Michelle Harrison Popular Books

Michelle Harrison Biography & Facts

Courtney Michelle Love (née Harrison; born July 9, 1964) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actress. A figure in the alternative and grunge scenes of the 1990s, her career has spanned four decades. She rose to prominence as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989. Love has drawn public attention for her uninhibited live performances and confrontational lyrics, as well as her highly publicized personal life following her marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. In 2020, NME named her one of the most influential singers in alternative culture of the last 30 years. Love had an itinerant childhood, but was primarily raised in Portland, Oregon, where she played in a series of short-lived bands and was active in the local punk scene. After briefly being in a juvenile hall, she spent a year living in Dublin and Liverpool before returning to the United States and pursuing an acting career. She appeared in supporting roles in the Alex Cox films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987) before forming the band Hole in Los Angeles with guitarist Eric Erlandson. The group received critical acclaim from underground rock press for their 1991 debut album Pretty on the Inside, produced by Kim Gordon, while their second release, Live Through This (1994), was met with critical accolades and multi-platinum sales. In 1995, Love returned to acting, earning a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Althea Leasure in Miloš Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), which established her as a mainstream actress. The following year, Hole's third album, Celebrity Skin (1998), was nominated for three Grammy Awards. Love continued to work as an actress into the early 2000s, appearing in big-budget pictures such as Man on the Moon (1999) and Trapped (2002), before releasing her first solo album, America's Sweetheart, in 2004. The subsequent several years were marred with publicity surrounding Love's legal troubles and drug relapse, which resulted in a mandatory lockdown rehabilitation sentence in 2005 while she was writing a second solo album. That project became Nobody's Daughter, released in 2010 as a Hole album but without the former Hole lineup. Between 2014 and 2015, Love released two solo singles and returned to acting in the network series Sons of Anarchy and Empire. In 2020, she confirmed she was writing new music. Love has also been active as a writer; she co-created and co-wrote three volumes of a manga, Princess Ai, between 2004 and 2006, and wrote a memoir, Dirty Blonde (2006). Life and career 1964–1982: Childhood and education Courtney Michelle Harrison was born July 9, 1964, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, the first child of psychotherapist Linda Carroll (née Risi; born 1944) and Hank Harrison (1941–2022), a publisher and road manager for the Grateful Dead. Her parents met at a party held for Dizzy Gillespie in 1963, and the two married in Reno, Nevada after Carroll discovered she was pregnant. Carroll, who was adopted at birth, is the biological daughter of novelist Paula Fox. Love's matrilineal great-grandmother was Elsie Fox (née de Sola), a Cuban writer who co-wrote the film The Last Train from Madrid with Love's great-grandfather, Paul Hervey Fox, cousin of writer Faith Baldwin and actor Douglas Fairbanks. Phil Lesh, the founding bassist of the Grateful Dead, is Love's godfather. According to Love, she was named after Courtney Farrell, the protagonist of Pamela Moore's 1956 novel Chocolates for Breakfast. Love is of Cuban, English, German, Irish, Ashkenazi Jewish, and Welsh descent. Through her mother's subsequent marriages, Love has two younger half-sisters, three younger half-brothers (one of whom died in infancy), and one adopted brother. Love spent her early years in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, until her parents divorced in 1970. In a custody hearing, her mother, as well as one of her father's girlfriends, testified that Hank had dosed Courtney with LSD when she was a toddler. Carroll also alleged that Hank threatened to abduct his daughter and flee with her to a foreign country. Though Hank denied these allegations, his custody was revoked. In 1970, Carroll relocated with Love to the rural community of Marcola, Oregon where they lived along the Mohawk River while Carroll completed her psychology degree at the University of Oregon. There, Carroll remarried to schoolteacher Frank Rodríguez, who legally adopted Love. Though Love was baptized a Roman Catholic, her mother maintained an unorthodox home; according to Love, "There were hairy, wangly-ass hippies running around naked [doing] Gestalt therapy", and her mother raised her in a gender-free household with "no dresses, no patent leather shoes, no canopy beds, nothing". Love attended a Montessori school in Eugene, Oregon, where she struggled academically and socially. She has said that she began seeing psychiatrists at "like, [age] three. Observational therapy. TM for tots. You name it, I've been there." At age nine, a psychologist noted that she exhibited signs of autism, among them tactile defensiveness. Love commented in 1995: "When I talk about being introverted, I was diagnosed autistic. At an early age, I would not speak. Then I simply bloomed." In 1972, Love's mother divorced Rodríguez, remarried to sportswriter David Menely, and moved the family to Nelson, New Zealand. Love was enrolled at Nelson College for Girls, but soon expelled for misbehavior. In 1973, Carroll sent Love back to Portland, Oregon, to be raised by her former stepfather and other family friends. At age 14, Love was arrested for shoplifting from a Portland department store and remanded at Hillcrest Correctional Facility, a juvenile hall in Salem, Oregon. While at Hillcrest, she became acquainted with records by Patti Smith, the Runaways, and the Pretenders, who later inspired her to start a band. She was intermittently placed in foster care throughout late 1979 until becoming legally emancipated in 1980, after which she remained staunchly estranged from her mother. Shortly after her emancipation, Love spent two months in Japan working as a topless dancer, but was deported after her passport was confiscated. She returned to Portland and began working at the strip club Mary's Club, adopting the surname Love to conceal her identity; she later adopted Love as her surname. She worked odd jobs, including as a DJ at a gay disco. Love said she lacked social skills, and learned them while frequenting gay clubs and spending time with drag queens. During this period, she enrolled at Portland State University, studying English and philosophy. She later commented that, had she not found a passion for music, she would have sought a career working with children. In 1981, Love was granted a small trust fund that had been left by her maternal grandparents, which she used to travel to Dublin, Ireland, where her biological father was liv.... Discover the Michelle Harrison popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Michelle Harrison books.

