Independent Television Network * (crossdomain.xml required)

Coordinates	53°12′″N45°01′″N
name	ITN (Independent Television News)
logo
genre	News
location city	London
location country	United Kingdom
area served	United Kingdom
owner	ITV plc (40%),DMGT (20%),Thomson Reuters (20%),UBM plc (20%)
divisions
homepage
intl	}}

ITN (Independent Television News) is a news and content provider with headquarters in the United Kingdom. It is made up of four key businesses: ITN News, ITN Source, ITN Productions and ITN Consulting.

ITN produces content for ITV, Channel 4, UK mobile phone operators, online outlets such as YouTube, MSN, Telegraph Media Group, Yahoo!, and film producers and researchers worldwide.

ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York City, Paris, Sydney and Washington DC.

History

ITN was founded in 1955 as part of the new British commercial television network, referred to as "Independent Television" (later ITV), by the Independent Television Authority. It began as a consortium of the initial broadcasters with former Labour MP Aidan Crawley as editor-in-chief.

One of those broadcasters, the London weekday contract-holder Associated-Rediffusion offered the new company studio space in their headquarters in Aldwych. The ITN 'newscaster' presenting their first broadcast was champion athlete Christopher Chataway.

Geoffrey Cox joined as News Editor in 1956 after Crowley resigned and got interviewers like Robin Day. As ITV expanded, each ITV company that made up the networks' federal structure had to purchase a stake in ITN and to continue to finance the company.

It has provided the main national news bulletins for ITV since 1955. News was always branded as ITN until 1999 when the Carlton and Granada partnership which were important stakeholders renamed it simply as ITV News. From this point, the name ITN was gradually phased out and only appears in the end production caption.

Even though national coverage is produced by ITN, it has no role in the regional coverage provided for each individual ITV region's newsroom, with the exception of the news for the London ITV region (Carlton/LWT), which has been run by ITN since March 2004, following its acquisition of the London News Network a company previously owned by the now merged Carlton and Granada.

With the launch of Britain's second commercial station in 1982, ITN was given the job of providing news for Channel 4, named as Channel 4 News.

Until the 1990s, ITN had a guaranteed right and obligation to provide news for ITV and Channel 4. Changes however, dating from the Broadcasting Act 1990, meant that ITN had to apply and bid for a licence to provide such services on these networks and would have to fight competition in order to preserve its services, as it had become the case with other ITV franchisees.

The biggest challenge came in 2001 when British Sky Broadcasting bid to supply network news to ITV as part of a consortium. ITN eventually succeeded and was awarded a contract extension to 2008. Failure did eventually strike however, when in January 2005 Sky News took over supplying bulletins to Channel 5. ITN had produced ''Five News'' since its launch in 1997. In the same year, ITN started producing The Queen's speech to the Commonwealth at Christmas on a biennial basis (once every two years), meaning that for the first time since the inception of Independent Television in 1955, ITN produced a programme for its rival the BBC.

In August 2000, the organisation launched its own 24 hour news channel in the UK, which was broadcast on satellite, cable and digital terrestrial. It was 50% owned by ITN and 50% owned by NTL. Carlton and Granada gradually bought out the two stakes and renamed the channel the ITV News Channel.

The ITV News Channel closed down at 6pm on 23 December 2005, with poor ratings in comparison to BBC News 24 and Sky News and ITV's desire to re-use the channel's allocation on Freeview, being cited as the reasons for its closure.

John Hardie is the Chief Executive Officer of ITN, a position he took up in June 2009. Prior to this, he was Executive VP and MD of Walt Disney Television EMEA.

Operations

ITN News

ITN (ITV News)

ITN's first bulletin aired on 22 September 1955, the day commercial television was born in the UK.

ITN began its own ''World News'' bulletins in the late 1980s, which were shown around the world on local television channels, particularly on PBS stations in the US, where presenter Daljit Dhaliwal (now with Al-Jazeera English) enjoyed cult status.

These were discontinued in 2001, in the face of competition from dedicated news channels such as BBC World (now known as BBC World News), although it still provides footage to CNN International and reports often appear on ''PBS NewsHour''. Its ''ITV Evening News'' bulletin was shown on the Newsworld International cable channel in the US.

In the 1990s, under new ownership, it was accused of abandoning its previous news style, which was ''broadsheet'' in style to mid-market tabloid with news stories that focused on personalities in the news rather than heavy news coverage.

The change in style matched changes in the nature of news coverage on the ITV Network (which has seen the network and ITN accused of dumbing down its style), which saw the axing of the long-running and award winning ''World in Action'' current affairs and investigative journalism news programme in 1998.

ITN's most famous news programme, ''News at Ten'' was also controversially replaced by an 11pm news bulletin in 1999, in order to allow ITV to broadcast films without the interruption of a 10 o'clock news bulletin. ''News at Ten'' was subsequently re-instated in 2001 after heavy public criticism over the change.

The restored ''News at Ten'', was however, 10 minutes shorter than its predecessor and carried less in-depth news coverage. It also was broadcast at a later time at least 1 day a week, which meant it was often referred to as ''News at When?''.

Since March 1999, the name ITN and its logo no longer features in the opening credits of the organisation's bulletins, with the term ITV News assuming prominence instead. The ITN name is now only seen at the end of bulletins.

There was increasing speculation that ''News at Ten'' was once again moved permanently, after under-performing against the ''Ten O'Clock News'' on BBC One which is broadcast every day at 10:00pm. In October 2003, the Independent Television Commission gave ITV approval to move ''News at Ten''.

The ''ITV News at 10.30'' launched on ITV on 2 February 2004 (the day that ITV in England and Wales came under the ownership of a single company) and was presented by Sir Trevor McDonald. The programme was longer than its predecessor and carried an integrated regional bulletin.

ITV News editors say that they are aiming at a more upmarket audience and the new programme carries a nightly sports roundup, more business stories and a preview of the next day's newspapers. Mark Austin took over main presenting duties on 16 January 2006.

The rebranded programme again saw new titles, this time featuring people walking over the face of Big Ben and has lately followed a more "sensationalist" approach to its main headlines. When ITV Executive Chairman Michael Grade joined ITV, he made it clear that he saw news as the key in defining any channel.

It was no surprise to see ''News at Ten'' returning to ITV on 14 January 2008 anchored by Sir Trevor McDonald and Julie Etchingham.

Similarly, ITN's 24-hour news channel (launched some distance behind the wake of Sky News and BBC News 24) was jointly bought by the main ITV companies Carlton and Granada and subsequently renamed and re-branded as the ITV News Channel.

In March 2004, ITN took over production of ITV London's regional news programmes, which relocated from The London Television Centre on the South Bank to ITN's Gray's Inn Road base.

ITN used to operate a radio news service on behalf of IRN Independent Radio News but on 15 October 2008, IRN announced that Sky News Radio was to replace ITN as its main supplier from March 2009.

Between 1996 and 2002, it also owned a share of London News Radio, which was based at ITN's Gray's Inn Road HQ and operated the LBC and News Direct London radio stations.

Channel 4 News

ITN is also home to Channel 4 News, producing the programme since the channel's inception in 1982.

Channel 4 News flagship programme is 55 minutes of in-depth news and current affairs broadcast at 7pm each weekday and at 6.30pm on Saturdays and Sundays. The weekday evening programme is anchored by Jon Snow, whereas Krishnan Guru-Murthy presents the weekend bulletins.

A five-minute long news summary goes out Monday to Friday at midday. The bulletin replaced Channel 4's defunct half hour News at Noon programme in late 2009, six years after its launch during the Iraq War of 2003.

In December 2009 Channel 4 also axed More4 News, which originally aired weekdays at 8pm on its sister channel More4.

ITN created More4 News when the digital channel was launched in October 2005. It was originally presented by Sarah Smith; Kylie Morris took over presenting duties in June 2007 and Smith was posted to the US as Channel 4 News' Washington correspondent.

Channel 5 News

From 1 January 2005, Sky News was awarded the contract to provide the news for Channel 5, replacing ITN which had provided the channel's news service from the channel's launch in 1997.

Setanta Sports News

Setanta Sports News was a 24-hour sports news television channel produced by ITN and jointly owned by Virgin Media Television and Setanta Sports, launched on 29 November 2007. The channel ceased broadcasting on 23 June 2009, when Setanta's UK operation were placed into administration, following financial difficulties.

ITN Source

ITN Source (formerly ITN Archive) is one of the world’s largest commercial providers of video footage, with access to over one million hours of content from 1896 to present day, including news, drama, celebrity, comedy, music, wildlife, natural history and film.

ITN Source also syndicates on-the-day news footage generated by ITN to the world's leading broadcasters and producers through ITN Source News

ITN Source represents the world’s largest collection of moving image libraries including Reuters, ITV, ANI, UTV, Fox News, Fox Movietone, Nine Network and other specialist collections.

ITN Source relaunched its website itnsource.com in September 2008. The site now allows customers to licence and download broadcast quality video directly to their desktop.

In 2005, ITN became a shareholder in Espresso Group. Espresso is the leading provider of digital content to primary schools in the UK with its service now running in 60% of English primary schools.

It features an extensive library of high quality, video rich broadband teaching resources and student activities that motivates pupils and supports teachers. Much of the content used in the service is from ITN Source.

In May 2008, ITN Source created the Education Clip Library a unique, video licensing service for educational publishers and broadcasters around the world. The Education Clip Library is aimed at educational publishers and broadcasters seeking to add video to their instructional products and services.

In October 2008, ITN Source announced the creation of Diagonal View a joint venture with Matt Heiman, a digital entrepreneur.

Diagonal View packages quirky and unique content from ITN Source’s vast archive and syndicates it to a range of commercial partners including MySpace, YouTube and MSN. Diagonal View is already one of the top 5 most watched channels of all time on MySpace.

With headquarters in London, ITN Source has sales offices in New York, Canada, Paris, Johannesburg, Sydney and Tokyo.

ITN Consulting

ITN Consulting is the management consultancy arm of ITN, combining the resources of ITN with the consulting team’s experience to advise global media companies on issues spanning all areas of strategy and operations, including financial planning, marketing, scheduling and content, recruitment, and interim management.

With its partner, Venture Consulting, it has offices in London, Milan, Dubai, Singapore and Sydney. It operates as a network with its consultants working on engagements globally.

ITN Consulting's focus is "on how strategy can be implemented to deliver to real change". They state that an understanding of how global, regional and local media markets conflict and come together enables them to identify the opportunities this creates. They take both an external, outsider perspective as well as having the viewpoint of senior "insider" media executives.

ITN Productions

ITN Productions was formed in February 2010 and incorporates the non-news operations of ITN, including the former ITN On, ITN Factual and ITN's corporate production arm.

ITN On sits under the ITN Productions banner and came into being in 2003, providing the first news bulletins for third generation (3G) mobile phone operator 3.

It has since expanded its video news service providing content to the UK's leading mobile operators including Vodafone Live!, T-Mobile and Orange. ITN On also provides content to handset manufacturers such as Nokia's Ovi store.

ITN Productions offers a range of news and entertainment and lifestyle content to broadband operators including MSN, YouTube, Yahoo, Daily Mail, Bauer Media, Express Group and Imagine Fashion amongst others. ITN Productions also produces bespoke programming for Telegraph's website. It also produces "The Fix", a daily celebrity bulletin for the UK's biggest music channel, 4Music, as well as delivering a daily tea-time programme to Shanghai's biggest English speaking channel.

Since becoming a partner in the Education Digital 2 Consortium, alongside Brook Lapping/Ten Alps, ITN On has produced Teachers TV News. This included daily video news updates online as well as a bi-weekly 15-minute programme presented by Charlotte Hume. Teachers TV has since been withdrawn as a TV channel remaining online only, and the news programme also ended.

The department previously known as ITN Factual sits under the ITN Productions brand and has creates programming for international broadcasters, including all the UK's main broadcasters as well as Discovery Channel, A&E; TV Networks, PBS and National Geographic Channel.

Ownership

From its inception in 1955, ITN was originally owned jointly by all the ITV operating companies, the shares split roughly in proportion to each company's advertising income. However the 1990 Broadcasting Act limited the ITV companies to a maximum joint 49% stake, with no single company allowed more than a 20% holding. These requirements were abolished by the Communications Act 2003.

As of 2010, ITN is owned by ITV plc (40%), Daily Mail and General Trust (20%), Thomson Reuters (20%) and UBM plc (20%). ITV plc's shareholding forms part of the wider ITV News Group, incorporating their regional operations in England and Wales, plus ITV Sport. The Director of the ITV News Group is Michael Jermey, a former editor and executive at ITN.

ITV's ownership of 40% of ITN (at that time equally split between Carlton and Granada) made the 2001 bid from Sky for ITV bulletins unlikely to succeed, the network having a vested interest to see ITN continue. The ITN contract for ITV News expires at the end of 2012. On 2 April 2007 ITN signed a deal which superseded the existing contract, worth at least £42m per year. ITV, which owns 40% of ITN, is investing more than £15m to upgrade ITN's newsroom as part of the deal.

Parodies

ITN has been spoofed several times on ITV's ''The Benny Hill Show'', namely in one 1971 show with the logo reading "NIT" instead of "ITN" and with Benny Hill as Reginald Boozenquet and Andrew Gardner.

ITN was also spoofed in 1978 in the Leprechaun Independent Television sketch with Benny as Angela O'Rippon, a parody of Angela Rippon, and again with Benny as Ann Afford, a parody of Anna Ford. It was also spoofed in a black and white 1971 show and a 1973 episode.

In the 2008 video game ''Saints Row 2'', the news broadcast on the radio opens and closes with the same theme tune as ITN. This is also true for the 2009 video game ''Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time''.

See also

List of ITV journalists and newsreaders

References

External links

ITN.co.uk

ITN Source

ITN Consulting

Diagonal View

Education Clip Library

Teachers TV

ITN on Daily Motion

ITN News at ''YouTube''

Category:Daily Mail and General Trust Category:ITV Category:Television news in the United Kingdom Category:1955 establishments Category:International management consulting firms

cy:ITN de:Independent Television News es:Independent Television News ko:ITN ja:ITN sv:ITN

Coordinates	53°12′″N45°01′″N
name	John Lennon
alt	A bearded, bespectacled man in his late twenties, with long dark brown hair and wearing a loose-fitting pajama shirt, sings and plays an acoustic guitar. White flowers are visible behind and to the right of him.
background	solo_singer
birth name	John Winston Lennon
birth date	October 09, 1940
birth place	Liverpool, England, UK
death date	December 08, 1980
death place	New York, New York, US
instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, harmonica, harmonium, electronic organ, six-string bass
genre	Rock, pop
occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, artist, writer
years active	1957–75, 1980
label	Parlophone, Capitol, Apple, EMI, Geffen, Polydor
associated acts	The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Plastic Ono Band, The Dirty Mac, Yoko Ono
notable instruments	Rickenbacker 325Epiphone CasinoGibson J-160E }}

John Winston Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Along with fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved as a teenager in the skiffle craze; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into The Beatles in 1960. As the group disintegrated towards the end of the decade, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced the critically acclaimed albums ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' and ''Imagine'', and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine". After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to his infant son Sean, but re-emerged in 1980 with a new album, ''Double Fantasy''. He was murdered three weeks after its release.

Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing, his drawings, on film, and in interviews, becoming controversial through his political and peace activism. He moved to New York City in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while some of his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement.

As of 2010, Lennon's solo album sales in the United States exceed 14 million units, and as writer, co-writer or performer, he is responsible for 25 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth, and in 2008, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all-time. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

History

1940–57: Early years

Lennon was born in war-time England, on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman who was away at the time of his son's birth. He was named John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His father was often away from home but sent regular pay cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his mother, but the cheques stopped when he went absent without leave in February 1944. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, but Julia—by then pregnant with another man's child—rejected the idea. After her sister, Mimi Smith, twice complained to Liverpool's Social Services, Julia handed the care of Lennon over to her. In July 1946, Lennon's father visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Julia followed them—with her partner at the time, 'Bobby' Dykins—and after a heated argument his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her. It would be 20 years before he had contact with his father again.

Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, he lived with his aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, who had no children of their own, at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton. His aunt bought him volumes of short stories, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, and when he was 11 years old he often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records, and taught him the banjo, learning how to play "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino.

In September 1980 he talked about his family and his rebellious nature: }}

He regularly visited his cousin, Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood. Seven years Lennon's senior, Parkes took him on trips, and to local cinemas. During the school holidays, Parkes often visited Lennon with Leila Harvey, another cousin, often travelling to Blackpool two or three times a week to watch shows. They would visit the Blackpool Tower Circus and see artists such as Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss, with Parkes recalling that Lennon particularly liked George Formby. After Parkes's family moved to Scotland, the three cousins often spent their school holidays together there. Parkes recalled, "John, cousin Leila and I were very close. From Edinburgh we would drive up to the family croft at Durness, which was from about the time John was nine years old until he was about 16." He was 14 years old when his uncle George died of a liver haemorrhage on 5 June 1955 (aged 52).

Lennon was raised as an Anglican and attended Dovedale Primary School. From September 1952 to 1957, after passing his Eleven-Plus exam, he attended Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool, and was described by Harvey at the time as, "A happy-go-lucky, good-humoured, easy going, lively lad." He often drew comical cartoons which appeared in his own self-made school magazine called ''The Daily Howl'', but despite his artistic talent, his school reports were damning: "Certainly on the road to failure ... hopeless ... rather a clown in class ... wasting other pupils' time."

