MAIN Art & ... Pop Culture Pop Icons Courtney Love

Born Courtney Michelle Harrison in San Francisco on July 9, 1964, Courtney Love was apparently wired from birth to be a free spirit and all-around wild child.

Her youth was spent wandering through hippie communes with her mother, therapist Linda Carroll who at various times introduced the young Courtney to four different stepfathers.

Later traveling through the UK & Ireland via a trust fund set up by her grandmother, (children's book author Paula Fox), she subsequently returned to the states to play in such bands as Babes In Toyland and Faith No More.

Eventually, she started her own band, Hole, and married Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain in 1992.

Following Cobain's suicide in 1994, Love's own career skyrocketed. Her image also changed from that of rocker chick to Hollywood starlet, gaining the attention of movie studios who cast her in critically acclaimed films such as Feeling Minnesota, and in the controversial hit, The People vs. Larry Flynt, opposite Woody Harrelson for which she earned a New York Film Critics Award and a Golden Globe nomination.

By 2001, her band had disbanded, and Hollywood stopped calling. But Love's wild child days were far from over.

In the past several years, she has often made headline news related to assault or drug charges, with intermittent other court appearances related to unpaid legal bills.

Her solo album, America's Sweetheart was released in February 2004, when a reviewer spoke of the pop icon's antics as "part Lucrezia Borgia and part Judy-Garland-meets-Janis-Joplin... there is still only one Courtney Love."

Soon after, Love lived up to her bad girl image with back-to-back court appearances — one for drug possession, and another for assault following an attack with a whiskey bottle on musician Kristin King when Love discovered the female rocker in her boyfriend's home.

Sentenced to three year probation until March 2007, Love was ordered by a Los Angeles judge to spend six months in a live-in rehabilitation center in September 2005 for using drugs during her probation.

In 2006, however, the unsinkable Courtney Love has staged a comeback with the release of a new CD entitled How Dirty Girls Get Clean, and a new book entitled Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love.

The rocker's tell-all account is matched by another book written by Courtney's mom, Linda Carroll, who has already published Her Mother's Daughter: A Memoir of the Mother I Never Knew and of My Daughter, Courtney Love.

In late 2006, Love appeared in a nude photo spread in the British fashion magazine, Pop in anticipation of her new book tour beginning in November 2006. That same year Love started recording what was going to be her second solo album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean, which included an anti-cocaine song entitled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab.

Reuniting with Hole in 2010, the album was released as Nobody's Daughter spinning off a hit alternative single, "Skinny Little Bitch". Shortly after, the band embarked on a world tour and continue to play at various venues worldwide through 2012.

More about Courtney Love around the Web:

Courtney Love - Wikipedia - A biography covering her music and film career, and history of court battles, with related links.

Courtney Love - Force of Nature - Archived BBC profile of the singer/actress - covering her early career, life of with Kurt Colbain, and her offstage antics with links to current news and related Web sites.