Best Seller Michelle Harrison Books of 2024

  • City of Stolen Magic synopsis, comments

    City of Stolen Magic

    Nazneen Ahmed Pathak

    A spellbinding, epic and heartracing magical adventure from an exquisite new storytelling talent.'Ahmed Pathak is a wonderful new voice; the book took her years to write, and it sh...

  • Ranking the First Ladies synopsis, comments

    Ranking the First Ladies

    Ian Randal Strock

    Have you ever wondered about the lives of the Presidential wives? Much attention has been focused on the Presidents, often ignoring the women who accompany them to the White House....

  • Summer of the Dragons synopsis, comments

    Summer of the Dragons

    Ed Clarke

    'That's not a bird,' Mari said, disbelievingly. 'That's another dragon . . .'A year after she discovered a tiny dragon on the beach, life is getting back to normal for Mari Jones a...

  • The Whisperling synopsis, comments

    The Whisperling

    Hayley Hoskins

    'One of the best debuts I've read in YEARS!' Emma CarrollWhen you're dead, you're dead. When you're gone, you're gone.Unless, of course, you're not.And that's where I come in.The ...

  • How to Win The Bachelor synopsis, comments

    How to Win The Bachelor

    Chad Kultgen & Lizzy Pace

    Perfect for fans of Bachelor Nation and Seinfeldia, an illuminating deep dive into the most successful reality TV franchise of all timeThe Bachelor.Since its premiere in 2002, ABC’...

  • The Whisperling Twins synopsis, comments

    The Whisperling Twins

    Hayley Hoskins

    From the author of the Branford Boase longlisted debut The Whisperling, comes the next adventure in the legacy...Gloucester, 1918.Nin and Lemon Esmond share a special bond. They're...

  • The Incredible Talking Machine synopsis, comments

    The Incredible Talking Machine

    Jenni Spangler

    Pull back the curtain and enter a world where mystery and magic take centre stage . . .   Twelveyearold Tig works at the Theatre Royale, cleaning, selling tickets and doing a...

  • Chaos Born synopsis, comments

    Chaos Born

    Rebekah Turner

    A fresh and exciting debut novel introducing the Chronicles of the Applecross.Lora Blackgoat, smuggler and mercenary, has been laying low after a job gone bad made her a laughing s...

  • Everdark synopsis, comments

    Everdark

    Abi Elphinstone

    The stunning prequel to Abi Elphinstone's mesmerising The Unmapped Chronicles series. Magic, adventure, and a whole new world is waiting to be discovered! The perfect series for ad...

  • Carnival of the Hunted synopsis, comments

    Carnival of the Hunted

    Kieran Larwood

    The first figure raises his crossbow, tilting his head to pinpoint the exact position of the thing in the bushes. It has stopped running now, and is muttering something. Some kind ...

  • The Making of the British Landscape synopsis, comments

    The Making of the British Landscape

    Francis Pryor

    This is the changing story of Britain as it has been preserved in our fields, roads, buildings, towns and villages, mountains, forests and islands. From our suburban streets that s...

  • Into Goblyn Wood synopsis, comments

    Into Goblyn Wood

    Anna Kemp

    Fairies are real, but their power is waning . . . Embark on the adventure of a lifetime and discover the magic of Goblyn Wood, with the first book in a major new fantasy series for...