His mother bought him his first guitar in 1956, an inexpensive Gallotone Champion acoustic for which she "lent" her son five pounds and ten shillings on the condition that the guitar be delivered to her own house, and not Mimi's, knowing well that her sister was not supportive of her son's musical aspirations. As Mimi was sceptical of his claim that he would be famous one day, she hoped he would grow bored with music, often telling him, "The guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never make a living out of it". On 15 July 1958, when Lennon was 17 years old, his mother, walking home after visiting the Smiths' house, was struck by a car and killed.

Lennon failed all his GCE O-level examinations, and was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art only after his aunt and headmaster intervened. Once at the college, he started wearing Teddy Boy clothes and acquired a reputation for disrupting classes and ridiculing teachers. As a result, he was excluded from the painting class, then the graphic arts course, and was threatened with expulsion for his behaviour, which included sitting on a nude model's lap during a life drawing class. He failed an annual exam, despite help from fellow student and future wife Cynthia Powell, and was "thrown out of the college before his final year."

1957–70: The Quarrymen to The Beatles

1957–65: Formation, commercial breakout, and touring years

The Beatles evolved from Lennon's first band, the Quarrymen. Named after Quarry Bank High School, the group was established by him in September 1956 when he was 15, and began as a skiffle group. By the summer of 1957 the Quarrymen played a "spirited set of songs" made up of half skiffle, and half rock and roll. Lennon first met Paul McCartney at the Quarrymen's second performance, held in Woolton on 6 July at the St. Peter's Church garden fête, after which McCartney was asked to join the band.

McCartney says that Aunt Mimi: "was very aware that John's friends were lower class", and would often patronise him when he arrived to visit Lennon. According to Paul's brother Mike, McCartney's father was also disapproving, declaring Lennon would get his son "into trouble"; although he later allowed the fledgling band to rehearse in the McCartneys' front room at 20 Forthlin Road. During this time, the 18-year-old Lennon wrote his first song, "Hello Little Girl", a UK top 10 hit for The Fourmost nearly five years later.

George Harrison joined the band as lead guitarist, even though Lennon thought Harrison (at 14 years old) was too young to join the band, so McCartney engineered a second audition on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, where Harrison played "Raunchy" for Lennon. Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon's friend from art school, later joined as bassist. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Sutcliffe became "The Beatles" in early 1960. In August that year The Beatles, engaged for a 48-night residency in Hamburg, Germany, and desperately in need of a drummer, asked Pete Best to join them. Lennon was now 19, and his aunt, horrified when he told her about the trip, pleaded with him to continue his art studies instead. After the first Hamburg residency, the band accepted another in April 1961, and a third in April 1962. Like the other band members, Lennon was introduced to Preludin while in Hamburg, and regularly took the drug, as well as amphetamines, as a stimulant during their long, overnight performances.

Brian Epstein, The Beatles' manager from 1962, had no prior experience of artist management, but nevertheless had a strong influence on their early dress code and attitude on stage. Lennon initially resisted his attempts to encourage the band to present a professional appearance, but eventually complied, saying, "I'll wear a bloody balloon if somebody's going to pay me". McCartney took over on bass after Sutcliffe decided to stay in Hamburg, and drummer Ringo Starr replaced Best, completing the four-piece line-up that would endure until the group's break-up in 1970. The band's first single, "Love Me Do", was released in October 1962 and reached #17 on the British charts. They recorded their debut album, ''Please Please Me'', in under 10 hours on 11 February 1963, a day when Lennon was suffering the effects of a cold, which is evident in the vocal on the last song to be recorded that day, Twist and Shout. The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership yielded eight of its fourteen tracks. With few exceptions—one being the album title itself—Lennon had yet to bring his love of wordplay to bear on his song lyrics, saying: "We were just writing songs ... pop songs with no more thought of them than that–to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant". In a 1987 interview, McCartney said that the other Beatles idolised John: "He was like our own little Elvis ... We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest".

The Beatles achieved mainstream success in the UK during the beginning of 1963. Lennon was on tour when his first son, Julian, was born in April. During their Royal Variety Show performance, attended by the Queen Mother and other British royalty, Lennon poked fun at his audience: "For our next song, I'd like to ask for your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands ... and the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery." After a year of Beatlemania in the UK, the group's historic February 1964 US debut appearance on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' marked their breakthrough to international stardom. A two-year period of constant touring, moviemaking, and songwriting followed, during which Lennon wrote two books, ''In His Own Write'' and ''A Spaniard in the Works''. The Beatles received recognition from the British Establishment when they were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1965.

Lennon grew concerned that fans attending Beatles' concerts were unable to hear the music above the screaming of fans, and that the band's musicianship was beginning to suffer as a result. Lennon's "Help!" expressed his own feelings in 1965: "I ''meant'' it ... It was me singing 'help'". He had put on weight (he would later refer to this as his "Fat Elvis" period), and felt he was subconsciously seeking change. The following January he was unknowingly introduced to LSD when a dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by Lennon, Harrison and their wives, spiked the guests' coffee with the drug. When they wanted to leave, their host revealed what they had taken, and strongly advised them not to leave the house because of the likely effects. Later, in an elevator at a nightclub, they all believed it was on fire: "We were all screaming ... hot and hysterical." A few months later in March, during an interview with ''Evening Standard'' reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon remarked, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink ... We're more popular than Jesus now—I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity." The comment went virtually unnoticed in England but caused great offence in the US when quoted by a magazine there five months later. The furore that followed—burning of Beatles' records, Ku Klux Klan activity, and threats against Lennon—contributed to the band's decision to stop touring.

1966–70: Studio years, break-up and solo work

Deprived of the routine of live performances after their final commercial concert on 29 August 1966, Lennon felt lost and considered leaving the band. Since his involuntary introduction to LSD in January, he had made increasing use of the drug, and was almost constantly under its influence for much of the year." According to biographer Ian MacDonald, Lennon's continuous experience with LSD during the year brought him "close to erasing his identity". 1967 saw the release of "Strawberry Fields Forever", hailed by ''TIME'' magazine for its "astonishing inventiveness", and the group's landmark album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'', which revealed Lennon's lyrics contrasting strongly with the simple love songs of the Lennon–McCartney's early years.

In August, after having been introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended a weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales, and were informed of Epstein's death during the seminar. "I knew we were in trouble then", Lennon said later. "I didn't have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music, and I was scared". They later travelled to Maharishi's ashram in India for further guidance, where they composed most of the songs for ''The Beatles'' and ''Abbey Road''.

The anti-war, black comedy ''How I Won the War'', featuring Lennon's only appearance in a non–Beatles' full-length film, was shown in cinemas in October 1967. McCartney organised the group's first post-Epstein project, the self-written, -produced and -directed television film ''Magical Mystery Tour'', released in December that year. While the film itself proved to be their first critical flop, its soundtrack release, featuring Lennon's acclaimed, Lewis Carroll-inspired "I am the Walrus", was a success. With Epstein gone, the band members became increasingly involved in business activities, and in February 1968 they formed Apple Corps, a multimedia corporation comprising Apple Records and several other subsidiary companies. Lennon described the venture as an attempt to achieve, "artistic freedom within a business structure", but his increased drug experimentation and growing preoccupation with Yoko Ono, and McCartney's own marriage plans, left Apple in need of professional management. Lennon asked Lord Beeching to take on the role, but he declined, advising Lennon to go back to making records. Lennon approached Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and other bands during the British Invasion. Klein was appointed as Apple’s chief executive by Lennon, Harrison and Starr, but McCartney never signed the management contract.

At the end of 1968, Lennon featured in the film ''The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus'' (not released until 1996) in the role of a Dirty Mac band member. The supergroup, comprising Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell, also backed a vocal performance by Ono in the film. Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969, and soon released a series of 14 lithographs called "Bag One" depicting scenes from their honeymoon, eight of which were deemed indecent and most of which were banned and confiscated. Lennon's creative focus continued to move beyond The Beatles and between 1968 and 1969 he and Ono recorded three albums of experimental music together: ''Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins'' (known more for its cover than for its music), ''Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions'' and ''Wedding Album''. In 1969 they formed The Plastic Ono Band, releasing ''Live Peace in Toronto 1969''. In protest at Britain's involvement in the Nigerian Civil War, Lennon returned his MBE medal to the Queen, though this had no effect on his MBE status, which could not be renounced. Between 1969 and 1970 Lennon released the singles "Give Peace a Chance" (widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam-War anthem in 1969), "Cold Turkey" (documenting his withdrawal symptoms after he became addicted to heroin) and "Instant Karma!".

Lennon left the group in September 1969, and agreed not to inform the media while the band renegotiated their recording contract, but he was outraged that McCartney publicised his own departure on releasing his debut solo album in April 1970. Lennon's reaction was, "Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!" He later wrote, "I started the band. I disbanded it. It's as simple as that." In later interviews with ''Rolling Stone'' magazine, he revealed his bitterness towards McCartney, saying, "I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record." He spoke too of the hostility he perceived the other members had towards Ono, and of how he, Harrison, and Starr "got fed up with being sidemen for Paul ... After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles?"

1970–80: Solo career

1970–72: Initial solo success and activism

In 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov in Los Angeles, California. Designed to release emotional pain from early childhood, the therapy entailed two half-days a week with Janov for four months; he had wanted to treat the couple for longer, but they felt no need to continue and returned to London. Lennon's emotional debut solo album, ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' (1970), was received with high praise. Critic Greil Marcus remarked, "John's singing in the last verse of 'God' may be the finest in all of rock." The album featured the songs "Mother", in which Lennon confronted his feelings of childhood rejection, and the Dylanesque "Working Class Hero", a bitter attack against the bourgeois social system which, due to the lyric "you're still fucking peasants", fell foul of broadcasters. The same year, Tariq Ali's revolutionary political views, expressed when he interviewed Lennon, inspired the singer to write "Power to the People". Lennon also became involved with Ali during a protest against ''Oz'' magazine's prosecution for alleged obscenity. Lennon denounced the proceedings as "disgusting fascism", and he and Ono (as Elastic Oz Band) released the single "God Save Us/Do the Oz" and joined marches in support of the magazine.

With Lennon's next album, ''Imagine'' (1971), critical response was more guarded. ''Rolling Stone'' reported that "it contains a substantial portion of good music" but warned of the possibility that "his posturings will soon seem not merely dull but irrelevant". The album's title track would become an anthem for anti-war movements, while another, "How Do You Sleep?", was a musical attack on McCartney in response to lyrics from ''Ram'' that Lennon felt, and McCartney later confirmed, were directed at him and Ono. However, Lennon softened his stance in the mid-1970s and said he had written "How Do You Sleep?" about himself. He said in 1980: "I used my resentment against Paul ... to create a song ... not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta ... I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and The Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep'. I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time".

Lennon and Ono moved to New York in August 1971, and in December released "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". To advertise the single, they paid for billboards in 12 cities around the world which declared, in the national language, "WAR IS OVER—IF YOU WANT IT". The new year saw the Nixon Administration take what it called a "strategic counter-measure" against Lennon's anti-war propaganda, embarking on what would be a four-year attempt to deport him: embroiled in a continuing legal battle, he was denied permanent residency in the US until 1976.

Recorded as a collaboration with Ono and with backing from the New York band Elephant's Memory, ''Some Time in New York City'' was released in 1972. Containing songs about women's rights, race relations, Britain's role in Northern Ireland, and Lennon's problems obtaining a green card, the album was poorly received—unlistenable, according to one critic. "Woman Is the Nigger of the World", released as a US single from the album the same year, was televised on 11 May, on ''The Dick Cavett Show''. Many radio stations refused to broadcast the song because of the word "nigger". Lennon and Ono gave two benefit concerts with Elephant's Memory and guests in New York in aid of patients at the Willowbrook State School mental facility. Staged at Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972, they were his last full-length concert appearances.

1973–75: "Lost weekend"

While Lennon was recording ''Mind Games'' (1973), he and Ono decided to separate. The ensuing 18-month period apart, which he later called his "lost weekend", was spent in Los Angeles and New York in the company of May Pang. ''Mind Games'', credited to the "Plastic U.F.Ono Band", was released in November 1973. Lennon also contributed "I'm the Greatest", to Starr's album ''Ringo'' (1973), released the same month. (an alternate take, from the same 1973 ''Ringo'' sessions, with Lennon providing a guide vocal, appears on ''John Lennon Anthology'').

In early 1974, Lennon was drinking heavily and his alcohol-fuelled antics with Harry Nilsson made headlines. Two widely publicised incidents occurred at The Troubadour club in March, the first when Lennon placed a menstruation "towel" on his forehead and scuffled with a waitress, and the second, two weeks later, when Lennon and Nilsson were ejected from the same club after heckling the Smothers Brothers. Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album ''Pussy Cats'' and Pang rented an Los Angeles beach house for all the musicians but after a month of further debauchery, with the recording sessions in chaos, Lennon moved to New York with Pang to finish work on the album. In April, Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)" which was, for contractual reasons, to remain unreleased for more than 30 years. Pang supplied the recording for its eventual inclusion on ''The Very Best of Mick Jagger'' (2007).

Settled back in New York, Lennon recorded the album ''Walls and Bridges''. Released in October 1974, it yielded his only number-one single in his lifetime, "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", featuring Elton John on backing vocals and piano. A second single from the album, "#9 Dream", followed before the end of the year. Starr's ''Goodnight Vienna'' (1974) again saw assistance from Lennon, who wrote the title track and played piano. On 28 November, Lennon made a surprise guest appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden, in fulfilment of his promise to join the singer in a live show if "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night"—a song whose commercial potential Lennon had doubted—reached number one. Lennon performed the song along with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There", which he introduced as "a song by an old estranged fiancee of mine called Paul".

Lennon co-wrote "Fame", David Bowie's first US number one, and provided guitar and backing vocals for the January 1975 recording. The same month, Elton John topped the charts with his cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", featuring Lennon on guitar and back-up vocals. He and Ono were reunited shortly afterwards. Lennon released ''Rock 'n' Roll'' (1975), an album of cover songs, in February. "Stand By Me", taken from the album and a US and UK hit, became his last single for five years. He made what would be his final stage appearance in the ATV special ''A Salute to Lew Grade'', recorded on 18 April and televised in June. Playing acoustic guitar, and backed by an eight-piece band, Lennon performed two songs from ''Rock 'n' Roll'' ("Stand By Me", which was not broadcast, and "Slippin' and Slidin'") followed by "Imagine".

1975–80: Retirement and return

With the birth of his second son Sean on 9 October 1975, Lennon took on the role of househusband, beginning what would be a five-year hiatus from the music industry during which he gave all his attention to his family. Within the month, he fulfilled his contractual obligation to EMI/Capitol for one more album by releasing ''Shaved Fish'', a compilation album of previously recorded tracks. He devoted himself to Sean, rising at 6 am daily to plan and prepare his meals and to spend time with him. He wrote "Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love)" for Starr's ''Ringo's Rotogravure'' (1976), performing on the track in June in what would be his last recording session until 1980. He formally announced his break from music in Tokyo in 1977, saying, "we have basically decided, without any great decision, to be with our baby as much as we can until we feel we can take time off to indulge ourselves in creating things outside of the family." During his career break he created several series of drawings, and drafted a book containing a mix of autobiographical material and what he termed "mad stuff", all of which would be published posthumously.

He emerged from retirement in October 1980 with the single "(Just Like) Starting Over", followed the next month by the album ''Double Fantasy'', which contained songs written during a journey to Bermuda on a 43-foot sailing boat the previous June, that reflected Lennon's fulfillment in his new-found stable family life. Sufficient additional material was recorded for a planned follow-up album ''Milk and Honey'' (released posthumously in 1984). Released jointly with Ono, ''Double Fantasy'' was not well received, drawing comments such as ''Melody Maker'''s "indulgent sterility ... a godawful yawn".

8 December 1980: Death

At around 10:50 pm on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in The Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times at the entrance to the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of the nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:07 pm. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of ''Double Fantasy'' for Chapman.

Ono issued a statement the next day, saying "There is no funeral for John", ending it with the words, "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him." His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life; as of 2011, he remains in prison, having been denied parole six times.

Personal relationships

Cynthia Lennon

Lennon and Cynthia Powell met in 1957 as fellow students at the Liverpool College of Art. Although being scared of Lennon's attitude and appearance, she heard that he was obsessed with French actress Brigitte Bardot, so she dyed her hair blonde. Lennon asked her out, but when she said that she was engaged, he screamed out, "''I didn't ask you to fuckin' marry me, did I?''" She often accompanied him to Quarrymen gigs and travelled to Hamburg with McCartney's girlfriend at the time to visit him. Lennon, jealous by nature, eventually grew possessive and often terrified Powell with his anger and physical violence. Lennon later said that until he met Ono, he had never questioned his chauvinistic attitude to women. The Beatles' song "Getting Better", he said, told his own story, "I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace".

