Demi Lovato

Demetria Devonne Lovato was born on August 20, 1992, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Dianna De La Garza (née Lee Smith) and engineer and musician Patrick Martin Lovato. Lovato has an older full sister named Dallas, a younger maternal half-sister, actress Madison De La Garza, and an older paternal half-sister, Amber, whom Lovato first spoke to at age 20. In mid-1994, shortly after Lovato's second birthday, her parents divorced. Her father was of Nuevomexicano descent, with mostly Spanish and Native American ancestors, and came from a family that had been living in New Mexico for generations; he also had distant Portuguese and Jewish ancestry. He was a descendant of Civil War Union veteran Francisco Perea and Santa Fe de Nuevo México governor Francisco Xavier Chávez. Lovato had no interest in forging a relationship with Patrick after her parents divorced. Her mother is of Irish descent. She has been vocal about her strained relationship with her father, calling him abusive and once stated, "He was mean, but he wanted to be a good person. And he wanted to have his family, and when my mom married my stepdad, he still had this huge heart where he said, 'I'm so glad that [he's] taking care of you and doing the job that I wish I could do.'" After Patrick died of cancer on June 22, 2013, Lovato said that he had been mentally ill, and she created the Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program in his honor. Lovato was brought up in Dallas, Texas. She began playing the piano at age seven and guitar at 10, when she began dancing and acting classes. In 2002, Lovato began her acting career on the children's television series Barney & Friends, portraying the role of Angela. She appeared on Prison Break in 2006 and on Just Jordan the following year. Due to her acting career, Lovato was bullied and consequently requested homeschooling, through which she eventually received her high-school diploma.