the Bible, with costars Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Linda Fiorentino and Janeane Garofalo.
27. Her band is unofficially known as Sexual Chocolate.
28. Its original drummer was Taylor Hawkins, who left in 1997 to join the Foo Fighters but is perhaps best known for his brief (and very public) fling with actress Minnie Driver after her nasty (and very public) breakup with Matt Damon.
29. She became known as "Miss O'Canada" for a short time after she sang a rocked-out version of the Canadian national anthem in front of 10,000 people at the 1988 World Figure Skating Championships in Ottawa.
30. She later had to hear herself singing the anthem every morning when it was played over the loudspeaker at Glebe High School in Ottawa, where she was a straight-A student.
31. Before her makeover into an American rock star, she performed as the opening act for an '80s flash-in-the-pan who is now trying to make himself into a legitimate rap star: Vanilla Ice.
32. Most of the songs on Jagged Little Pill were written and recorded in one day each.
33. "Perfect" was written in 20 minutes and recorded in just two takes, and the hit "Hand in My Pocket," which features her debut on the harmonica, was penned in 15 minutes.
34. After hearing an advance tape of the song "You Oughta Know," the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea and Dave Navarro asked Alanis if they could play on the record.
35. She became buddies with Friends' Matt LeBlanc when, as a young model, he appeared in the video for "I'll Walk Away," one of the songs from her first Canadian album.
36. Later it would be rumored that LeBlanc was the subject of "You Oughta Know." Alanis denied the claim.
37. Her first serious boyfriend was former Full House and America's Funniest People star Dave Coulier. The two met at the 1992 NHL All-Star game in Montreal, where she was performing the national anthem and he was playing in a celebrity hockey game. The relationship lasted little over a year.
38. As for a definitive answer to the identity of the subject of "You Oughta Know," the world may never know. Says Morissette on Coulier: "I'm not going to deny or say yes to that, because I think it is wrong. I sort of laugh at it. That was the most public relationship, and it is a predictable answer. The truth is, I am never going to tell who it was about."
39. Leonardo DiCaprio invited the singer on a Cuban vacation last February with a group of friends. She went along, and even did an impromptu café concert.
40. Other celeb Morissette fans: Ben Stiller, Sarah McLachlan, k.d. lang, Annie Lennox, Prince and Alicia Silverstone, who even wrote her a fan letter.
41. During her first tour, Alanis and her band had a contest going to see who could sleep with the most people. Alanis, who says she's "a very sexual person," reportedly finished third.
42. She has a fondness for dirty jokes. "I have the filthiest mouth of them all. So I'm right there with the filth," she says. "I encourage them as long as they're not derogatory."
43. During her time in Toronto, Alanis says, she lived a life she calls "deviant and perverse." She had a penchant, it seems, for stealing other girls' boyfriends. "The only way I would feel desirable was when a man would leave his girlfriend for me," she says.
44. She won four Grammys in 1996 for Jagged Little Pill--Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and Album of the Year--making it the most successful debut album of all time.
45. But she lost out on the 1996 Best New Artist statuette, which went to...Hootie and the Blowfish.
46. Jagged Little Pill almost wasn't. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles and hooking up with writing partner Glen Ballard, Alanis was robbed at gunpoint on her way home from the gym. The thieves held a gun to her head and made her lie facedown on the pavement, but the singer said she was only concerned about the book of lyrics she was carrying with her, many of which ended up as JLP tunes.
47. She says the robbery experience caught up with her a few months later. On a 1994 flight back to Canada for Christmas, she began to sob, and crying jags and fainting spells haunted her until she finally checked herself into a hospital for therapy.
48. When Jagged Little Pill hit the 1 million sales mark, Maverick Records honcho Madonna gave Alanis platinum nail polish to celebrate.
49. Alanis had a habit of painting the fingernails of everyone she met during her first tour--from band members to journalists to road crew, male and female. "It's a good excuse to get a guy to put his hand on your knee," she joked.
50. Though Jagged Little Pill (which has sold 16 million copies to date) made her wealthy, Alanis has remained thrifty. Instead of the multimillion-dollar homes a real estate agent showed her, she opted for a small, cottage-like house in Brentwood, and her accountant frequently calls to encourage Alanis to spend more money.

This list was published by Kimberly Potts on E!Online

Nifty Facts About Alanis

• She was born at Riverside Hospital in Ottawa, Canada.
• Her twin brother Wade is 12 minutes older than she is. They also have an older brother Chad, who is 3 years older than them.
• The name Alanis is Greek. Her father Alan saw it one day in a Greek Newspaper while trying to come up with a name for her. He wanted a female version of his name so when he saw the word "Alanis" he thought it was a perfect name. According to Alanis in the November 1998 Rolling Stone, in Greek it means "someone who is off doing their own thing, like a lone wolf."
• Alanis and her family lived in the former West Germany for 3 years when she was about 3. Her parents were military school teachers, causing the family to move around a lot when she was younger.
• She began taking piano lessons at age 6, and still plays regularly now.
• She wrote her first song at age 9.
• Alanis played "Annie" in a school production of the play when she was 11.
• She went to Glebe Collegiate High School in Ottawa and was a straight A student despite her hectic schedule.
• The first band she was ever in was a rock cover band called "The New York Fries."
• She had a brief part in a movie called "Just One Of The Girls." She was at the end and performed a song off her first CD "Alanis" called "Feel Your Love."
• Her favorite foods are corn on the cob and steamed spinach.
• She loves to read, especially books on psychology.
• If she wasn't a musician, she would probably be an English teacher.
• She drinks chamomile tea for her voice.
• She loves to drink Bailey's on ice.
• She speaks French, and knows Hungarian as well.
• She got the key to the city of Ottawa in 1996, and now March 8th is Alanis Morissette Day.
• She was in three triathlons last year and did pretty good in all of them.
• She recently created her own website of her poetry (http://www.alanismorissette.com/home.html)
• Alanis's favorite singer as a kid was Olivia Newton John, who Alanis says inspired her to become a singer.
• When she was 9, Alanis went to Olivia Newton John's house, and said over the intercom at the front gates "Hi..I'm Alanis..I want to meet you one day and I want to be famous just like you"
• Alanis did meet Olivia Newton John eventually..they met backstage at one of Alanis's shows in 1996.
• Some of Alanis's other favorite musicians/bands are: John Lennon, Annie Lennox, Radiohead, The Beatles, ABBA, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Tori Amos, and Supergrass.
• She drives a Jeep Wrangler.
• She is allergic to cats, and anything scented..like candles, and incense. So now she sticks with all the unscented stuff.
• She loves doggies.
• She is currently dating actor Dash Mihok. (He was Benvolio in the new Romeo and Juliet, and was most recently in "The Thin Red Line". He has just become a regular on the WB's "Felicity".... He plays a swimmer named Lynn.

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