Recalling his reaction in July 1962 on learning that Cynthia was pregnant, Lennon said, "There's only one thing for it Cyn. We'll have to get married." The couple were married on 23 August at the Mount Pleasant Register Office in Liverpool. His marriage began just as Beatlemania took hold across the UK. He performed on the evening of his wedding day, and would continue to do so almost daily from then on. Epstein, fearing that fans would be alienated by the idea of a married Beatle, asked the Lennons to keep their marriage secret. Julian was born on 8 April 1963; Lennon was on tour at the time and did not see his son until three days later.

Cynthia attributes the start of the marriage breakdown to LSD, and as a result, she felt that he slowly lost interest in her. When the group travelled by train to Bangor, Wales, in 1967, for the Maharishi Yogi's Transcendental Meditation seminar, a policeman did not recognise her and stopped her from boarding. She later recalled how the incident seemed to symbolize the ending of their marriage. After arriving home at Kenwood, and finding Lennon with Ono, Cynthia left the house to stay with friends. Alexis Mardas later claimed to have slept with her that night, and a few weeks later he informed her that Lennon was seeking a divorce and custody of Julian on grounds of her adultery with him. After negotiations, Lennon capitulated and agreed to her divorcing him on the same grounds. The case was settled out of court, with Lennon giving her £100,000, and custody of Julian.

Brian Epstein

The Beatles were performing at Liverpool's Cavern Club in 1962, when all four Beatles were introduced to Epstein after a midday concert. Epstein was homosexual. According to biographer Philip Norman, one of his reasons for wanting to manage the group was that he was physically attracted to Lennon. Almost as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on holiday to Spain with Epstein, leading to speculation about their relationship. Questioned about it later, Lennon said, "Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I was conscious was homosexual. We used to sit in a café in Torremolinos looking at all the boys and I'd say, 'Do you like that one? Do you like this one?' I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer all the time: I am experiencing this." Soon after their return from Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club MC Bob Wooler for saying "How was your honeymoon, John?" The MC, known for his wordplay and affectionate but cutting remarks, was making a joke, but ten months had passed since Lennon's marriage, and the honeymoon, deferred, was still two months in the future. To Lennon, who was intoxicated with alcohol at the time, the matter was simple: "He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in".

Lennon delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact that he was Jewish. When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography, Lennon offered ''Queer Jew''; on learning of the eventual title, ''A Cellarful of Noise'', he parodied, "More like ''A Cellarful of Boys''". He demanded of a visitor to Epstein's flat, "Have you come to blackmail him? If not, you're the only bugger in London who hasn't." During the recording of "Baby, You're a Rich Man", he sang altered choruses of "Baby, you're a rich fag Jew".

Julian Lennon

Lennon's first son, Julian, was born as his commitments with The Beatles intensified at the height of Beatlemania during his marriage to Cynthia. Lennon was touring with The Beatles when Julian was born on 8 April 1963. Julian's birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to Lennon, was kept secret because Epstein was convinced public knowledge of such things would threaten The Beatles' commercial success. Julian recalls how some four years later, as a small child in Weybridge, "I was trundled home from school and came walking up with one of my watercolour paintings. It was just a bunch of stars and this blonde girl I knew at school. And Dad said, 'What's this?' I said, 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'" Lennon used it as the title of a Beatles' song, and though it was later reported to have been derived from the initials LSD, Lennon insisted, "It's not an acid song." McCartney corroborated Lennon's explanation that Julian innocently came up with the name. Lennon was distant from Julian, who felt closer to McCartney than to his father. During a car journey to visit Cynthia and Julian during Lennon's divorce, McCartney composed a song, "Hey Jules", to comfort him. It would evolve into The Beatles song "Hey Jude". Lennon later said, "That's his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian ... he turned it into 'Hey Jude'. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it wasn't."

Lennon's relationship with Julian was already strained, and after Lennon and Ono's 1971 move to New York, Julian would not see his father again until 1973. With Pang's encouragement, it was arranged for him (and his mother) to visit Lennon in Los Angeles, where they went to Disneyland. Julian started to see his father regularly, and Lennon gave him a drumming part on a ''Walls and Bridges'' track. He bought Julian a Gibson Les Paul guitar and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by demonstrating guitar chord techniques. Julian recalls that he and his father "got on a great deal better" during the time he spent in New York: "We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time in general."

In a ''Playboy'' interview with David Sheff shortly before his death, Lennon said, "Sean was a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me, and he always will." He said he was trying to re-establish a connection with the then 17-year-old, and confidently predicted, "Julian and I will have a relationship in the future." After his death it was revealed that he had left Julian very little in his will.

Yoko Ono

Two versions exist of how Lennon met Ono. According to the first, on 9 November 1966 Lennon went to the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit, and they were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." Ono had supposedly not heard of The Beatles, but relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." The second version, told by McCartney, is that in late 1965, Ono was in London compiling original musical scores for a book John Cage was working on, ''Notations'', but McCartney declined to give her any of his own manuscripts for the book, suggesting that Lennon might oblige. When asked, Lennon gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word".

Ono began telephoning and calling at Lennon's home, and when his wife asked for an explanation, he explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit". In May 1968, while his wife was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the ''Two Virgins'' album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn." When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child they named John Ono Lennon II on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.

During Lennon's last two years in The Beatles, he and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in The Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, made famous three months earlier by The Beatles' ''Let It Be'' rooftop concert. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth. After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on The Beatles' last album, ''Abbey Road''. To escape the acrimony of the band's break-up, Ono suggested they move permanently to New York, which they did on 31 August 1971.

They first lived in the St. Regis Hotel on 5th Avenue, East 55th Street, then moved to a street-level flat at 105 Bank Street, Greenwich Village, on 16 October 1971. After a robbery, they relocated to the more secure Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street, in May 1973.

May Pang

ABKCO Industries, formed in 1968 by Allen Klein as an umbrella company to ABKCO Records, recruited May Pang as a receptionist in 1969. Through involvement in a project with ABKCO, Lennon and Ono met her the following year. She became their personal assistant. After she had been working with the couple for three years, Ono confided that she and Lennon were becoming estranged from one another. She went on to suggest that Pang should begin a physical relationship with Lennon, telling her, "He likes you a lot." Pang, 22, astounded by Ono's proposition, eventually agreed to become Lennon's companion. The pair soon moved to California, beginning an 18-month period he later called his "lost weekend". In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to develop regular contact with Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. He also rekindled friendships with Starr, McCartney, Beatles' roadie Mal Evans, and Harry Nilsson. Whilst drinking with Nilsson, after misunderstanding something Pang said, Lennon attempted to strangle her, relenting only when physically restrained by Nilsson.

On moving to New York, they prepared a spare room in their newly rented apartment for Julian to visit. Lennon, hitherto inhibited by Ono in this regard, began to reestablish contact with other relatives and friends. By December he and Pang were considering a house purchase, and he was refusing to accept Ono's telephone calls. In January 1975, he agreed to meet Ono—who said she had found a cure for smoking—but after the meeting failed to return home or call Pang. When Pang telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable, being exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment, stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from Ono was now over, though Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress.

Sean Lennon

When Lennon and Ono were reunited, she became pregnant, but having previously suffered three miscarriages in her attempt to have a child with Lennon, she said she wanted an abortion. She agreed to allow the pregnancy to continue on condition that Lennon adopt the role of househusband; this he agreed to do. Sean was born on 9 October 1975, Lennon's 35th birthday, delivered by Caesarean section. Lennon's subsequent career break would span five years. He had a photographer take pictures of Sean every day of his first year, and created numerous drawings for him, posthumously published as ''Real Love: The Drawings for Sean''. Lennon later proudly declared, "He didn't come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish."

Former Beatles

Although his friendship with Starr remained consistently warm during the years following The Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon's relationship with McCartney and Harrison varied. He was close to Harrison initially, but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to America. When Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 ''Dark Horse'' tour, Lennon agreed to join him on stage, but failed to appear after an argument over Lennon's refusal to sign an agreement that would finally dissolve The Beatles' legal partnership. (Lennon eventually signed the papers while holidaying in Florida with Pang and Julian.) Harrison incensed Lennon in 1980 when he published an autobiography that made little mention of him. Lennon told ''Playboy'', "I was hurt by it. By glaring omission ... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch ... he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."

Lennon's most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him through the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?", Lennon argued with him through the press for three years after the group split. The two later began to reestablish something of the close friendship they had once known, and in 1974 even played music together again, before growing apart once more. Lennon said that during McCartney's final visit, in April 1976, they watched the episode of ''Saturday Night Live'' in which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer to get The Beatles to reunite on the show. The pair considered going to the studio to make a joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but were too tired. Lennon summarised his feelings towards McCartney in an interview three days before his death: "Throughout my career, I've selected to work with...only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono....That ain't bad picking."

Along with his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During his five-year career break he was content to sit back so long as McCartney was producing what Lennon saw as mediocre "product". When McCartney released "Coming Up" in 1980, the year Lennon returned to the studio and the last year of his life, he took notice. "It's driving me crackers!" he jokingly complained, because he could not get the tune out of his head. Asked the same year whether the group were dreaded enemies or the best of friends, he replied that they were neither, and that he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he also said, "I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on."

Political activism

Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon as what they termed a "Bed-In for Peace" at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel; the March 1969 event attracted worldwide media ridicule. At a second Bed-In three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal Lennon wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Released as a single, it was quickly taken up as an anti-war anthem and sung by a quarter of a million demonstrators against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC, on 15 October, the second Vietnam Moratorium Day.

Later that year, Lennon and Ono supported efforts by the family of James Hanratty, hanged for murder in 1962, to prove his innocence. Those who had condemned Hanratty were, according to Lennon, "the same people who are running guns to South Africa and killing blacks in the streets. ... The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything, it's the whole bullshit bourgeois scene." In London, Lennon and Ono staged a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" banner march and a "Silent Protest For James Hanratty", and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing years later, Hanratty's conviction was upheld.

Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity with the Clydeside UCS workers' work-in of 1971 by sending a bouquet of red roses and a cheque for £5,000. On moving to New York City in August that year, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Another peace activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug. In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 20,000 people attended the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally", a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others. Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming ''Some Time in New York City'' album including "John Sinclair", whose lyrics called for his release. The day before the rally, Michigan State had drastically reduced the penalties for Sinclair’s crimes and three days after the rally, he was released on bail. The performance was recorded and two of the tracks later appeared on ''John Lennon Anthology'' (1998).

Following the ''Bloody Sunday'' incident in Northern Ireland in 1972, in which 13 unarmed civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army, Lennon said that given the choice between the army and the IRA (who were not involved in the incident) he would side with the latter. Lennon and Ono wrote two songs protesting British presence and actions in Ireland for their ''Some Time in New York City'' album: "Luck of the Irish" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". In 2000, David Shayler, a former member of Britain's domestic security service MI5 suggested that Lennon had given money to the IRA though this was swiftly denied by Ono. Biographer Bill Harry records that following Bloody Sunday, Lennon and Ono financially supported the production of the film ''The Irish Tapes'', a political documentary with a Republican slant.

According to FBI surveillance reports (and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006) Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist group formed in Britain in 1968. However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a revolutionary since he was "constantly under the influence of narcotics".

Deportation attempt

Following the impact of "Give Peace a Chance" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", both strongly associated with the anti–Vietnam War movement, the Nixon administration, hearing rumours of Lennon's involvement in a concert to be held in San Diego at the same time as the Republican National Convention, tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon's anti-war activities could cost him his re-election; Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested in a February 1972 memo that "deportation would be a strategic counter-measure" against Lennon. The next month the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began deportation proceedings, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanor conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible for admission to the United States. Lennon spent the next three and a half years in and out of deportation hearings until on 8 October 1975, when a court of appeals barred the deportation attempt, stating " ... the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds." While the legal battle continued, Lennon attended rallies and made television appearances. Lennon and Ono co-hosted the ''Mike Douglas Show'' for a week in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale to mid-America. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS defending Lennon, stating:

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the country’s so-called art institution. They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days. Ono, meanwhile, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York City Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia; a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people". Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they asked for political asylum in the US. The press conference was filmed, and would later appear in the 2006 documentary ''The U.S. vs. John Lennon''. Lennon's ''Mind Games'' (1973) included the track "Nutopian International Anthem", which comprised three seconds of silence. Soon after the press conference, Nixon's involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June the Watergate hearings began in Washington, DC. They led to the president's resignation 14 months later. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, showed little interest in continuing the battle against Lennon, and the deportation order was overturned in 1975. The following year, his US immigration status finally resolved, Lennon received his "green card" certifying his permanent residency, and when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.

FBI surveillance and declassified documents

After Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files documenting the Bureau's role in the deportation attempt. The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them on the grounds that they contained national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court declined to review the case. In 1997, respecting President Bill Clinton's newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld only if releasing them would involve "foreseeable harm", the Justice Department settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by releasing all but 10 of the contested documents. Wiener published the results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. ''Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files'' contained facsimiles of the documents, including "lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges". The story is told in the documentary ''The U.S. vs. John Lennon''. The final 10 documents in Lennon's FBI file, which reported on his ties with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had been withheld as containing "national security information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were released in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.

Writing and art

Lennon's biographer Bill Harry writes that Lennon began drawing and writing creatively at an early age with the encouragement of his uncle. He collected his stories, poetry, cartoons, and caricatures in a Quarry Bank High School exercise book that he called the ''Daily Howl''. The drawings were often of crippled people, and the writings satirical, and throughout the book was an abundance of wordplay. According to classmate Bill Turner, Lennon created the ''Daily Howl'' to amuse his best friend and later Quarrymen band mate, Pete Shotton, to whom he would show his work before he let anyone else see it. Turner said that Lennon "had an obsession for Wigan Pier. It kept cropping up", and in Lennon's story ''A Carrot In A Potato Mine'', "the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier." Turner described how one of Lennon's cartoons depicted a bus stop sign annotated with the question, "Why?". Above was a flying pancake, and below, "a blind man wearing glasses leading along a blind dog—also wearing glasses".

Lennon's love of wordplay and nonsense with a twist found a wider audience when he was 24. Harry writes that ''In His Own Write'' (1964) was published after "Some journalist who was hanging around The Beatles came to me and I ended up showing him the stuff. They said, 'Write a book' and that's how the first one came about". Like the ''Daily Howl'' it contained a mix of formats including short stories, poetry, plays and drawings. One story, "Good Dog Nigel", tells the tale of "a happy dog, urinating on a lamp post, barking, wagging his tail—until he suddenly hears a message that he will be killed at three o'clock". ''The Times Literary Supplement'' considered the poems and stories "remarkable ... also very funny ... the nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain of pure fantasy". ''Book Week'' reported, "This is nonsense writing, but one has only to review the literature of nonsense to see how well Lennon has brought it off. While some of his homonyms are gratuitous word play, many others have not only double meaning but a double edge." Lennon was not only surprised by the positive reception, but that the book was reviewed at all, and suggested that readers "took the book more seriously than I did myself. It just began as a laugh for me".

In combination with ''A Spaniard in the Works'' (1965), ''In His Own Write'' formed the basis of the stage play ''The John Lennon Play: In His Own Write'', co-adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy. After negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the artistic director of the National Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier, the play opened at the Old Vic in 1968. Lennon and Ono attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together to date. After Lennon's death, further works were published, including ''Skywriting by Word of Mouth'' (1986); ''Ai: Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook'' (1992), with Lennon's illustrations of the definitions of Japanese words; and ''Real Love: The Drawings for Sean'' (1999). ''The Beatles Anthology'' (2000) also presented examples of his writings and drawings.

Musicianship

Instruments played

His playing of a mouth organ during a bus journey to visit his cousin in Scotland caught the driver's ear. Impressed, the driver told Lennon of a harmonica he could have if he came to Edinburgh the following day, where one had been stored in the bus depot since a passenger left it on a bus. The professional instrument quickly replaced Lennon's toy. He would continue to play harmonica, often using the instrument during The Beatles' Hamburg years, and it became a signature sound in the group's early recordings. His mother taught him how to play the banjo, later buying him an acoustic guitar. At 16, he played rhythm guitar with the Quarrymen. As his career progressed, he played a variety of electric guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325, Epiphone Casino and Gibson J-160E, and, from the start of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul Junior. Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass VI, providing bass on some Beatles' numbers that occupied McCartney with another instrument. His other instrument of choice was the piano, on which he composed many songs, including "Imagine", described as his best-known solo work. His jamming on a piano with McCartney in 1963 led to the creation of The Beatles' first US number one, "I Want to Hold Your Hand". In 1964, he became one of the first British musicians to acquire a Mellotron keyboard, though it was not heard on a Beatles' recording until "Strawberry Fields Forever" in late 1966.

Vocal style

When Lennon recorded "Twist and Shout", the final track during the mammoth one-day session that captured the band's 1963 debut album ''Please Please Me'', his voice, already compromised by a cold, came close to giving out. Lennon said, "I couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just screaming." In the words of biographer Barry Miles, "Lennon simply shredded his vocal cords in the interests of rock 'n' roll." The Beatles' producer, George Martin, tells how Lennon "had an inborn dislike of his own voice which I could never understand. He was always saying to me: 'DO something with my voice! ... put something on it ... Make it ''different''.'" Martin obliged, often using double-tracking and other techniques. Music critic Robert Christgau says that Lennon's "greatest vocal performance ... from scream to whine, is modulated electronically ... echoed, filtered, and double tracked."

