Courtney Love

Biography

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. Born to countercultural parents in San Francisco, 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, 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: The Diaries of Courtney Love (2006). Description above from the Wikipedia article Courtney Love, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

Big Pink

Basquiat

Althea Leasure

The People vs. Larry Flynt

Joan Vollmer Burroughs

Beat

Lynne Margulies

Man on the Moon

Cheryl

Trapped

Rhonda the Waitress

Feeling Minnesota

Velma

Straight to Hell

Self

Kurt & Courtney

Gretchen

Sid and Nancy

Lucy

200 Cigarettes

Self (archive footage)

The Righteous Babes

Self

Not Bad for a Girl

Self (archive footage)

Meet Me in the Bathroom

Self

Hit So Hard

Club Vatican

Claire

Julie Johnson

Self (archive footage)

Kalvøyafestivalen - 50 år siden første riff

Self

Arianne Phillips: Dressing the Part

Self

Pesel Ha'Zahav

Self

Cobain: Montage of Heck

Hole: Live at The Metro (Chicago, 1994)

Self

1991: The Year Punk Broke

Herself

Bob and the Monster

The Head Bitch In Charge

The Young Blood Chronicles

Caligula

Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula

Herself

No Alternative Girls

Self

The Return of Courtney Love

Self

Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson

Pearl

The Long Home

Self

Franca: Chaos and Creation

Norman's Spanker (uncredited)

Tapeheads

Kitty Menendez

Menendez: Blood Brothers

Self

Mayor of the Sunset Strip

Self

Sunset Strip

The Dark Night of the Soul

Self

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond

Sasha

J.T. LeRoy

Herself

Author: The JT LeRoy Story

Bounce: Behind The Velvet Rope

Self - Performer

Tower of Song: A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen

Self

(This Is Known as) The Blues Scale

A Midsummer's Nightmare

Self

L7: Pretend We're Dead

Lead Vocals, Guitar

Hole: MTV Unplugged

Self

Welcome to My Castle!

Narrator (voice)

Clara Bow: Discovering the It Girl

Self

Last Party 2000

Self (archive footage)

James Blunt: One Brit Wonder

Hole - Live Through This

Self (archive footage)

I Hate Myself and I Want to Die

(archive footage)

The AGFA Mystery Mixtape Vault

Hole: The Electric Factory

Self

Broken English

Herself

Hole: Garbadge Man

Herself

Hole: Live at Club Lingerie (Hollywood, 1990)

Herself

Hole: Live at The Lemon Grove (Exeter, 1991)

Herself

Hole: Miss World

Herself

Hole: Doll Parts

Herself

Hole: Violet

Self

Antiheroine

Doll Crafting with Dame Darcy & Courtney Love

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten