Faith Hill

Audrey Faith Perry was adopted as an infant and raised in Star, Mississippi, by Edna and Ted Perry alongside two older brothers. In 1990, she began searching for her biological family, eventually meeting her birth mother in 1993 and learning that she shared her biological mother's musical inclinations. Through this reunion, she also connected with her biological brother, Zack.

In 1988, she married music publishing executive Daniel Hill, taking the surname she continued to use throughout her professional career. The marriage ended in divorce in 1994. In the spring of 1996, Hill joined country artist Tim McGraw on the Spontaneous Combustion Tour. The two developed a relationship and married on October 6, 1996. The couple has three daughters: Gracie Katherine, Maggie Elizabeth, and Audrey Caroline. Throughout their marriage, Hill and McGraw have maintained a shared rule never to spend more than three consecutive days apart.

Hill began singing at Star Baptist Church at age three and gave her first public performance at a 4-H luncheon when she was seven years old. After attending an Elvis Presley concert in Jackson, Mississippi, just before her ninth birthday, she became determined to pursue music. As a teenager, she sang with the Steele Family gospel quartet and formed a local band at age 17 to play at rodeos and community fairs.

After graduating from McLaurin Attendance Center in 1986 and spending a brief period at Hinds Junior College, Hill moved to Nashville at age 19 to pursue a music career. During her early years in the city, she unsuccessfully auditioned to be a backup singer for Reba McEntire, worked at a McDonald's franchise, sold merchandise, and worked as a secretary at a music publisher. While working at the publishing house, she began recording song demos and sang backup vocals for songwriter Gary Burr at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe. Warner Bros. Records executive Martha Sharp saw her perform with Burr and offered her a recording contract.

Hill released her debut studio album, Take Me as I Am, in 1993. The album's lead single, "Wild One", became a major breakthrough, making her the first female country artist in 30 years to hold the number-one spot on Billboard's country chart for four consecutive weeks. Her follow-up single, a cover of "Piece of My Heart", also reached number one, helping propel the album to sales of three million copies.

The recording of Hill's second album was delayed while she underwent surgery to repair a ruptured blood vessel on her vocal cords. Released in 1995, It Matters to Me produced another chart-topping country single with its title track, along with several additional top-ten country hits, and matched the multi-platinum sales of her debut record.

Hill returned in 1998 with Faith, an album that blended country foundations with mainstream pop production. The single "This Kiss" became her first major international success, topping the country charts and reaching number seven on the Billboard pop chart. The album sold more than six million copies and featured the hit duet "Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me" with McGraw.

In November 1999, Hill released Breathe, which debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 all-genre chart and the Top Country Albums chart. Driven by the massive pop and adult contemporary appeal of singles like "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me", the album sold nearly 10 million copies worldwide and earned three Grammy Awards, including Best Country Album. In 2001, she contributed the ballad "There You'll Be" to the Pearl Harbor soundtrack, which earned an Academy Award nomination and became her top-selling single across Europe. Her 2002 follow-up album, Cry, leaned further into pop and adult contemporary styles, earning another Grammy Award for its title track.

Hill returned to contemporary country radio with her 2005 album Fireflies, which debuted at number one on both the country and pop album charts. The release featured successful singles including "Mississippi Girl", "Sunshine and Summertime", and the Grammy-winning duet "Like We Never Loved at All".

In 2006, Hill and McGraw launched the Soul2Soul II Tour, which grossed 90 million dollars and became the highest-grossing country music tour in history at the time. The couple continued their live collaborations with a concert residency at the Venetian in Las Vegas between 2012 and 2014, followed by the Soul2Soul World Tour in 2017. That same year, they signed with Sony Music Nashville and released their first full-length joint album, The Rest of Our Life.

Hill made her acting debut in 1997 with guest appearances on the television dramas Touched by an Angel and Promised Land. She made her feature film debut in Frank Oz's 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives, co-starring alongside Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, and Glenn Close, and later appeared in the 2015 independent drama Dixieland. In 2021, Hill starred as Margaret Dutton in the Paramount+ western miniseries 1883, a prequel to Yellowstone in which McGraw also starred.

Beyond acting, Hill served as the signature voice of NBC's Sunday Night Football introductory theme song from 2007 through 2013. She executive-produced the syndicated daytime lifestyle show Pickler & Ben from 2017 to 2019. Hill has also been active in philanthropic efforts, founding the Faith Hill Family Literacy Project in 1999 to distribute children's books and partnering with McGraw to stage major charity concerts following Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Nashville floods.