As his Beatles' era segued into his solo career, his singing voice found a widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writes that Lennon was, "tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in a number of acoustic-led 'confessional' ballads, so beginning the process of 'public therapy' that will eventually culminate in the primal screams of 'Cold Turkey' and the cathartic ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band''." David Stuart Ryan notes Lennon's vocal delivery to range from, "extreme vulnerability, sensitivity and even naivety" to a hard "rasping" style. Wiener too describes contrasts, saying the singer's voice can be "at first subdued; soon it almost cracks with despair" Music historian Ben Urish recalls hearing The Beatles' ''Ed Sullivan Show'' performance of "This Boy" played on the radio a few days after Lennon's murder: "As Lennon's vocals reached their peak ... it hurt too much to hear him scream with such anguish and emotion. But it was my emotions I heard in his voice. Just like I always had."

Legacy

Music historians Schinder and Schwartz, writing of the transformation in popular music styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s, say that The Beatles' influence cannot be overstated: having "revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll's doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts", the group then "spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock's stylistic frontiers". Liam Gallagher, his group Oasis among the many who acknowledge the band's influence, identifies Lennon as a hero; in 1999 he named his first child Lennon Gallagher in tribute. On National Poetry Day in 1999, after conducting a poll to identify the UK's favourite song lyric, the BBC announced "Imagine" the winner.

In a 2006 ''Guardian'' article, Jon Wiener wrote: "For young people in 1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon's courage in standing up to [US President] Nixon. That willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one reason why people still admire him today." Whilst for music historians Urish and Bielen, Lennon's most significant effort was "the self-portraits ... in his songs [which] spoke to, for, and about, the human condition."

Lennon continues to be mourned throughout the world and has been the subject of numerous memorials and tributes. In 2010, on what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday, the John Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled in Chavasse Park, Liverpool, by Cynthia and Julian Lennon. The sculpture entitled ‘Peace & Harmony’ exhibits peace symbols and carries the inscription “Peace on Earth for the Conservation of Life · In Honour of John Lennon 1940–1980”.

Awards and sales

The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership is regarded as one of the most influential and successful of the 20th century. As performer, writer or co-writer Lennon has had 25 number one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. His album sales in the US stand at 14 million units. ''Double Fantasy'', released shortly before his death, and his best-selling, post-Beatles' studio album at three million shipments in the US, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The following year, the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music went to Lennon. Participants in a 2002 BBC poll voted him eighth of "100 Greatest Britons". Between 2003 and 2008, ''Rolling Stone'' recognised Lennon in several reviews of artists and music, ranking him fifth of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" and 38th of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time", and his albums ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' and ''Imagine'', 22nd and 76th respectively of "The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) with the other Beatles in 1965. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Discography

''Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins'' (with Yoko Ono) (1968)

''Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions'' (with Yoko Ono) (1969)

''Wedding Album'' (with Yoko Ono) (1969)

''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' (1970)

''Imagine'' (1971)

''Some Time in New York City'' (with Yoko Ono) (1972)

''Mind Games'' (1973)

''Walls and Bridges'' (1974)

''Rock 'n' Roll'' (1975)

''Double Fantasy'' (with Yoko Ono) (1980)

''Milk and Honey'' (with Yoko Ono) (1984)

''Menlove Ave.'' (1986)

Notes

Lennon was responsible for 25 Billboard Hot 100 number one singles as performer, writer or co-writer. Solo (2): "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", "(Just Like) Starting Over". With The Beatles (20): "Can't Buy Me Love", "I Feel Fine", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "Love Me Do", "She Loves You", "A Hard Day's Night", "Eight Days a Week", "Help!", "Ticket to Ride", "Yesterday", "Paperback Writer", "We Can Work It Out", "All You Need Is Love", "Hello Goodbye", "Penny Lane", "Hey Jude", "Something/"Come Together", "Get Back", "Let It Be", "The Long and Winding Road"/"For You Blue". As co-writer of and performer on release by another artist (1): "Fame" (David Bowie). As co-writer of releases by other artists (2): "A World Without Love" (Peter and Gordon), "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (Elton John).

Citations

References

Further reading

Kane, Larry (2007). ''Lennon Revealed''. Running Press. ISBN 9780762429660

Pang, May; Edwards, Henry (1983). ''Loving John: The Untold Story''. Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-37916-6.

Wiener, Jon. The John Lennon FBI Files

Yorke, Richard (1969). "John Lennon: Ringo’s Right, We Can’t Tour Again", ''New Musical Express'', 7 June 1969, reproduced by ''Crawdaddy!'', 2007.

External links

The Liverpool Lennons

''BBC'' Archive on John Lennon

''NPR'' Archive on John Lennon

John Lennon and Yoko Ono – slideshow by ''Life magazine''

John Lennon hosted by EMI Group Limited

Unveiling of ‘Peace & Harmony’, European Peace Monument – Dedicated to John Lennon

Category:1940 births Category:1980 deaths Category:Alumni of Liverpool College of Art Category:People educated at Quarry Bank High School Category:Assassinated English people Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:Brit Award winners Category:British anti-war activists Category:British people murdered abroad Category:Capitol Records artists Category:COINTELPRO targets Category:Critics of religions or philosophies Category:Deaths by firearm in New York Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English experimental musicians Category:English film actors Category:English male singers Category:English pacifists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English rock guitarists Category:English rock pianists Category:English rock singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English-language singers Category:Feminist musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Male feminists Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire Category:Murdered musicians Category:Nonviolence advocates Category:People convicted of drug offenses Category:People murdered in New York Category:Plastic Ono Band members Category:Religious skeptics Category:Rhythm guitarists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:The Beatles members Category:The Dirty Mac Category:The Quarrymen members Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Yoko Ono

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Coordinates	53°12′″N45°01′″N
name	Taylor Lautner
birth name	Taylor Daniel Lautner
birth date	February 11, 1992
birth place	Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.
yearsactive	2001–present
occupation	Actor, voice actor, model
signature	Taylor Lautner signature.svg90px }}

Taylor Daniel Lautner (pronounced , ; born February 11, 1992) is an American actor, voice actor, model, and martial artist. As a child, Lautner took up martial arts and was ranked number one in his category by the American Sports Karate Association. Lautner soon thereafter began his acting career, appearing in bit roles in comedy series such as ''The Bernie Mac Show'' (2003) and ''My Wife and Kids'' (2004), before having voice roles in television series like ''What's New, Scooby-Doo?'' (2005) and ''Danny Phantom'' (2005). In 2005, he appeared in the film ''Cheaper by the Dozen 2'' and starred in ''The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D''.

Lautner got his big break when he was cast as Jacob Black in ''The Twilight Saga'' film series, beginning with the first film, ''Twilight'' (2008). Lautner returned for the following two movies, ''The Twilight Saga: New Moon'' (2009) and ''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse'' (2010), ''The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1'' (2011) and is set to appear in the final film of the series, ''The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2'' in late 2012. Lautner has been nominated for several awards for his work in the ''Twilight'' series, including honors at the MTV Movie Awards, People's Choice Awards, and Scream Awards. He later found more commercial success with his debut action film, ''Abduction'', which became a sleeper hit.

The late 2000s saw Lautner become a teen idol and rise as a sex symbol, after extensively changing his physique to keep the role of Jacob Black in further ''Twilight'' installments, and thereafter generating media attention for his good looks. In 2010, he was ranked second on ''Glamour'''s "The 50 Sexiest Men of 2010" list, and fourth on ''People'''s "Most Amazing Bodies" list, among other honors. As of 2010, Lautner was considered the highest-paid teenage actor in Hollywood.

Early life

Lautner was born on February 11, 1992 in Grand Rapids, Michigan to Deborah and Daniel Lautner. His mother works for a software development company, while his father is a Midwest Airlines pilot. He has one younger sister named Makena. Raised as a Roman Catholic, Lautner is of mixed German, French, and Dutch heritage, and has "distant" Native American ancestry (specifically Ottawa and Potawatomi) through his mother. Lautner grew up in Hudsonville, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids. Lautner stated that when he was younger he was bullied in school because he was an actor. He commented, "I just had to tell myself I can't let this get to me. This is what I love to do. And I'm going to continue doing it."

He took his first karate class at the age of six. A year later, he attended the national karate tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, where he met Michael Chaturantabut, the founder of Xtreme Martial Arts. Chaturantabut invited Lautner to a camp he held at University of California, Los Angeles. Lautner trained with Chaturantabut for several years, earning his black belt by the age of eight, and winning several junior world championships. He appeared in an ISKA karate event televised on ESPN in 2003 that was later lampooned on the sports-comedy show Cheap Seats that first aired in 2006.

In junior high, Lautner—who was involved in karate, baseball and hip-hop dance—won the award for "Best Smile" and played in the school's Turkey Bowl American Football game. He went to public school in Valencia until his sophomore year of high school.

Chaturantabut, who once portrayed the Blue Ranger in ''Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue'', suggested to Lautner that he take up acting. For a few years, the Lautners flew from Michigan to Los Angeles for auditions when his talent agency called, and returned to Grand Rapids for school sometimes the same day. Lautner balanced karate and acting with being on the football and baseball teams at his school, and taking up jazz and hip-hop dance. After that became tiring, Lautner and his family decided to move to California for a month, to try it out, before moving to Santa Clarita, California, permanently in 2002.

Career

2001–07: Early career

In his first months after moving to Los Angeles, Lautner appeared in small television roles, small film roles, and ads and commercials. In 2001, Lautner first appeared in the made-for-television film, ''Shadow Fury''. He then got a voice-over job in a commercial for ''Rugrats Go Wild''. He then appeared in small television parts on ''The Bernie Mac Show'', ''My Wife and Kids'', and ''Summerland''. Lautner then earned voice-over roles in animated series such as ''Danny Phantom'', ''Duck Dodgers'', and ''What's New, Scooby-Doo?''. In 2005, he had a role as Elliot Murtaugh in the comedy film ''Cheaper by the Dozen 2''. The same year, he earned his first breakout role, starring in the film, ''The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D''. Lautner spent three months on location in Austin, Texas, to film the movie, which was received with negative reviews from critics, and was a minor international success. However, Lautner was nominated at the 2006 Young Artist Awards for Best Performance in a Feature Film by a Leading Actor. For the film, Lautner choreographed all of his fight scenes after director Robert Rodríguez learned of his extensive martial arts training. Months later, he was cast as Eliot Murtaugh in ''Cheaper by the Dozen 2'', which was panned by critics, being named one of the "Worst Films of the 2000s" by Rotten Tomatoes. After returning from Canada filming the latter movie, Lautner said he realized his newfound fame, from ''Sharkboy and Lavagirl''. In 2008 he appeared in the show ''Love Inc.'' and the TV special ''He's a Bully, Charlie Brown''. Two years later, Lautner appeared in a lead role in the short-lived NBC drama, ''My Own Worst Enemy'', portraying Christian Slater's son, Jack Spivey. ''Rolling Stone'' coined his early roles as either "the popular kid, jock, or bully."

2008–09: Breakthrough and ''The Twilight Series''

In 2007, filmmakers began a search for actors to portray Jacob Black, a Native American friend of lead character Bella Swan in ''Twilight'', the first film in the The ''Twilight'' Saga film series. In January 2008, an open casting call was held in Portland, Oregon. Lautner had not heard of the ''Twilight'' series before, but was urged by his agent to audition. At his audition, he read lines with Kristen Stewart, who had already been cast as Bella, and they acted out scenes from ''The Twilight Saga: New Moon'' and ''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse''. The film was a commercial success, earning $69 million its opening weekend, and has grossed $392 million worldwide. It received mixed reviews from critics, having a "Rotten" rating with a weighted average of 5.5/10. In describing the critical consensus, it stated: "Having lost much of its bite transitioning to the big screen, ''Twilight'' will please its devoted fans, but do little for the uninitiated." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, it has an average score of 56 from the 37 reviews. At the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Lautner was nominated for Male Breakthrough Performance, which was won by co-star Robert Pattinson.

Initially, director Chris Weitz wanted to recast the role of Jacob Black for ''Twilight'''s sequel, ''The Twilight Saga: New Moon'', due to the major physical changes that occur in Black between the two novels, and have an actor that would accurately portray "the new, larger Jacob Black." Black's role in the novel also increases significantly, with him falling in love with Bella and becoming a werewolf, putting the actor in a starring role. Representatives for Weitz had stated that they were make a full effort to recast the "high-profile gig," and MTV News confirmed that Weitz was looking at Michael Copon to take on the role; however, Summit Entertainment said a decision had not been made. In an attempt to keep the role, Lautner weight-trained extensively and gained approximately 30 pounds of muscle. In January 2009, Weitz and Summit Entertainment announced that Lautner would continue to play the role of Jacob in the sequel. In an interview, fellow cast member Kristen Stewart talked about Lautner's transformation saying, "He's an entirely different person physically." Stewart later said, "He gets a lot of attention because he's buff, but I think as soon as the movie comes out, people are going to realize that's not why he got the job." Co-star Robert Pattinson said after seeing Lautner's body, "I saw him and thought 'Jesus, I'm going to get fired." In an interview with ''The Wrap'', Weitz said Lautner deserved a lot of credit for the movie's box office, stating, "If you look at the movie, it should have been the weakest in the franchise, because Robert Pattinson doesn't play as big a role." Weitz said Lautner had to "pick up that slack, and if his character hadn't been emotionally, not just physically, appealing, the movie wouldn't have been as big a hit." The commercial performance of the film outpaced the first film, setting several box office records including the biggest midnight opening in the United States and Canada and the biggest single-day opening. The opening weekend of ''New Moon'' is the third highest opening weekend in domestic history with $142,839,137. ''The Twilight Saga: New Moon'' also has the sixth highest worldwide opening weekend with $274.9 million total. Critical reception was less favorable, with the movie getting a 4.6/10 average from Rotten Tomatoes, and a 44 on Metacritic. Lautner won Favorite Breakout Movie Actor at the 35th People's Choice Awards.

Although it began after the release of the first film, upon release of ''New Moon'', Lautner and his co-stars Stewart and Pattinson transitioned to teen idol status, with Lautner particularly admired by teens for his new physical characteristics, becoming a sex symbol. The trio appeared on many covers and televised appearances together. In between the second and third films in the ''Twilight'' series, Lautner was a part of the ensemble cast in the movie ''Valentine's Day'' as Willy Harrington, acting alongside his rumored girlfriend at the time, American country pop singer Taylor Swift. The duo was nominated at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards for Best Kiss. Although it received generally negative reviews, the film grossed $213 million and had the second biggest opening in the United States for a romantic comedy film. Lautner presented at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards and the 82nd Academy Awards. Lautner hosted ''Saturday Night Live'' on December 12, 2009, making him one of the youngest celebrity hosts in the show's history.

2010 to present: Continuing ''Twilight'' and other projects

Lautner returned for the third ''Twilight'' film, ''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse'', in 2010. Receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film surpassed its predecessor to become the highest-grossing film of the franchise and the highest-grossing romantic fantasy, werewolf and vampire movie of all time at the American and Canadian box office. It ranks as the 36th highest grossing film of all-time in the U.S. and Canada. The popularity of Lautner and his cast members continued to summit, especially via the "Team Edward vs. Team Jacob" campaign that promoted the film. Lautner's fanbase also began to expand to older audiences. Lautner won "Best Fantasy Actor" at the 2010 Scream Awards, and he is nominated for "Favorite Movie Actor" for his role in ''Eclipse'' at the 37th People's Choice Awards. On November 2010 ''The Hollywood Reporter'' named Lautner as one of the young male actors who are “pushing – or being pushed” into taking over Hollywood as the new “A-List”.

Lautner was initially supposed to be in two films, ''Northern Lights'' and a movie based on Max Steel, but pulled out of both films due to scheduling conflicts and better offers. Other planned projects were the lead in a movie about Stretch Armstrong and a hostage thriller, ''Cancun''. Lautner filmed a ''Bourne Identity''-esque spy film with Lily Collins, entitled ''Abduction'', which was released in September 2011. He will appear in the remaining parts of the ''Twilight'' series, the ''The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn'' films, which are anticipated to be released over a two-year period from 2011–2012.

As of 2010, Lautner was considered to be the highest-paid teen actor in Hollywood.

Image

Publications such as ''GQ'', ''Rolling Stone'', and ''People'' have referred to Lautner as a sex symbol, with the latter publication calling the actor a future epitome of pop culture. He has been called the new young adult star that can "both woo the girls with his intensity and impress the boys with his rugged agility." According to Mickey Rapkin of ''GQ'', the use of Lautner's physique in films has been compared to Megan Fox in her work. After his massive physical change following ''Twilight'', Lautner became a tabloid teen idol with his co-stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Lautner, determined to stay in the series, worked out every day and gained over 30 pounds of muscle in order to bulk up for the role of Jacob Black in the remaining films in the ''The Twilight Saga''. Michelle Lanz of MSN Wonderwall said that Lautner's change may have saved his career. Several critics credit Lautner's physical characteristics for much of the success of the ''Twilight'' series, with critic Sharon Waxman stating, "as a tabloid teen idol, he certainly deserves some credit for ''New Moon's'' $700 million worldwide gross." Lautner's abs in particular have been subject to media attention, with ''The Wrap'' stating that companies bidding for the actor in movies in 2011 would "shell out for the young actor's much-on-display though mostly untried abs." Mickey Rapkin of ''GQ'' said, "the film's marketing issues were solved when Lautner's "abdominal muscles became ''New Moon'''s main talking point, not to mention his calling card." He was named number one on Access Hollywood's "Top 5 Hollywood Abs" list.

