Courtney Love

About Courtney Love

Courtney Michelle Love (born Courtney Michelle Harrison on July 9, 1964) is an American rock musician and Golden Globe-nominated actress. Love is best known as lead singer, songwriter and lyricist for the alternative rock band Hole and for her two-year marriage to late Nirvana lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain. Rolling Stone has called Love “the most controversial woman in the history of rock”.

Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California to a family of Irish and Jewish descent. She regards herself as "a nice Jewish girl". Love’s biological family broke up soon after her birth. During a child custody case following Love’s parents’ divorce, both her mother and one of her friends presented letters to the court implying her father had given the child, then three years old, LSD. Harrison denies this allegation and has passed polygraph tests; however, these allegations led to full custody being awarded to Love’s mother.

Love then spent a troubled childhood with her mother as she married and divorced three times, and temporarily settled in many hippie communes in Oregon, and various schools including Nelson College for Girls in New Zealand where she boarded. Before arriving in New Zealand, Love had been left in the United States with Shirley, a friend of her mother's, who was a therapist, while her mother, the new husband and her half-sisters settled in New Zealand without her. Shortly after reuniting with her family in New Zealand, Love was sent to the boarding school in Nelson.