Julio Iglesias (original) (raw)

Julio Iglesias (born September 23, 1943) is Spain's best selling singer in history and one of the best selling hispanic singers of all time.

He was a professional soccer player with Real Madrid, where he played as goalie. During this time, he also enrolled in law school. He had an accident that dashed his hopes of becoming a great soccer player, but during his period in bed, he started to compose songs. He received a certificate as a lawyer from Cambridge University a little later.

In 1968, he won a songwriter's contest in Spain and signed a contract with an independent label, Discos Columbia. During the 1970s, he married the half Spanish-half Filipino girl Isabel Preysler and they had three children: Chabeli Iglesias, nowadays a former show host who is a news reporter in Washington D.C, Enrique Iglesias, now a world-famous singer who followed his father's steps, and Julio Jos� Iglesias, a model who has released 2 CDs. It was during the 1970s that the Iglesias family's private life became of public knowledge, with Julio and the rest of the family on the covers of various international magazines many times.

In 1978, he signed a contract for CBS International, propelling him to add English, French and Italian to his language repertoire, because he recorded in those languages also under his new management.

In 1984, he released the smash hit album 1100 Bel Air Place, which gave him considerable fame in England. In 1985, his father was kidnapped but found well and alive after two agonizing weeks. This prompted Julio, who had already divorced from Preysler, to move his family to Miami, where they settled in a mansion at Miami Beach. That year he also made duets with Diana Ross and Willie Nelson. It was rumored in 1986 that Julio, perhaps seeking to get away from all the fame and hoopla for one week, was found walking around the streets of Cayey, Puerto Rico after disappearing for seven days. Julio feels there is a deep connection between him and Puerto Rico because one of his grandmothers was from there.

Stories of Julio's expensive private jets, boats and houses became legendary during that decade, and his world tours took him to such places like Indonesia and Malaysia.

In the 1990s, Julio went back to his Spanish music roots and in 1996, he released the CD nicknamed Tango. He is slowly stepping out of the limelight now and enjoying his son Enrique's popularity, together with his long time companion Miranda and their baby daughter.

Julio is very amenable to sign autographs, although he can be a little difficult to reach sometimes, due to his and his family's security detail, which they have had since the 1985 kidnapping of Julio's father.

Iglesias returned to the headlines in October, 2003, when he went to Argentina and kissed show host Susana Gimenez three times on her mouth during a live telecast of her show.