Before the actor turned 18, his sexualized image was often critiqued, and subject to controversy. In December 2009, Lautner appeared on the cover of ''Rolling Stone'' in a wet t-shirt. Jennifer Cady of E! Online said to wait a few months when Lautner would "be of age, which will make this whole operation you got going on completely legal." In his interview with the magazine, after declining to talk about whether he was dating Taylor Swift, the magazine pressed Lautner on rumors of him being homosexual, which he brushed off. Brent Hartinger, a columnist for AfterElton, blasted the magazine, calling the questioning "unimaginably irresponsible," commenting that Lautner was just "a 17-year old kid" and that while the rumors were baseless and speculation from certain blogs and fans, it was disappointing that a "legitimate media outlet" would print gossip. Hartinger said the magazine reached a "new low" and did not have common decency, noting that there was not a line between "child and adult" although Lautner was in adult-like roles.

Lautner has stated that he doesn't want to be just known for his looks, as some have attributed his popularity to that and not his actual acting skill. In an interview, the actor revealed that he was originally supposed to have a baring scene in the movie ''Valentine's Day''. He stated, "The script said we were walking into school and Willy takes off his shirt. I said, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out. He's gonna take off his shirt in the middle of school? No, no, no. The reason I took off my shirt for ''New Moon'' is because it's written in the book that way. And there's reasons behind it." Lautner later said he would not bare his chest for any role that did not call for it. In June 2010, Lautner covered ''GQ'' magazine. The actor was lampooned in conservative writer Laura Ingraham's satirical ''The Obama Diaries'', commenting to have Lautner as a mascot for the White House Easter Egg Roll, to fit their health-conscious theme, and have Lautner don a furry bunny head and appear shirtless. In 2010, Lautner was ranked number two on ''Glamour'''s "50 Sexiest Men of 2010 " list. ''Men's Health'' ranked him at third on their list of "Top 10 Summer Bodies." Additionally in 2010, he was ranked fourth on ''People'''s "Most Amazing Bodies" list.

Personal life

Lautner has an intricate workout plan, which was covered by ''Men's Health'', and has a specific diet after developing his body for ''The Twilight Saga: New Moon''. In addition, he still practices and trains in martial arts regularly. He has stated that he is drug and alcohol free.

Lautner resides with his parents and younger sister in Valencia, California, which he says he prefers due to the dearth of paparazzi. Lautner has said that he has never thought of moving out on his own, stating, "The thing I love is that my home life hasn't changed. I still help out with the garbage. I still help out with the lawn." He owns a BMW 5 series, which have tinted windows for obscurity.

The boost given to his career by the success of the ''Twilight'' films made him too busy to attend school, so he took the California High School Proficiency Exam to graduate from high school in 2008. He has stated on the David Letterman show that if he does not have work, he would like to go back to school. He now takes online classes at his local community college.

In 2009, Lautner was linked romantically to American country pop singer Taylor Swift and American actress and pop singer Selena Gomez.

Filmography

Films

''Valentine's Day (film) ''Abduction (2011 film)

+ Films in which Lautner has appeared, with the role listed and notes.
Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
2001	''Shadow Fury''	Young Kismet	Small role
	''''	Sharkboy	Main role, Young Artist Awards nomination.
''Cheaper by the Dozen 2''	Elliot Murtaugh	Sequel
2008	Twilight (2008 film)>Twilight''	Jacob Black
2009	''''		Kids' Choice Awards and Young Artist Award nominationsGolden Raspberry Awards nomination for Worst Couple
	Valentine's Day ||	Willy Harrinton	Part of ensemble cast. MTV Movie Awards nomination for Best Kiss
''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse''	Jacob Black	Scream Awards, People's Choice, and Teen Choice Awards nomination
	Abduction'' ||	Nathan	Lead role
	Jacob Black
2012		Jacob Black	Post-production

Television

''Love, Inc. (TV series)

+ Television in which Lautner has appeared, with the role listed and notes.	Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
2003	''''	Aaron	Two episodes
	''My Wife and Kids''	Tyrone
''Summerland (TV series)	Summerland''	Boy on beach	Small appearance
	''Danny Phantom''	Youngblood	Voice; Recurring role; three episodes
	Reggie WassersteinTerrible Obnoxious Boy	Voice; two episodes
''What's New, Scooby-Doo?''	DennisNed	Voice; two episodes
	Love, Inc.'' ||	Oliver	TV
''He's a Bully, Charlie Brown''	Joe Agate	TV special; voice
2008		Jack Spivey	Main role

Awards and nominations

! Year !! Award !! Category !! Motive !! Result
2005	Young Artist Awards	"Best Performance in a Feature Film – Young Lead Actor"	''The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D''
	Scream Awards	"Male Breakout Performance"	rowspan="2"
MTV Movie Awards
Teen Choice Awards	"Choice Fresh Face – Male"	Himself
	People's Choice Awards	"Favorite Breakout Actor"
rowspan="2"	"Favorite Movie Actor"
"Cutest Couple" (with Kristen Stewart)
Golden Raspberry Awards	Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screen Couple with Kristen Stewart)
Young Artist Awards	"Best Performance in a Feature Film – Young Lead Actor"
MTV Movie Awards	Best Kiss (with Taylor Swift)
	"Male Hottie"
"Red Carpet Fashion Icon – Male"
"Choice Smile"
"Choice Movie Actor: Fantasy"	''The Twilight Saga: Eclipse''
"Choice Movie: Liplock" (with Taylor Swift)
"Choice Movie: Chemistry" (with Taylor Swift)
Scream Awards	"Best Fantasy Actor"
rowspan="2"	"Fave Kiss" (with Kristen Stewart)
"Hottest Hottie"	Himself
		"Favorite Movie Actor"
"Favorite On-screen Team" (with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart)

References

External links

Category:1992 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from California Category:Actors from Michigan Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American karateka Category:American people of Dutch descent Category:American people of French descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Native American descent Category:American television actors Category:People from Grand Rapids, Michigan Category:People from Los Angeles County, California Category:People from Ottawa County, Michigan

ar:تايلور لوتنر bg:Тейлър Лотнър ca:Taylor Lautner cs:Taylor Lautner cy:Taylor Lautner da:Taylor Lautner de:Taylor Lautner et:Taylor Lautner es:Taylor Lautner fa:تیلور لاتنر fr:Taylor Lautner gl:Taylor Lautner ko:타일러 로트너 hr:Taylor Lautner id:Taylor Lautner it:Taylor Lautner he:טיילור לאוטנר jv:Taylor Lautner lv:Teilors Lautners hu:Taylor Lautner nl:Taylor Lautner ja:テイラー・ロートナー no:Taylor Lautner pl:Taylor Lautner pt:Taylor Lautner ro:Taylor Lautner ru:Лотнер, Тэйлор simple:Taylor Lautner sk:Taylor Lautner sl:Taylor Lautner sr:Tejlor Lautner fi:Taylor Lautner sv:Taylor Lautner th:เทย์เลอร์ เลาต์เนอร์ tr:Taylor Lautner uk:Тейлор Лотнер vi:Taylor Lautner zh:泰勒·洛納

Coordinates	53°12′″N45°01′″N
name	Justin Bieber
background	solo_singer
birth name	Justin Drew Bieber
birth date	March 01, 1994
birth place	London, Ontario, Canada
origin	Stratford, Ontario, Canada
instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, percussion, trumpet
genre	Pop, R&B;, teen pop
occupation	Singer, musician, actor
years active	2009–present
label	Island, RBMG
associated acts	Usher
website	justinbiebermusic.com }}

Justin Drew Bieber ( , born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian pop/R&B; singer, songwriter and actor. Bieber was discovered in 2008 by Scooter Braun, who came across Bieber's videos on YouTube and later became his manager. Braun arranged for him to meet with Usher in Atlanta, Georgia, and Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher, and then to a recording contract with Island Records offered by L.A. Reid. Bieber's debut single, "One Time", was released in 2009 and peaked in the top ten in Canada and charted in the top thirty in several international markets. His debut album, the seven-track EP ''My World'', followed in November 2009, and was soon certified platinum in the United States. He became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album chart on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100.

Bieber's first full-length studio album, ''My World 2.0'', was released in March 2010. It debuted at number one or within the top ten in several countries and was certified platinum in the United States. It was preceded by the worldwide top-ten single, "Baby". The music video of "Baby" is currently ranked as the most viewed and most discussed YouTube video. Bieber followed-up the release of his debut album with his first headlining tour, the My World Tour, the remix albums ''My Worlds Acoustic'' and ''Never Say Never – The Remixes'', and the 3D biopic-concert film ''Justin Bieber: Never Say Never'' – which had an opening weekend gross that nearly matched the record for the biggest opening weekend for a concert-film. Bieber released his second studio album, ''Under the Mistletoe'' in November 2011, which debuted at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200. Bieber has received numerous awards, including Artist of the Year at the 2010 American Music Awards — and has been nominated for numerous awards, including Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 53rd Grammy Awards.

Life and career

1994–2007: Childhood and youth

Bieber was born on March 1, 1994, in London, Ontario, and was raised in Stratford, Ontario. Bieber's mother, Patricia Lynn "Pattie" Mallette, was 18 years old when she became pregnant with her son. Mallette, originally from Stratford, raised her son with the help of her parents, Bruce and Diane. Mallette worked a series of low-paying office jobs, raising Bieber as a single mother in low-income housing. Bieber has maintained contact with his father, Jeremy Jack Bieber, who married another woman and had two children. Bieber's paternal great-grandfather was a German immigrant to Canada. His mother's ancestry is French Canadian. Bieber attended French immersion school at Stratford school Jean Sauve.

During his childhood, Bieber was interested in hockey, soccer, and chess; he often kept his musical aspirations to himself. As he grew up, Bieber taught himself to play the piano, drums, guitar, and trumpet. In early 2007, when he was twelve, Bieber sang Ne-Yo's "So Sick" for a local singing competition in Stratford and placed second. Mallette posted a video of the performance on YouTube for their family and friends to see. She continued to upload videos of Bieber singing covers of various R&B; songs, and Bieber's popularity on the site grew. Chris Hicks, Bieber's A&R; at Island/Def Jam, explained the young artist's huge online following to HitQuarters by saying:

"He was doing something different. He was an attractive white kid singing very soulful R&B; hits. That set him apart immediately from anyone in his range because no one was covering or singing these kind of records. But equally important was that you believed in these songs – it was real. And you wanted to hear more."

2008–09: Discovery and ''My World''

While searching for videos of a different singer, Scooter Braun, a former marketing executive of So So Def, clicked on one of Bieber's 2007 videos by accident. Impressed, Braun tracked down the theater Bieber was performing in, located Bieber's school, and finally contacted Mallette. Mallette was reluctant because of Braun's Jewish religion; she remembered praying, "God, I gave him to you. You could send me a Christian man, a Christian label! ... you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?" However, after praying with her church elders and receiving their encouragement, she permitted Braun to fly Bieber, then 13, to Atlanta, Georgia, to record demo tapes. A week after arriving, Bieber sang for R&B; singer/songwriter Usher. Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher. Justin Timberlake was also reportedly in the running to sign Bieber, but lost the bidding war to Usher. Usher then sought assistance in finding a label home for the artist from then manager Chris Hicks, who helped engineer an audition with his contact Antonio L.A. Reid of Island Def Jam Music Group. Reid signed Bieber to Island Records in October 2008 (resulting in a joint venture between RBMG and Island Records) and appointed Hicks as executive Vice-President of Def Jam where he would be able manage Bieber's career at the label. At that point, Bieber and his mother moved to Atlanta temporarily, also the home of Usher and Braun, to record and get counseling from Braun. Braun became Bieber's manager.

Bieber's first single, "One Time", was released to radio while Bieber was still recording his debut album. The song reached number 12 on the Canadian Hot 100 during its first week of release in July 2009, and later peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. During fall 2009 it had success in international markets. The song was certified Platinum in Canada and the US and Gold in Australia and New Zealand. Bieber's first release, an extended play entitled ''My World'', was released on November 17, 2009. The album's second single, "One Less Lonely Girl", and two promo singles, "Love Me", and "Favorite Girl", were released exclusively on the iTunes store and charted within the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100. "One Less Lonely Girl" was later also released to radio and peaked within the top fifteen in Canada and the US, being certified Gold in the latter. ''My World'' was eventually certified Platinum in the US and Double Platinum in both Canada and the UK. To promote the album, Bieber performed on several live shows such as mtvU's VMA 09 Tour, European program ''The Dome'', YTV's ''The Next Star'', ''The Today Show'', ''The Wendy Williams Show'', ''Lopez Tonight'', ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show'', ''It's On with Alexa Chung'', ''Good Morning America'', ''Chelsea Lately'', and BET's ''106 & Park'' with Rihanna. Bieber also guest starred in an episode of ''True Jackson, VP'' in late 2009.

Bieber performed Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" for U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House for ''Christmas in Washington'', which was broadcast on December 20, 2009, on U.S. television broadcaster TNT. Bieber was also one of the performers at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest on December 31, 2009. Bieber was a presenter at the 52nd Grammy Awards on January 31, 2010. He was invited to be a vocalist for the remake of We Are The World (a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie) for its 25th anniversary to benefit Haiti after the earthquake. Bieber sings the opening line, which was sung by Lionel Richie in the original version. On March 12, 2010, a version of K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" recorded by a collective of Canadian musicians known as Young Artists for Haiti was released. Bieber is featured in the song, performing the closing lines.

2010: ''My World 2.0'' and continued success

"Baby", the lead single from his debut album, ''My World 2.0'', which features Ludacris, was released in January 2010 and became his biggest hit thus far, charting at number five in the U.S. and reaching the top ten in seven other countries. Two promo singles "Never Let You Go", and "U Smile" were top thirty hits on the U.S. Hot 100, and top twenty hits in Canada. According to review aggregator Metacritic, the album has received "generally favorable reviews". It debuted at number one on the U.S. ''Billboard'' 200, making Bieber the youngest solo male act to top the chart since Stevie Wonder in 1963. ''My World 2.0'' also debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, Irish Albums Chart, and Australian Albums Chart, and the New Zealand Albums Chart and reached the top ten of fifteen other countries. To promote the album, Bieber appeared on several live programs including ''The View'', the 2010 Kids Choice Awards, ''Nightline'', ''The Late Show with David Letterman'', ''The Dome'' and ''106 and Park''. Bieber collaborated with Sean Kingston on his single "Eenie Meenie" which also appeared on Bieber's debut album. The song reached the top ten in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the top-twenty of most other markets. thumb|left|Bieber performing at the Conseco Fieldhouse, in August 2010 On April 10, 2010, Bieber was the musical guest on ''Saturday Night Live''. On July 4, 2010, Bieber performed at the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular in New York City. The second single from ''My World 2.0'', "Somebody to Love", was released in April 2010, and a remix was released featuring Bieber's mentor Usher. The single reached number ten in Canada, number fifteen in the United States, and the top twenty in multiple international countries.

On June 23, 2010, Bieber went on his first official headlining tour, the My World Tour, starting in Hartford, Connecticut, to promote ''My World'' and ''My World 2.0''. In July 2010, it was reported that Bieber was the most searched for celebrity on the Internet. That same month his music video, "Baby", surpassed Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" to become the most viewed, and most disliked YouTube video ever. In September 2010, it was reported that Bieber accounted for three percent of all traffic on Twitter, according to an employee of the social-networking site.

Bieber began recording his second album in July 2010 in New York City. At this point, because of puberty, his voice was deeper than it was when he recorded his first album. In April 2010, the singer discussing his vocals remarked, "It cracks. Like every teenage boy, I'm dealing with it and I have the best vocal coach in the world. [...] Some of the notes I hit on "Baby" I can't hit anymore. We have to lower the key when I sing live." British singer/songwriter Taio Cruz confirmed in July 2010 that he is writing songs for Bieber's next album. Hip hop producer Dr. Dre produced two songs with Bieber in July 2010 but it is unknown if they were made for the album, which is currently due for a 2011 release. Bieber guest-starred in the season premiere of the CBS crime drama ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'', aired on September 23, 2010. He played a "troubled teen who is faced with a difficult decision regarding his only brother". Bieber was also in a subsequent episode which aired on February 17, 2011, in which his character is killed. Bieber performed a medley of "U Smile", "Baby", and "Somebody to Love" and briefly played the drums at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010. Bieber announced in October 2010 that he would release an acoustic album, called ''My Worlds Acoustic''. It was released on Black Friday in the United States and featured acoustic versions of songs from his previous albums, and accompanied the release of a completely new song titled "Pray".

