Kylie Minogue has been at the forefront of Australia – and the world’s – entertainment industry for almost five decades.
The perennially perky and impossibly youthful Minogue, now 57, came from humble beginnings in Melbourne, where she started acting as a child in Australian soaps, before she embarked on a highly successful music career and became a cultural icon.
Now, weeks before the release of a new three-part docuseries entitled Kylie, let’s look back on her life and career, as well as the special relationship she shares with her equally famous sister Dannii.
Watch the video above.
A star is born
Kylie Ann Minogue was born in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield South on May 28, 1968, to parents Ron, an accountant, and Carol, who once eyed a career as a dancer.
She has two younger siblings; brother, Brendan, who was born in 1970, and Dannii, who followed in 1971.
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Both Kylie and her younger sister were enrolled in dancing and singing classes from a young age, but it was initially Dannii who enjoyed success. After convincing her parents to enrol her at the Johnny Young Talent School, she became a contestant on the hugely popular TV show Young Talent Time in 1979.
That same year, their aunt Suzette, an actress, suggested Dannii audition for a role in Aussie soap The Sullivans. Instead, Carol took all three children along to the audition and it was Kylie who was cast as Carla.
Minogue went on to appear in eight episodes of the show.
After guest starring on Aussie TV series Skyways and Zoo Family, she won a starring role in The Henderson Kids, alongside Nadine Garner, Nicholas Eadie and Ben Mendelsohn.
She appeared in the first season of the show, which aired in 1985, but was written off before the second season, something Garner once said was because Minogue was ‘fragile’ and would burst into tears when producers yelled at her for forgetting her lines.
By then, Dannii was the bigger star of the two, having become a fulltime cast member on Young Talent Time in 1982.
Hoping to replicate her fame, Kylie applied to go on the show and was invited on as a guest, where she and Dannii sang a duet of Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves.
While she wasn’t offered a fulltime role, fame was right around the corner.
Neighbours and worldwide fame
In 1986, Minogue joined the cast of the popular new Australian soap Neighbours as mechanic Charlene Mitchell.
Producers moved quickly to capitalise on a storyline involving a romance between her character and Scott Robinson, played by Jason Donovan.
Their on-screen wedding attracted a worldwide audience of 20 million people when it aired on July 1, 1987.
By that time, they were also a couple in real life. The two reportedly started dating after meeting on set and became one of the most high-profile celebrity couples in Australia and the UK, where the show was also popular.
During a December 2025 appearance on the Great Company with Jamie Laing podcast, Donovan described watching Minogue’s meteoric rise to fame.
“With Kylie, she started out as this sort of rough mechanic on Neighbours, sort of a tomboy-like character, and sort of blossomed, you know,” he said.
“It was phenomenal to watch.”
Music career
In July 1986, Minogue agreed to perform at a benefit concert for Fitzroy Football Club in Melbourne and ended with a rendition of the 1960s hit The Loco-Motion.
A music producer in the audience arranged for her to record a demo of the song, which was sent to the then-head of Mushroom Records, Michael Gudinski.
Locomotion was released in Australia on July 13, 1987 – just 12 days after the Neighbours wedding episode aired in order to capitalise on her fame.
It went to number one, where it stayed for seven weeks, and became one of the biggest-selling songs of the decade.
Minogue headed to London months later to work with English songwriters and producers Stock Aitken Waterman.
They reportedly forgot she was coming and left her waiting outside the studio while they wrote her next hit, I Should be So Lucky. She recorded it the same day and it went to number one in the UK, Australia, Germany and South Africa on its release that December.
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Mike Stock later flew to Australia to meet with Minogue and Donovan in a bar to apologise over her earlier treatment before she agreed to keep working with the trio.
A third hit, Got to be Certain, was released in May 1988.
All three songs, including a new version of Locomotion, appeared on her debut album Kylie, released in July 1988. It went to number one in the UK, and Minogue, then 20, became the youngest artist to have a number-one album – a record that stood until 2002.
Minogue left Neighbours that year to concentrate on her music career. She and Donovan released a duet, Especially for You, on November 28, 1988.
The next year her second album, Enjoy Yourself, went to number one in the UK and spawned the hits Hand on Your Heart and Tears on My Pillow, but failed to crack the US.
An eyebrow-raising romance
Minogue and Donovan split in 1989. Soon after, Minogue, then 20, started dating INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, who was nine years her senior.
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She stunned the world when she donned a blonde cropped wig and took him as her date to the premiere of her first feature film, The Delinquents, in December 1989.
The relationship raised eyebrows, especially after Hutchence quipped his favourite pastime was “corrupting Kylie”.
Minogue told the 2019 docuseries Mystify: Michael Hutchence, the singer had an “insatiable curiosity” for “all the good things in life, and some bad”.
“He opened up a whole new world for me. A lot of it was based around pleasure… Sex, love, food, drugs, music, travel, books, you name it, he wanted to experience it.”
The relationship lasted two years before Hutchence broke it off. She told ACA host Tracy Grimshaw in 2014, “He broke my heart. I have to confess that the hurt stayed for quite a long time.”
More success
Minogue’s third album, Rhythm of Love, was released in 1990 and moved into the dance genre with hits Better the Devil You Know, Step Back in Time, What Do I Have to Do and Shocked.
She moved record labels ahead of the release of her fifth album, Kylie Minogue, in September 1994, which contained the hit Confide in Me.
She appeared in the 1994 film Street Fighter opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme, who later revealed the two had an affair. She followed this with a small role in the 1996 film Bio-Dome.
Minogue collaborated with Nick Cave on Where the Wild Roses Grow, ahead of the release of her 1997 album Impossible Princess.
But it was her 2000 album Light Years, which contained the Robbie Willams duet Kids and the smash hit Spinning Around – and a film clip featuring those gold hotpants – that put her back on the map.
