Enrique Iglesias

Enrique Miguel Iglesias Preysler was born in Madrid, Spain, the third and youngest child of Spanish singer Julio Iglesias and Filipina socialite and magazine journalist Isabel Preysler. Iglesias was raised with two older siblings, Chábeli and Julio Jr. One of his mother's aunts is actress Neile Adams, the first wife of American actor Steve McQueen, mother of actor Chad McQueen, and grandmother of actor Steven R. McQueen. His father's family is from Galicia and Andalusia; his father also claims some Jewish and Puerto Rican ancestry on his mother's side. Iglesias found out later in life that he was born with a rare congenital condition known as situs inversus, where some of the body's major organs, such as the heart, are situated on the opposite side of the body from where they would normally be located. At first, Iglesias and his two siblings stayed with their mother; however, in December 1981, Iglesias's grandfather Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga was kidnapped by the armed Basque group ETA. When Enrique was six years old he lived for a year in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade with his mother. For their safety, Enrique and his brother Julio were sent to live with their father in Miami. There, they were brought up mostly by the nanny, Elvira Olivares, to whom Enrique later dedicated his first album. Iglesias attended Gulliver Preparatory School, a private high school in Miami, where he participated in his first live performance in a school production of Hello Dolly. He then attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where he studied business but dropped out after a year. After dropping out of the University of Miami, Iglesias traveled to Toronto to record his first album. Iglesias did not want his father to know about his plans for a music career and did not want his famous surname to help advance his career. In Toronto, he borrowed money from his family's nanny and recorded a demo cassette tape which consisted of a Spanish song and two English songs. Approaching his father's former publicist, Fernán Martínez, the two promoted the songs under the stage name Enrique Martínez with the backstory of being a singer from Guatemala.