2011–present: ''Never Say Never'' film, ''Under the Mistletoe'' and ''Believe''

A 3-D part-biopic, part-concert film starring Bieber entitled ''Justin Bieber: Never Say Never'', was released on February 11, 2011, directed by ''Step Up 3D'' director Jon Chu. It topped the box office with an estimated grossing of $12.4 million on its opening day from 3,105 theaters. It grossed $30.3 million for the weekend and was narrowly beaten by the romantic comedy ''Just Go With It'', which grossed $31 million. ''Never Say Never'' is said to have exceeded industry expectations, nearly matching the $31.1 million grossed by Miley Cyrus's 2008 3-D concert film, Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, which holds the record for the top debut for a music-documentary. The film is accompanied by his second remix album, ''Never Say Never – The Remixes'', released February 14, 2011, and features remixes of songs from his debut album, with guest appearances from Miley Cyrus, Chris Brown, and Kanye West, among others.

On February 27, 2011, Bieber attended the 2011 Vanity Fair Oscar Party with American actress and singer Selena Gomez, confirming several months of media speculation about a romantic relationship between the pair. The relationship has since continued to garner significant media attention.

In June 2011, Bieber was ranked number 2 on the Forbes list of Best-Paid Celebrities under 30. He is the youngest star and 1 of 7 musicians on the list raking in with $53 million earned in a 12 month period. On November 1, 2011, Bieber released ''Under the Mistletoe'', his second studio album. It debuted at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200, selling 210,000 copies in its first week of release. Bieber is currently recording his third studio album entitled ''Believe''. Kanye West and Drake are confirmed to be featured on the album.

Image

''The Observer'' newspaper in the UK published a report indicating that Justin Bieber is more influential in the social networking sphere than Barack Obama or The Dalai Lama. According to Jan Hoffman of ''The New York Times'', part of Bieber's appeal stems from his YouTube channel. Long before he released his EP, ''My World'', in mid-November, the YouTube videos attracted millions of views. Braun recognized the appeal. Prior to flying him to Atlanta, Braun wanted to "build him up more on YouTube first" and had Bieber record more home videos for the channel. "I said: 'Justin, sing like there’s no one in the room. But let's not use expensive cameras.' We'll give it to kids, let them do the work, so that they feel like it's theirs", recalled Braun. Bieber continues to upload videos to the same channel and has opened a Twitter account, from which he interacts with fans regularly; his account was reported in November 2010 to have over 6 million followers. Since then he has been consistently gaining followers at an average of 24,000 per day. The accounts also serve marketing purposes; for example, Bieber's music video for "One Time" only began selling quickly after it was uploaded to YouTube. Usher comments that while he and Bieber were both signed at the same age, "I had the chance to ramp up my success, where this has happened to Bieber abruptly." As a result, Usher, Braun, Bieber's bodyguard Kenny, and other adults surrounding Bieber constantly coach him on handling fame and his public image. After signing Bieber, Usher appointed one of his former assistants, Ryan Good, to be Bieber's road manager and stylist. Good, once nicknamed Bieber's "swagger coach", created a "streetwise look" for the singer which consisted of baseball caps, hoodies, dog chains and flashy sneakers. Amy Kaufman of ''The Los Angeles Times'' comments, "Though a product of a middle-class suburban upbringing in Stratford, Ontario, Bieber's manner of dress and speech ("Wassup man, how you doin'?" or "It's like, you know, whateva' ") suggest he's mimicking his favorite rappers."

Bieber is often featured in teen magazines such as ''Tiger Beat'', and has been labeled as a "teen hearthrob". Bieber has released a collection of nail varnishes to raise awareness for charity. Wax statues of Bieber are on display at Madame Tussauds wax museums in New York, Amsterdam and London. His change of hairstyle in 2010, and the consequent alterations to Bieber products, led to it being called 'the most expensive musical haircut of all time; one company spent $100,000 to fix its dolls for the 2011 Christmas season.

Bieber has been criticized for looking and sounding younger than his age, his teen-pop music, image, and frequent media attention. He has been a frequent target of Internet bloggers and message board posters, notably by users of Internet message board 4chan and users of YouTube. Nick Collins of ''The Daily Telegraph'' speculated that "Bieber's character also appears to strike a particularly sour note with his Internet critics, with many remarks commenting on his youthful appearance, his teen-pop songs, his image as a heart-throb to young teenage girls and his manner of speech".

Personal views

Bieber is a Christian, and said he has a relationship with Jesus, talks to him and that "he's the reason I'm here".

Bieber's comments in a February 2011 profile in ''Rolling Stone'' sparked controversy. Asked whether a person should wait until marriage to have sex, Bieber responded, "I don't think you should have sex with anyone unless you love them." Asked about his opinion on abortion, Bieber said he does not "believe in abortion" and that it is "like killing a baby". When asked about abortion in cases of rape, he said, "Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don't know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that." In the same interview, Bieber talked about homosexuality, stating that "It's everyone's own decision to do that. It doesn’t affect me and shouldn't affect anyone else", and ''Rolling Stone'' commented, "It is not clear whether he intended to label homosexuality as a lifestyle choice." However, Bieber has also contributed to the It Gets Better Project, a project started in response to the suicide of Billy Lucas, a teenager who was the target of anti-gay bullying.

Bieber has said he is not interested in obtaining United States citizenship, praising Canada as being "the best country in the world", citing its health care system as an example.

Discography

''My World 2.0'' (2010)

''Under the Mistletoe'' (2011)

''Believe'' (2012)

Tours

2009: Urban Behavior Tour

2010–2011: My World Tour

Filmography

rowspan="4" ''Extreme Makeover: Home Edition'' Himself

Year !! Title !! Role !! Notes
rowspan="2"	2009	''True Jackson, VP''	>rowspan="3"| Guest star
''My Date With...''
	Silent Library (MTV series)>Silent Library''
''School Gyrls (film)	School Gyrls''	Cameo
''Saturday Night Live''
''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation''	Jason McCann
''Hubworld''	Guest star
''The X Factor (UK)''	Performer
rowspan="9"	2011	|	Guest star
''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation''	Jason McCann
''Khloé & Lamar''	|Episode:The Father In Law (uncredited) Himself playing the NBA Celebrity All Star Game
''Saturday Night Live''
''Justin Bieber: Never Say Never''	Himself
''Dancing With The Stars''	Guest star
''So Random!''	Himself
''Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade''	Guest star
''The X Factor (UK)''	Performer

Awards and nominations

References

Further reading

External links

Category:1994 births Category:Canadian child singers Category:Canadian Christians Category:Canadian dance musicians Category:Canadian expatriate musicians in the United States Category:Canadian Internet personalities Category:Canadian male singers Category:Canadian people of French descent Category:Canadian people of German descent Category:Canadian pop singers Category:Canadian rhythm and blues singers Category:Child pop musicians Category:Hip hop singers Category:Island Records artists Category:Musicians from Ontario Category:People from Stratford, Ontario Category:Living people

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Coordinates	53°12′″N45°01′″N
name	Lewis Hamilton
nationality	British
birth date	January 07, 1985
2011 team	McLaren–Mercedes
2011 car number	3
races	83
championships	1 ()
wins	16
podiums	40
poles	18
points	642
fastest laps	10
first race	2007 Australian Grand Prix
first win	2007 Canadian Grand Prix
last win	2011 German Grand Prix
last race
last season	2010
last position	4th (240 points) }}

Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton MBE (born 7 January 1985) is a British Formula One racing driver from England, currently racing for the McLaren team, and was the Formula One World Champion.

Hamilton was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. In December 1995, at the age of ten, he approached McLaren team principal Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards ceremony and told him, "I want to race for you one day ... I want to race for McLaren." Less than three years later McLaren and Mercedes-Benz signed him to their Young Driver Support Programme. After winning the British Formula Renault, Formula Three Euroseries, and GP2 championships on his way up the racing career ladder, he drove for McLaren in 2007, making his Formula One debut 12 years after his initial encounter with Dennis. Coming from a mixed-race background, with a black father and white mother, Hamilton is often labelled "the first black driver in Formula One".

In his first season in Formula One, Hamilton set numerous records, while finishing second in the 2007 Formula One Championship, just one point behind Kimi Räikkönen. He won the World Championship the following season, ahead of Felipe Massa by the same margin of a single point. Clinching the crown thanks to passing the dry tyre-shod Timo Glock in the wet on the final lap, to take the necessary fifth position. Following that, prestigious motorsport weekly Autosport dubbed him as ''Last Lap Lewis''. He has stated he wants to stay with the McLaren team for the rest of his F1 career.

Following his 2008 title Hamilton struggled with less competitive McLarens, in spite of taking quite a few Grand Prix wins he was not able to challenge for the 2009 championship, and finished a close fourth in 2010, being in mathematical contention until the final round.

Personal life

Hamilton was born on 7 January 1985 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, and was named after American sprinter Carl Lewis. Hamilton's mother, Carmen Larbalestier (now married as Carmen Lockhart), is white British, while his father, Anthony Hamilton, is black British, making him mixed-raced, (Anthony Hamilton's parents emigrated from Grenada to the United Kingdom in the 1950s). Lewis Hamilton's parents separated when he was two, as a result of this he lived with his mother and half-sisters Nicola and Samantha until he was twelve, when he started living with his father, stepmother Linda and half-brother Nicolas (who has cerebral palsy). In early 2011, Nicolas signed with Total Control Racing to start a racing career in the 2011 Renault Clio Cup. Hamilton was raised as a Roman Catholic by his father.

Hamilton's father bought him a radio-controlled car in 1991, which gave him his first taste of racing competition. Hamilton finished second in the national BRCA championship the following year. He said of the time: "I was racing these remote-controlled cars and winning club championships against adults". As a result of this his father bought him his first go-kart as a Christmas present at the age of six. His father told him that he would support his racing career as long as he worked hard at school. Supporting his son became problematic, which caused him to take redundancy from his position as an IT Manager and became a contractor. He was sometimes employed in up to three jobs at a time, while still managing to find enough time to attend all Hamilton's races. He later set up his own computer company as well as working as a full-time manager for Hamilton. Hamilton is now managed by Simon Fuller.

Hamilton was educated at The John Henry Newman School, a voluntary aided Catholic secondary school in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Alongside his interest for racing, he played football for his school team with current Aston Villa and England international midfielder Ashley Young. Hamilton said that if Formula One had not worked for him he would have been a footballer, being a big fan of Arsenal F.C or a cricketer, having played both for his school teams as a youngster. He subsequently attended, in February 2001, Cambridge Arts and Sciences (CATS), a private sixth-form college in Cambridge. At the age of five Hamilton took up Karate in order to defend himself as a result of bullying at school.

In October 2007, Hamilton announced his intention to live in Switzerland, stating that this was because he wished to get away from the media scrutiny that he experienced living in the United Kingdom. Hamilton admitted under questioning on the television show ''Parkinson'', which was broadcast on 10 November 2007, that taxation was partly responsible for his decision, in addition to wanting more privacy. Hamilton received public criticism from UK MPs including Liberal Democrat MP Bob Russell for avoiding UK taxes. He settled in Luins in Vaud canton on Lake Geneva; other Formula One drivers, including world champions Michael Schumacher, Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso, also live in Switzerland. Hamilton was one of several super-rich figures whose tax arrangements were singled out for criticism in a report by the charity Christian Aid in 2008.

On 18 December 2007, Hamilton was suspended from driving in France for a month after being caught speeding at on a French motorway. His Mercedes-Benz CLK was also impounded. In November 2007, Hamilton started dating Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer of the American girl band Pussycat Dolls; it was announced in January 2010 that they split up to focus on their respective careers, however they were seen together at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix and at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, on 13 June 2010.

Hamilton was awarded an MBE by the Queen in the 2009 New Year Honours.

On 18 March 2009, Madame Tussauds unveiled a waxwork of Hamilton in his Vodafone McLaren Mercedes race suit. This wax replica cost around £150,000 and took over six months to complete.

Two days before the 2010 Australian Grand Prix, Victoria Police witnessed Hamilton "deliberately losing traction" in his silver Mercedes-AMG C63, and impounded the car for 48 hours. Hamilton immediately released a statement of apology for "driving in an over-exuberant manner". After being charged with intentionally losing control of a vehicle, Hamilton was eventually fined A$500 (£288), being described as a "Hoon" [boy racer] by the magistrate.

In July 2011 the father of Nicole Scherzinger announced that Hamilton and his daughter were engaged to be married. However, this was denied shortly after by Scherzinger on Twitter.

Early career

Karting

Hamilton began karting in 1993 at the age of eight, at the Rye House Kart Circuit and quickly began winning races and Cadet class championships. At the age of ten he approached McLaren F1 team boss Ron Dennis for an autograph, and told him, "Hi. I'm Lewis Hamilton. I won the British Championship and one day I want to be racing your cars." Dennis wrote in his autograph book, "Phone me in nine years, we'll sort something out then." Hamilton drove for Martin Hines' Zip Young Guns Karting Team. From the Cadet ranks, he progressed through to Junior Yamaha (1997) and Ron Dennis actually called him in 1998 after Hamilton won an additional Super One series and his second British championship. Dennis delivered on his promise and signed Hamilton to the McLaren driver development program. This contract included an option of a future F1 seat, which would eventually make Hamilton the youngest ever driver to secure a contract which later resulted in an F1 drive. |width=21%|align=right}} Hamilton continued his progress in the Intercontinental A (1999), Formula A (2000) and Formula Super A (2001) ranks, and became European Champion in 2000 with maximum points. In Formula A and Formula Super A, racing for TeamMBM.com, his team mate was Nico Rosberg who would later drive for the Williams and Mercedes GP teams in Formula One. Following his karting successes the British Racing Drivers' Club made him a "Rising Star" Member in 2000.

In 2001, Michael Schumacher made a one-off return to karts and competed against Hamilton along with other future F1 drivers Vitantonio Liuzzi and Nico Rosberg. Hamilton ended the final in seventh, four places behind Schumacher. Although the two saw little of each other on the track Schumacher praised the young Briton (see quote box).

Formula Renault and Formula Three

Hamilton began his car racing career in the 2001 British Formula Renault Winter Series. Despite crashing on his third lap in the car in testing, he finished fifth overall in the winter series. This led to a full 2002 Formula Renault UK campaign with Manor Motorsport. Hamilton finished third overall with three wins and three pole positions. He remained with Manor for another year and won the championship with ten wins and 419 points to the two wins and 377 points of his nearest rival, Alex Lloyd. Having clinched the championship, Hamilton missed the last two races of the season to make his debut in the season finale of the British Formula Three Championship. Here he was less successful: in the first race he was forced out with a puncture, and in the second he crashed out and was taken to hospital after a collision with his team-mate Tor Graves. He did show his speed at both the Macau Grand Prix and Korea Super Prix, in the latter he qualified on pole position in his first visit to the track and in only his fourth F3 race. Asked in 2002 about the prospect of becoming one of the youngest ever Formula One drivers, Hamilton replied that his goal was "not to be the youngest in F1 ...[but] to be experienced and then show what I can do in F1".

Later in 2004 Williams would announce that they had come close to signing him but were refused the opportunity due to BMW, their engine supplier at the time, refusing to fund Hamilton's career. Hamilton eventually re-signed with McLaren, and made his debut with Manor in the 2004 Formula 3 Euro Series. They won one race and Hamilton ended the year fifth in the championship. He also won the Bahrain F3 Superprix and raced one of the Macau F3 Grand Prix. Hamilton first tested for McLaren in late 2004 at Silverstone.

Hamilton moved to the reigning Euro Series champions ASM for the 2005 season and dominated the championship, winning 15 of the 20 rounds. This would have been 16 but for being disqualified from one win at Spa-Francorchamps on a technical infringement that caught out several other drivers. He also won the Marlboro Masters of Formula 3 at Zandvoort. After the season British magazine ''Autosport'' featured him in their "Top 50 Drivers of 2005" issue, ranking Hamilton 24th.

GP2

Due to his success in Formula Three, he moved to ASM's sister GP2 team ART Grand Prix for 2006. Just like their sister team in F3, ART were the leaders of the field and reigning champions having taken the 2005 GP2 crown with Nico Rosberg. Hamilton won the GP2 championship at his first attempt, beating Nelson Piquet, Jr. and Timo Glock.

His performances included a dominant win at the Nürburgring, despite serving a penalty for speeding in the pit lane. At his home race at Silverstone, supporting the , Hamilton overtook two rivals at Becketts, a series of high-speed (up to 150 mph in a GP2 car) bends where overtaking is rare. In Istanbul he recovered from a spin that left him in eighteenth place to take second position in the final corners. He won the title in unusual circumstances, inheriting the final point he needed after Giorgio Pantano was stripped of fastest lap in the Monza feature race. In the sprint race, though he finished second with Piquet sixth, he finished twelve points clear of his rival.

His 2006 GP2 championship coincided with a vacancy at McLaren following the departure of Juan Pablo Montoya to NASCAR and Kimi Räikkönen to Ferrari. After months of speculation on whether Hamilton, Pedro de la Rosa or Gary Paffett would be paired with defending champion Fernando Alonso for , Hamilton was confirmed as the team's second driver. He was told of McLaren's decision on 30 September, but the news was not made public until 24 November, for fear that it would be overshadowed by Michael Schumacher's retirement announcement.

Formula One career

2007 season

It was announced prior to the start of the season that Hamilton would be partnering defending double World Champion Fernando Alonso who had joined McLaren after leaving Renault. On his debut at the , he qualified fourth and finished third in the race, becoming the thirteenth driver to finish on the podium in his first F1 career race (excluding those in the first ever World Championship round). In Bahrain, Hamilton got his first front-row start, qualifying and finishing second behind Felipe Massa. Hamilton again finished second behind Massa in the , to take the lead in the drivers championship. This meant that Hamilton broke Bruce McLaren's record of being the youngest driver to ever lead the world championship.

