Fergie has always been driven, says Giles Hattersley in the London Sunday Times. Growing up in the Los Angeles suburbs, the 34-year-old singer was a Girl Scout, a straight-A student, and student council president. She was also a child actress, starring on the TV show Kids Incorporated when she was just 9. Success, she decided early on, was simply her destiny. “We’d watch a lot of musicals. I saw girls up there my age doing Annie, so I said, ‘Mom, I wanna do this.’ I started with a local theater group, and the leader of that helped me get an agent. After school, I’d go to the front office to see if I had any auditions that day, get my script, then into the car on the way to Hollywood doing my homework, look at my lines, then straight to dance class after some fast food. I had a Social Security number at age 7.” All this frantic activity eventually became too much, and her life fell apart. That’s why, she says, she feels a real kinship with Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and other child stars. “When you’re a child professional, you’re taught not to have tantrums, to people-please. That’s part of how I got into drugs later. You’re going to have your rebellion phase.”
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