It was followed by her most successful single, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, which went to number one in more than 40 countries.
It was included on the album Fever, which also contained the hits, In Your Eyes, Love at First Sight and Come into My World.
Minogue received her first Grammy award nomination in 2003 for Best Dance Recording for Love at First Sight.
The following year she was nominated again for Come into My World, which she won, making her the first Australian artist to win a major Grammy since Men at Work in 1983.
A life-changing diagnosis
Minogue had just embarked on her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour, when she announced in May 2005 she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
She cancelled her tour so she could undergo surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
In a trailer for her new docuseries Kylie, she admitted her diagnosis scared her and likened chemo as “experiencing a nuclear bomb”.
“I felt removed from my body. I was so scared of what was ahead of me,” she said.
She announced in January 2006 she had finished treatment and had no sign of disease.
She resumed her renamed Showgirl Homecoming Tour that November.
More albums followed, including X, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Electronic/Dance Album, and Aphrodite, which contained the hit, All the Lovers.
Next came Kiss Me Once, a Christmas album and Golden.
Her Summer 2019 tour saw her play at the famed Glastonbury Festival for the first time – 14 years after her breast cancer diagnosis forced her to cancel.
Her set was the most attended in Glastonbury’s history, and attracted an audience of three million on the BBC – more than any act in history.
Padam Padam and making history
More albums followed, then in 2023 came the single Padam Padam. It was released on May 18 but took off after catching the attention of social media users, becoming a viral hit.
It became the first single of her 16th studio album Tension, which was released later that year.
The song was nominated in the new category of Best Pop Dance Recording at the 2024 Grammy awards, and won – exactly 20 years after she had won her first Grammy.
Sister act
By her side during all the ups and downs of her life has been her sister Dannii.
They have performed together numerous times during their respective careers and supported each other on the red carpet at various events.
In 2006, when Kylie was making her return to the stage after battling breast cancer, it was her sister she called on to help her sing the Robbie Williams duet, Kids, on stage.
Dannii told the Take 5 with Zan Rowe Who podcast in 2024 they re-enacted dance moves from their childhood.
“At the start of the song, we’re at the top of the stairs, and we do the daggiest dancing,” she said.
“Then we’d do this thing at the end of the catwalk where we’d grab our hands and lean back and spin.
“We remember doing that as kids, on the grass with the sprinkler and stuff. It had all these references in there from all of our childhood beautiful moments.”
In the same interview, Dannii said it was their mutual love of music that helped when her sister was battling cancer.
“When I would go and visit her when she was having chemo and very, very unwell, I would jump around to music with her to get some good vibes happening,” she said.
A trailer from the new Netflix documentary Kylie shows Dannii emotionally recalling her sister’s diagnosis and the importance of music.
“We didn’t know if she’s ever gonna be well again,” she said.
“I just wanted to be with my sister. Music kept us going,” she said.
Not only was she OK, but the sisters went on to perform together at the Kylie Christmas Concert at Royal Albert Hall in London in 2015, and Sydney WorldPride Opening Concert in Sydney in 2023.
Love life
Minogue had a string of relationships after breaking up with Hutchence, but has never married or had children.
She dated singer Lenny Kravitz in 1991.
After her reported affair with married action star Claude Van Damme while filming Street Fighter in Thailand, she had a three-year relationship with French photographer Stephane Sednaoui, from 1996 to 1998.
She then dated model James Gooding, who was six years her junior, from 2000 to 2003, before taking up with another Frenchman, actor Olivier Martinez.
It was Martinez who supported her during her cancer battle during the relationship, which lasted from 2003 to 2007.
Next, she dated Spanish model Andrés Velencoso, who was a decade younger than Minogue, from 2008 to 2013.
From 2015 to 2017, she dated UK actor Joshua Sasse, who was 19 years her junior. It was the closest Minogue came to marriage, with the couple reportedly becoming engaged.
After that relationship ended, she had a five-year romance with Brtish GQ creative director Paul Solomons from 2018 to 2023.
But far from considering herself unlucky in love, Minogue said in 2012 she had “learnt something from all of my relationships”.
“I don’t know. I just don’t consider it a failure,” she said.
“I think I’m more realistic, partly because of all the headlines that are all about my failed love life. ‘Unlucky in love’. God I hate that pun. I don’t actually feel unlucky in it; I feel that it just hasn’t been textbook fairytale.”
She is not believed to be dating anyone now.
No place like home
In 2021, Minogue, relocated from London, where she had lived for 30 years, to her hometown of Melbourne, in part to be closer to her ageing parents and siblings, including Dannii, and her son Ethan, now 15.
She told the BBC at the time, “I have spent a lot of time with my family this year in Australia and it felt really good”.
The following year, she put down roots, buying an $8 million house in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
She has a reported net worth of $166 million thanks to her music career, tours and other interests such as her perfume lines and wine brand.
Cultural icon
Minogue is considered a cultural icon, in part due to her record breaking successes.
Apart from her two Grammy Awards, she has won four Brit Awards, 18 ARIA Music Awards and nine Logies.
In 1989, she became the youngest person to ever win the coveted Gold Logie at age 19, and the only person to snag four Logies in one year.
Minogue is the highest-selling Australian female artist of all time, with more than 80 million record sales worldwide. She is the only female to achieve number one singles across four decades and chart-topping albums in five consecutive decades in the UK.
In 2024, Time included her on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Mattel has even made two Barbie dolls in her likeness. In 2024, she was included in a list of Barbie Role Models during Barbie’s 65th anniversary.
Then in February 2026, she became the first Australian immortalised with a Barbie Signature Collector Doll.
It was modelled on the outfit she wore in the music video for Padam Padam.
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