Hamilton finished second behind Alonso at Monaco and afterwards suggested he was prevented from racing his team mate. The FIA cleared McLaren following an investigation. Hamilton had both his first pole position and first victory of his F1 career in the at Montreal. He led for most of the race even after the safety car was deployed four times increasing the chances of him being overtaken. A week later Hamilton won the , also from pole position, becoming the first Briton since John Watson in 1983 to win an F1 race in the US, and only the second person, after Jacques Villeneuve, to win more than one race in his rookie Formula One season since the first year of the Championship.

By finishing third at Magny-Cours behind Ferrari drivers Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa, Hamilton extended his lead in the Driver's Championship to 14 points. This was the first time in his F1 career he finished a race in a lower position than he started, and the first time he had been passed on the race track in Formula One. He took pole at his home Grand Prix at Silverstone and led for the first 16 laps, but slipped to third, 40 seconds behind Räikkönen and Alonso.

During qualifying for the , Hamilton crashed at the Schumacher chicane after a problem with the wheel nut caused by the air gun used on his car. He was taken to the circuit's medical centre on a stretcher with an oxygen mask and drip, but was conscious throughout. He was unable to complete qualifying and his existing laptime was surpassed by all other competitors during Q3, thus he qualified in tenth position. After a final medical check on Sunday morning, Hamilton was cleared to race. During a heavy rainstorm which caused the race to be red-flagged Hamilton slid off into a gravel trap, however as he kept his engine running he was lifted back on to the circuit and able to rejoin the race after the restart. His ninth place finish in this race was his first non-podium and non-points finish, enabling title contenders Alonso and Massa to reduce Hamilton's championship lead.

Hamilton won the from pole position following a controversial qualifying session. Alonso had set the fastest time, but was relegated five places down the grid to sixth for preventing Hamilton to leave the pit lane in time to complete his final qualifying lap. Kimi Räikkönen stayed within five seconds of Hamilton for the entire race (excluding pit stop periods). McLaren were docked any constructor's points earned during the race due to the incident in qualifying.

After declaring he had restored his relationship with Alonso, Hamilton qualified second in Turkey. After dropping to third at the first corner, Hamilton looked set for a podium finish with 15 laps remaining, but a right-front tyre puncture forced him to crawl back to the pits, leaving him to finish fifth meaning his championship lead was cut once more.

Alonso beat Hamilton in the Italian and Belgian Grands Prix, leaving Hamilton with a two-point lead in the title race. However he extended his lead to 12 points after winning the in heavy rain after Alonso crashed. Following the race Hamilton was investigated by the race stewards over his involvement in an incident behind the safety car, which saw both Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber crash out of the race while following the McLaren. The trio were cleared on the Friday of the weekend.

After securing pole position in China, which saw changeable weather conditions, Hamilton retired from the race. He experienced considerable tyre wear, notably his right rear, and he ran wide into the gravel trap in the pitlane where his car beached, recording the first retirement of his Formula One career. It was later revealed that Bridgestone became unnerved at the glaringly worn tyres and advised McLaren to order him to make a pit stop, which McLaren refused to do, believing it would be counterproductive. Hamilton himself couldn't tell the full extent of the tyre problem as raindrops were in his wing mirrors. Hamilton thus went into the final race of the season four and seven points ahead of Alonso and Räikkönen respectively.

In the he failed to finish in a championship-winning position, finishing the race in seventh after being as low as 18th place during the race, due to two incidents. In the first he was passed by Räikkönen away from the line before being boxed in by Massa and Räikkönen into the first corner, and 'wrong-footed' by Räikkönen mid-corner, Hamilton was passed by Alonso in Turn 3. Hamilton attempted to re-pass Alonso in turn four, but ran wide, dropping four places to eighth. The second problem started on lap 9 when Hamilton encountered a gearbox problem, which meant that he was stuck in neutral and could not select any gears. The gearbox became operational again after Hamilton switched settings on his steering wheel, but he lost 40 seconds while his car was coasting. For most of the race, Massa was leading with Räikkönen in second. If this had been the case come the chequered flag with Hamilton in seventh place, Hamilton would have become world champion. After the second round of pit stops, Räikkönen stayed out a couple of laps longer than Massa and took the lead. Once in front Räikkönen made no mistakes in the remaining laps and won the race to become the Formula One world champion.

On 21 October 2007 it was announced that the FIA were investigating BMW Sauber and Williams for fuel irregularities, the BMW drivers had finished in fifth and sixth place, and if they were to be excluded Hamilton would be promoted to fifth and would win the 2007 Drivers World Championship by one point over Räikkönen. Ultimately no penalty whatsoever was given to any team as there was "sufficient doubt as to render it inappropriate to impose a penalty", though McLaren officially appealed this decision. Hamilton subsequently told the BBC he does not want to win an F1 title through the disqualifications of other drivers. A precedent had been set in 1995 when Michael Schumacher, then of Benetton-Renault, and David Coulthard, then of Williams-Renault, were both found guilty of possessing illegal fuel in their cars and in that situation both drivers were initially docked drivers points, but for unspecified reasons it would transpire over a week later that constructor points would be docked instead.

Ahead of the world championship finale, Hamilton answered a question about what it would mean to him to become the first black champion, saying: "It will show that not only white people can do it, but also black people, Indians, Japanese and Chinese. It will be good to mean something." Having made few public remarks about his ethnicity since becoming an F1 driver, Hamilton added: "Outside of Formula One my heroes are foremost my father, then Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. Being black is not a negative. It's a positive, if anything, because I'm different. In the future it can open doors to different cultures and that is what motor sport is trying to do anyway".

Team tensions

Hamilton's relationship with McLaren team boss Ron Dennis dates back to 1995, with the first indication that Hamilton was unhappy with his team appearing after he finished second at Monaco in 2007. After post-race comments made by Hamilton which suggested he had been forced into a supporting role, the FIA initiated an inquiry to determine whether McLaren had broken rules by enforcing team orders. McLaren denied favouring double world champion Fernando Alonso, and the FIA subsequently vindicated the team, stating that: "McLaren were able to pursue an optimum team strategy because they had a substantial advantage over all other cars. They did nothing which could be described as interfering with the race result".

The tensions within the team surfaced again at the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix. During the final qualifying session for the race Hamilton was delayed in the pits by Alonso and thus unable to set a final lap time before the end of the session. McLaren pointed out that Hamilton had disobeyed an earlier instruction to let Alonso pass in qualifying, for fear of losing his own position. Alonso was relegated to sixth place on the starting grid, thus elevating Hamilton (who had originally qualified second) to first, while McLaren were docked constructors championship points. Hamilton said he thought Alonso's penalty was "quite light if anything" and only regretted the loss of constructors' points. Hamilton was reported to have sworn at Dennis on the team radio following the incident. British motorsport journal ''Autosport'' claimed that this "[led] Dennis to throw his headphones on the pit wall in disgust (a gesture that was misinterpreted by many to be in reaction to Alonso's pole)". However McLaren later issued a statement on behalf of Hamilton which denied the use of any profanity. As a result of these events, the relationship between Hamilton and Alonso temporarily collapsed, with the pair not on speaking terms for a short period. In the aftermath it was reported that Hamilton had been targeted by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo regarding a Ferrari drive for .

Following the stewards' investigation into the incident at the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix, Alonso stated: "I'm not thinking of this championship anymore, it's been decided off the track. The drivers' briefing has no purpose. You go there to hear what Charlie Whiting and the other officials say. Twenty one drivers have an opinion, Charlie and the officials another, and so it's like talking to a wall".

The rivalry between Hamilton and teammate Alonso led to speculation that one of the pair would leave McLaren at the end of the 2007 season and Alonso and McLaren subsequently terminated their contract by mutual consent on 2 November 2007.

2008 season

On 14 December 2007, it was confirmed that Heikki Kovalainen who drove for Renault in 2007 would drive the second car for McLaren-Mercedes for the 2008 Formula One season alongside Hamilton. In January 2008, Hamilton signed a new five-year multi-million pound contract to stay with McLaren-Mercedes until the end of the 2012 season.

Hamilton won the first race of the 2008 season, the , having qualified on pole position. In Malaysia, he finished fifth after duels with Mark Webber and Jarno Trulli. He had been demoted to ninth on the grid, from fourth, for impeding Nick Heidfeld's flying lap. In Bahrain, Hamilton destroyed his car during a practice crash. He continued with a spare chassis and took third place in qualifying. In the race, after a bad start, he crashed into the back of Alonso's Renault finishing 13th. This led to him being overtaken in the Drivers' Championship by Kimi Räikkönen and Nick Heidfeld. He was back on the podium in Spain finishing third from fifth on the grid. Hamilton finished second in Turkey, and won the a fortnight later, putting him in the lead of the championship.

He achieved his eighth career pole position in Montreal but he crashed into the back of Räikkönen during the race, after failing to see that the Finn was waiting at a red light at the end of the pit lane. Both cars were forced to retire and Hamilton was given a 10 position grid penalty for the next race, the , as a result of this incident. At that race, Hamilton overtook Sebastian Vettel at the chicane on lap 1 but missed the apex and was given a drive through penalty which he served on lap 13, finishing the race in 13th. Despite an error in qualifying that saw him start fourth on the grid, Hamilton went on to win the in difficult, wet conditions. His performance was stated as being one of his best drives to date. Hamilton himself said in the post race press conference that it was his most difficult and most meaningful win.

In the next race at Hockenheim, Hamilton started from pole position, building up an 11 second lead over second-placed Felipe Massa early in the race. After stopping and re-emerging in the lead, McLaren then decided to keep Hamilton out on-track when the safety car was deployed mid-way through the race. When Hamilton finally pitted, he came out in fifth place, jumping to third after his team-mate let him by and Nick Heidfeld pitted. He then overtook Massa and Nelson Piquet, Jr. for the lead, eventually winning by 9 seconds.

Hamilton won the on the road, however he was later judged to have gained an unfair advantage by cutting a chicane when he used a tarmac run off area to avoid hitting Kimi Räikkönen. McLaren said that their telemetry showed Hamilton backed off to let Räikkönen past but Hamilton was given a 25 second penalty, thereby dropping him to third. As a result his main title rival Massa inherited the win. Hamilton's lead in the drivers' championship was cut to two points, and a subsequent appeal by McLaren to the FIA World Motor Sport Council was rejected on the grounds that the case was inadmissible. The Italian Grand Prix was won by Sebastian Vettel in the Toro Rosso. Both Massa and Hamilton failed to capitalise on the weather and each other's poor grid positions finishing sixth and seventh respectively. This result cut Hamilton's lead in the Championship to one point. Hamilton finished third at the next race in Singapore, while Massa failed to score any points, allowing Hamilton to increase his championship lead to seven points.

At Fuji, Hamilton took pole in qualifying. His closest rival for the Championship title, Felipe Massa, could only manage to qualify fifth. As the race began Kimi Räikkönen made a good start from second position, getting ahead of pole-sitter Hamilton. Hamilton moved down the inside before the first corner, out-braking himself and running wide. This forced some of the drivers behind him to go off the track, including the cars of Räikkönen and Heikki Kovalainen, for which Hamilton was given a drive-through penalty. A second incident followed soon afterwards, on the second lap, when Hamilton attempted to pass Massa into the chicane at turn 10. Hamilton pulled alongside the Ferrari and as Massa ran wide into the corner, Hamilton made a move to pass him. Massa then ran up inside Hamilton and the cars collided at the second bend of the chicane, pushing the McLaren into a spin. Massa was later given a drive-through penalty for this move. Hamilton, who had been in sixth place behind Massa, dropped down to last place but managed to regain some places and managed to finish the race in 12th position. However Massa finished seventh after being given an extra point after a penalty was given to Toro Rosso's Sébastien Bourdais. This meant that with just two races to go Hamilton led the World Championship by five points from Massa.

At the penultimate race of the season, the , Hamilton was much faster than all the other cars in the practice sessions, and qualified on pole position. He went on to win the race from Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen, taking a 7 point lead in the World Championship into the last race of the season. Speaking afterwards, Hamilton said "All weekend we have had God on our side as always, and the team did a phenomenal job in preparing the car, which has been a dream to drive." Hamilton needed to finish at least fifth in the to secure the World Championship. After a hard fought race Hamilton was in fifth but, after rain, and in the closing laps of the race, Sebastian Vettel of Scuderia Toro Rosso took the fifth position away from Hamilton. Had the race ended then, this would have given the driver's title to Massa.

On the final lap of the race first Vettel and then Hamilton managed to pass Timo Glock of Toyota, after Glock (unlike Hamilton) had risked staying on the track with dry-weather tyres, despite the rain. This moved Hamilton back up to fifth, ensuring that he finished one point ahead of Massa overall and winning the 2008 title. Hamilton's overtaking move happened after Massa had crossed the line to win. This meant that Hamilton had clinched the 2008 Formula One World Championship, becoming the youngest driver to win the title, as well as the first black driver. He is also the first British driver to win the World Championship since Damon Hill triumphed in 1996.

;Racial abuse On 4 February 2008, Hamilton was verbally heckled and otherwise abused during pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya in Catalonia by several Spanish spectators who wore black face paint and black wigs, as well as shirts bearing the words "Hamilton's ". Hamilton became widely unpopular in Spain because of his rivalry with Spanish former team-mate Fernando Alonso. The FIA have warned Spanish authorities about the repetition of such behaviour. In reaction to this behaviour, the FIA announced on 13 February 2008 that it will launch a "Race Against Racism" campaign.

Shortly before the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, a website owned by the Spanish branch of the New York-based advertising agency TBWA and named "pinchalaruedadeHamilton" (burst Hamilton's tyre) was featured in the British media. The website contained an animated image of Interlagos that allowed users to leave nails and porcupines on the track for Hamilton's car to run over. Among thousands of comments left since 2007, some included racial insults. His rival Fernando Alonso condemned the racist supporters.

2009 season

A year after winning the 2008 Australian Grand Prix from pole position, Hamilton started the season-opening from 18th place on the grid after the McLaren team incurred a penalty for changing his malfunctioning gearbox during qualifying. Hamilton benefited from a late crash between Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica to move into fourth place by the end of the race. He was then promoted to third after Jarno Trulli was penalised for overtaking him under safety-car conditions. During a post-race stewards' hearing, Hamilton and McLaren officials told stewards they had not purposely let Trulli pass, but it was revealed by release of the McLaren race radio communication that this was not true. Hamilton was then disqualified from the race for providing "misleading evidence" during the stewards' hearing. He later privately apologised to FIA race director Charlie Whiting for having lied to the stewards.

Over the next six races, Hamilton qualified outside the top ten three more times, twice qualifying as high as fifth. He scored minor points at the Malaysian, Chinese and Bahrain Grands Prix. A chance for points, and even hopes for a podium finish came at the Nürburgring when he again qualified fifth, but a puncture on the first lap caused by a collision with Mark Webber sent him down to 19th as the McLaren limped back to the pits damaging the floor and undertray. With the car's aerodynamics damaged he finished 18th, last and the only driver in the race lapped.

Hamilton's fortunes were reversed at the Hungaroring, the tenth round of the season. A KERS-assisted start from fourth place saw him take second place by the first corner, before losing it to Mark Webber at the next turn. Hamilton repassed Webber on lap five and following Alonso's retirement on lap 13, he led the remainder of the race to finish 11.529 seconds clear of Räikkönen and take his 10th career win and the first for a KERS-equipped car. McLaren's return to form continued in Valencia, where Hamilton qualified on pole position for the first time in the season, heading a McLaren one-two with team-mate Heikki Kovalainen. In the race a poor pit stop by the mechanics lost Hamilton first place but he finished a steady second behind Rubens Barrichello's Brawn.

Hamilton crashed out of the next two races, the Belgian and Italian Grands Prix, going out of third place on the last lap of the Italian race when chasing Jenson Button for second. This mathematically eliminated his chances of defending his title. In September, at the , Hamilton took his second win of the season. He finished third at the next two races, the Japanese and Brazilian Grands Prix, starting the latter event from 17th on the grid. In the inaugural , Hamilton was quick throughout the practice sessions and qualified on pole, six tenths of a second quicker than Sebastian Vettel who was second on the grid. Hamilton led the race, but retired on lap 20 due to a rear brake problem, his first technical-related retirement in Formula One.

Kovalainen left the team at the end of the year, and like Alonso he was upset with the team's favouritism of Hamilton. According to Kovalainen, Hamilton always had priority for the newest parts, and Kovalainen was forced to carry more fuel during qualifying, reducing his qualifying times.

2010 season

After a difficult 2009 season Hamilton was set out to challenge for the title hoping for a better season for him and McLaren. For the new season Hamilton would drive alongside new teammate, Jenson Button, while Heikki Kovalainen moved to Lotus Racing.

Hamilton finished third in Bahrain, having qualified fourth on the grid. In Australia, Hamilton failed to make the top ten in qualifying, starting the race from eleventh place on the grid. He ran as high as third, before ending the race in sixth, after a late-race collision with Mark Webber. The Malaysia saw him in the top three positions in all practice sessions, but a misjudgement on the weather by his team in qualifying, left him on tyres that were unfavourable for the wet conditions. This restricted him to 20th on the grid for the race, before he came through to finish sixth. He was given a warning during the race, after he weaved four times over a straight trying to break the tow that Vitaly Petrov was receiving and was not intending to block him. After the race the rules were clarified by stewards to only allow a driver to weave once even if they are only trying to break a tow.

