Paula Abdul

Paula Abdul grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California. At the age of eight, she began taking dance classes. Van Nuys High School was where she was the senior class president and chief cheerleader. She graduated from high school in the year 1980. After graduation she started the college process at Cal State Northridge. There, she majored in radio and television. After joining the L.A. Lakers cheerleaders, she became head cheerleader/choreographer after only a few months, eventually dropping out of college to dance and choreograph full-time. The Jacksons hired her to choreograph their 1984 film "Torture" which was the first in a long line of movies and videos she choreographed. After her debut album "Forever Your Girl" and her first solo album, her singing career began to take off. However, the single "Straight Up" was a massive success and she has been a wildly successful performer/singer ever after. This is aided by her time on American Idol (2002-2004). Her father (Harry Abdul) is from a Sephardic Jewish background from Syria. Her mother, too Jewish, was born and was raised in Canada. Her parents lived in Canada, Syria, Brazil and Syria. This has resulted in a variety of stories about her faith and nationality in the media. The daughter of Harry Abdul (once a livestock trader in Brazil) and Lorainne Abdul (former assistant to film director Billy Wilder), grew in Hollywood, California. From the age of seven, she sang and danced in local musical theatre groups while traveling across America. She also took tap dancing lessons too, which is how she was awarded a scholarship for tap dancing school. In the future she attended Cal-State-Northridge College in which she majored in Broadcast radio. During that time, she auditioned for the Los Angeles Lakers NBA Cheerleading team, and that led to her getting a spot as a cheerleader for the team. The team earned fifty dollars per game during her first year of college.