Hamilton qualified in sixth position in Shanghai, making up four places in the race and achieving a second place finish, behind teammate Jenson Button. This completed the team's first 1–2 finish since the 2007 Italian Grand Prix. The race saw multiple brief periods of rain, and two safety car periods, which upset the order and resulted in many overtaking manoeuvres. Hamilton was involved in a pit lane incident with Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel, for which both later received a reprimand from race stewards, Hamilton for his second consecutive race after the Petrov incident in Malaysia. Hamilton qualified third for the , and by the end of the race he was running in second behind Mark Webber and set the fastest lap of the race on the third last lap. The next lap, he speared off into the gravel trap and came in contact with the wall, destroying the left front suspension and putting him out of the race. It appeared that his front left tyre received a puncture and blew out but it was later confirmed by McLaren that the wheel rim had failed and destroyed the tyre, sending Hamilton into the barrier. Despite running in the top three for most of the race, he was classified outside the points.

The next weekend at Monaco Hamilton qualified and finished 5th. For the , Hamilton qualified a season's best 2nd, behind Mark Webber. He was overtaken by 3rd placed Sebastian Vettel, but managed to reclaim the place soon after. Hamilton was then promoted to 1st after Vettel and Webber collided with each other on Lap 40. Hamilton's teammate, Jenson Button was then in 2nd behind him and later overtook Hamilton, but Hamilton retook the lead in the first corner after a few near collisions. Both drivers held back then and cruised to a the finish, with Hamilton taking his first victory of the 2010 season, promoting him to 3rd in the Drivers Championship.

Prior to the Turkish Grand Prix in 2010, Hamilton evidently had both of his ears pierced, as he was sporting black studs in each ear on the grid before the race, however despite FIA policy prohibiting the wearing of earrings and jewellery at grand prix, the FIA stated that they had no issue with Hamilton's freshly pierced ears. Hamilton qualified on pole for the , continuing a 100% pole record at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. After setting his pole lap, Hamilton received instructions from his team to stop on circuit due to a lack of fuel in the car which would not be equivalent to the level necessary for a sample to be taken by the FIA. Hamilton was reprimanded after failing to complete his in-lap in a sufficient time, while his team received a $10,000 fine. This fine did not appear to affect Hamilton who won the race and promoted him to lead the Drivers Championship. A day after the Grand Prix Hamilton flew back into the UK and drove Ayrton Senna's championship winning MP4/4. Hamilton had been denied the chance to drive it in 2009 when the car had a gearbox problem the day before he drove it at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Hamilton was clearly excited and overcome with emotion and described it as 'one of the best days of his life'. He also stated that he had 'ticked off one of his dreams' by driving the car.

Hamilton qualified third in Valencia and passed Mark Webber at the start of the race. He went up the inside of Vettel into the second corner but was run out of room by Vettel, jumped over the kerbs and made slight contact which resulted in some damage to his McLaren. When the safety car was deployed after Webber's 300 km/h flying crash, Vettel and Hamilton were on the pit straight. Vettel passed the second safety car line before the safety car exited the pits while Hamilton just missed making the line by about 0.5s. Hamilton passed the safety car after the second safety car line instead of decelerating to follow the safety car. Fernando Alonso was a second behind Hamilton and was disadvantaged by having to remain behind the safety car. Alonso complained on the radio to his team which led to the stewards investigating the incident and penalising Hamilton with a drive through penalty. The stewards announced the penalty 20 minutes after the incident which allowed Hamilton to make a gap before serving the penalty and kept him in second place. This angered Alonso and the Ferrari team as the penalty did not alter the results, leading Hamilton to accuse Alonso of "sour grapes", although the pair reconciled before the next race.

Hamilton finished second behind Vettel and retained his lead in the drivers championship. He finished second at Silverstone and fourth at Hockenheim, while in Hungary, Hamilton qualified fifth but retired during the race due to gearbox problems, losing the championship lead to Webber. Despite running into the gravel at Spa-Francorchamps, Hamilton won his third race of the season and reclaimed the championship lead.

Hamilton crashed out of the Singapore Grand Prix in a racing incident with Mark Webber on lap 35. Webber had overtaken Hamilton during his pitstop, then Hamilton attempted to overtake Webber whilst Webber was lapping Virgin Racing's Lucas di Grassi. The resulting collision ended Hamilton's race while Webber went on to finish third.

2011 season

Hamilton began the season finishing second in the behind winner Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull, despite having to deal with a damaged floor on his McLaren. In the , he qualified second and finished seventh on-the-road, struggling partly due to tyre wear and being tagged by Ferrari's Fernando Alonso in the closing stages. Both Hamilton and Alonso received 20-second time penalties post-race, which dropped Hamilton to eighth place behind Kamui Kobayashi, while Alonso remained sixth. He took his first win of the season in China, overtaking race leader Vettel with just a few laps remaining. He then finished fourth in Turkey, and second behind Vettel in Spain, after pressuring him for the lead in the closing stages.

In Monaco, he qualified tenth after Q3 was red-flagged before he could set a competitive time due to a heavy crash from Sergio Pérez. He passed Schumacher at the start, but was then re-passed at the Grand Hotel hairpin. Later on he tried to pass Massa at this point, and hit Massa's side pod, stopping both temporarily. After this he passed and sent Massa into the barriers in the tunnel, putting him out of the race. He was then given a drive-through penalty. Later on, he was being lapped whilst battling with several other drivers. He braked to avoid Adrian Sutil, who had run wide, this caused Alguersuari to rear-end Hamilton, breaking his rear wing. This crash red-flagged the race as Petrov had hit the wall and injured himself. Hamilton's wing was repaired, and on the restart he sent Maldonado into the barriers, putting him out of the race too. He eventually finished 6th, one lap down. He was then given a 20 second time penalty for his crash with Maldonado, but did not drop him down the order. Hamilton later criticised the stewards after the race. At the , Hamilton attempted to pass teammate Button on the start/finish straight, though lack of visibility in wet conditions meant that Button was unaware of Hamilton's presence and they collided. Button carried on to victory and Hamilton retired with suspension damage.

Hamilton qualified third in Valencia, and dropped to fifth at the start, but he passed Massa during the pit stop phase to finish fourth. He qualified tenth at Silverstone, and moved up to sixth on the first lap. He later moved up to fourth place, but was told to conserve fuel towards the end of the race, and started being caught up by Massa. Massa passed him on the last lap, but Hamilton moved ahead at the final corner and marginally held on to fourth position. He qualified second at Germany, and took the lead from Webber at turn 1. Webber undercut Hamilton during the pit stops to take the lead, but Hamilton re-took the lead after the second set of pit stops, where Webber emerged just behind him and he passed Alonso round the outside of turn 2 to take his second victory of 2011. Another front-row start followed at Hungary and had many exciting battles for the lead with Button. He span whilst in the lead at one point and sent Paul di Resta onto the grass, for which he received a drive-through penalty, but recovered to finish fourth.

After qualifying second for the 2011 Belgian Grand Prix, Hamilton failed to finish for only the second time in the season after a collision with Sauber driver Kamui Kobayashi.

Records

Hamilton has matched or set the following records in Formula One: Most consecutive podiums from debut race: 9 – 2007 Australian GP – 2007 British GP (previous record was 2 by Peter Arundell – 1964 Monaco GP – 1964 Dutch GP) Most consecutive podiums for a British driver: 9 – 2007 Australian GP – 2007 British GP (tied with Jim Clark – 1963 Belgian GP – 1963 South African GP) Youngest driver to lead the World Championship: 22 years, 4 months, 6 days – at the 2007 Spanish GP (previous record was 23 years, 7 months, 22 days by Fernando Alonso at the 2005 Malaysian GP) Most wins in a debut season: 4 – 2007 Canadian, USA, Hungarian and Japanese GPs (equalling Jacques Villeneuve, 1996 European, British, Hungarian and Portuguese GPs) Most pole positions in a debut season: 6 – 2007 Canadian, USA, British, Hungarian, Japanese and Chinese GPs (previous record was 3 held jointly by Jacques Villeneuve () and Juan Pablo Montoya ()) Most points in a debut season: 109

In his debut season, Hamilton took the record of Youngest World Drivers' Championship runner-up, at 22 years and 288 days, previously held by Kimi Räikkönen at 23 years and 360 days. In 2009, this record was taken by Sebastian Vettel, who was 22 years and 122 days when he secured runner-up position in the championship.

Hamilton is the first driver of black heritage to compete in Formula One (although Willy T. Ribbs tested an F1 car in 1986) and the first driver of black heritage to win a major race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in any discipline. In addition, he is the third youngest driver to achieve an F1 pole position, and the fourteenth F1 driver to achieve a podium finish on his debut.

During the 2007 European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, Hamilton became the first driver to have his car recovered by a crane and put back on the track during an F1 race, although several drivers have been pushed back onto the circuit by the marshals without mechanical aids when judged to be in a dangerous position, such as Michael Schumacher during the 2003 European Grand Prix. Since then, the FIA have now banned the use of mechanical assistance to help move a car back onto the track, meaning that Hamilton became the first and the last driver to have his car recovered by crane back onto the track.

Lewis Hamilton's contract for the McLaren driver development program made him the youngest ever driver to secure a contract which later resulted in an F1 drive.

Driving style

Hamilton is known for his aggressive and interesting driving style. He commonly uses oversteer to control the car's direction change. Confidence in car control allows Hamilton to excel in wet conditions as demonstrated in his performance at the 2008 British Grand Prix. Confidence is also demonstrated when overtaking, as reflected in his 32 overtakes in 4 races during .

His aggressive style often attracts the attention of critics. For example, critics argued that Hamilton's defensive weaving during the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix in attempt to break the tow of Vitaly Petrov's chasing Renault was potentially dangerous. Hamilton was quick to defend himself to these accusations, but race director Charlie Whiting clarified after the race that such weaving would favour a penalty in the future.

Helmet

Due to the fact that Hamilton has said in the past that Ayrton Senna was his hero, some people assumed that his helmet is yellow in honour of him. In actuality it was made yellow so that his father could tell which kart his son was driving back in his karting days. Hamilton chose the colours blue, green and red and they were originally in a ribbon design; however, Hamilton later felt that the design was "a bit old hat" so it was changed. In later years a white ring was added and the ribbons moved forward to make room for adverts and logos.

During the 2010 Monaco Grand Prix, Hamilton had an altered helmet design with the addition of a roulette wheel image on the top. Hamilton had said, "...I'll also be wearing a specially-painted helmet for the occasion. When you see it, you'll know why I'll be hoping for it to swing the odds in my favour."

Racing results

Career summary

! Season	! Series	! Team	! Races	! Wins	! Poles	! F/Laps	! Podiums	! Points	! Position
! 2001	align=left		4	0	0	0	0	?	5th
2002	align=left		13	3	3	5	7	274
	align=left	4	1	1	2	3	92	5th
2003	align=left		15	10	11	9	13	419
	align=left	2	0	0	0	0	0	NC
	align=left	2	0	0	0	1	24	12th
	align=left	2	0	0	0	0	25	27th
	align=left	1	0	1	0	0	N/A	NC
		1	0	0	0	0	N/A	NC
2004	align=left		20	1	1	2	5	69	5th
align=left	1	1	0	0	1	N/A
	1	0	0	0	0	N/A	14th
align=left	1	0	0	0	0	N/A	14th
2005	align=left	align=left rowspan=2	20	15	13	10	17	172
align=left	1	1	1	1	1	N/A
! 2006	align=left		21	5	1	7	14	114
! 2007	align=left	align=left	17	4	6	2	12	109
! 2008	align=left	align=left	18	5	7	1	10	98
! 2009	align=left	align=left	17	2	4	0	5	49	5th
! 2010	align=left	align=left	19	3	1	5	9	240	4th
! 2011	align=left	align=left	12	2	0	2	4	146*	5th*

Season in progress.

Complete Formula Renault 2000 Eurocup results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)

! Year

! Entrant

! 1

! 2

! 3

! 4

! 5

! 6

! 7

! 8

! 9

! DC

! Points

! Manor Motorsport

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! 92

Complete British Formula Three results

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! Year

! Entrant

! 1

! 2

! 3

! 4

! 5

! 6

! 7

! 8

! 9

! 10

! 11

! 12

! 13

! 14

! 15

! 16

! 17

! 18

! 19

! 20

! 21

! 22

! 23

! 24

! DC

! Points

!Manor Motorsport

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NC

0

Complete Formula Three Euroseries results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)

! Year

! Entrant

! Chassis

! Engine

! 1

! 2

! 3

! 4

! 5

! 6

! 7

! 8

! 9

! 10

! 11

! 12

! 13

! 14

! 15

! 16

! 17

! 18

! 19

! 20

! DC

! Points

! Manor Motorsport

! Dallara F302/049

Mercedes-Benz in motorsport>HWA-Mercedes

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! 5th

! 68

ART Grand Prix>ASM Formule 3

! Dallara F305/021

Mercedes-Benz in motorsport>Mercedes

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Complete GP2 Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)

! Year

! Entrant

! 1

! 2

! 3

! 4

! 5

! 6

! 7

! 8

! 9

! 10

! 11

! 12

! 13

! 14

! 15

! 16

! 17

! 18

! 19

! 20

! 21

! DC

! Points

! ART Grand Prix

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Complete Formula One results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)

! Year

! Entrant

! Chassis

! Engine

! 1

! 2

! 3

! 4

! 5

! 6

! 7

! 8

! 9

! 10

! 11

! 12

! 13

! 14

! 15

! 16

! 17

! 18

! 19

! WDC

List of Formula One World Championship points scoring systems>Points

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines>Mercedes

McLaren McLaren MP4-22>MP4-22

!

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Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines

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McLaren Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines>Mercedes

McLaren McLaren MP4-23>MP4-23

!

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Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines

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McLaren Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines>Mercedes

McLaren McLaren MP4-24>MP4-24

!

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! 5th

! 49

Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines

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! 5th

! 49

McLaren Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines>Mercedes

McLaren McLaren MP4-25>MP4-25

!

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! 4th

! 240

Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines

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! 4th

! 240

McLaren Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines>Mercedes

McLaren McLaren MP4-26>MP4-26

! Official Web Site Career details Lewis Hamilton biography – McLaren.com [[Jamie Green">Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines

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! 5th*

! 146*

*Season in progress. Did not finish, but was classified as he had completed more than 90% of the race distance. Half points awarded as less than 75% of race distance was completed.

References

Further reading

Written by Hamilton

(also in paperback )

Written by others

(also in paperback ) (also in paperback )

External links

Official Web Site

Career details

Lewis Hamilton biography – McLaren.com

title = Formula Three Euroseries Drivers' Champion | years=[[2005 Formula Three Euroseries season|2005 | after= Paul di Resta}} Nick Heidfeld(1997) | title = Monaco Formula Three SupportRace Winner| after = nonerace not held since | years = 2005}} Alexandre Prémat | title = Formula Three MastersWinner| after = Paul di Resta | years = 2005}} Nico Rosberg | title = GP2 SeriesDrivers' Champion | years=2006 | after= Timo Glock}} Kimi Räikkönen | title = Formula One World Champion| after = Jenson Button | years = }} Juan Manuel Fangio (1950) and Giuseppe Farina (1950)3 wins | title = Most Wins in a debut Formula One season4 wins | after = Incumbent | years = 2007, tied with: Jacques Villeneuve (1996)}}

Fernando Alonso24 years, 58 days(2005 season) | after = Sebastian Vettel23 years, 134 days(2010 season) | years = 23 years, 300 days(2008 season)}}

Danny Watts | title = AutosportBritish Club Driver of the Year | after = James Pickford | years = 2003}} Tiago Monteiro | title = AutosportRookie Of The Year | after = Sebastian Vettel| years =2006–2007}} Jenson Button | after= Jenson Button| years=2007–2008}} Jenson Button | title = AutosportBritish Competition Driver of the Year | after = Allan McNish| years = 2007}} Fernando Alonso | title = AutosportInternational Racing Driver Award | after = Jenson Button| years = 2007–2008}} Sebastian Vettel|title=Lorenzo Bandini Trophy|years=2010|after= Nico Rosberg}} Amélie Mauresmo | after = Rebecca Adlington | title = Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year | years = 2008}} }}

Category:1985 births Category:Living people Category:People from Stevenage Category:Black British sportspeople Category:English racecar drivers Category:English Formula One drivers Category:English people of Grenadian descent Category:McLaren Formula One drivers Category:Formula One World Drivers' Champions Category:GP2 Series drivers Category:GP2 Series Champions Category:Formula Three Euroseries drivers Category:Formula Three Euroseries Champions Category:British Formula Renault 2.0 drivers Category:Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 drivers Category:German Formula Renault 2.0 drivers Category:Monaco Grand Prix winners Category:CIK-FIA Karting World Championship drivers Category:English Roman Catholics Category:British karateka Category:BRDC Gold Star winners Category:Segrave Trophy recipients Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire Category:British expatriates in Switzerland

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