Jason Donovan

Born in Australia and now based in London, Jason Donovan built his reputation as a singer and actor across television, film, and stage after first gaining notice in the soap opera Neighbors. The son of actor Terence Donovan and television presenter Sue MacIntosh, he has moved fluidly among soap operas, motion pictures, recordings, and theatrical productions in both his homeland and the United Kingdom.

The long-running series Neighbors, a hit in Australia and Britain alike, introduced Donovan and fellow cast member Kylie Minogue to the production team Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Those songwriters shaped him into a teen idol whose late-eighties and early-nineties output yielded multiple chart successes. While four of those singles reached the Australian Top Ten, among them the chart-topping duet “Especially for You” with Minogue, his British run proved even stronger, delivering three straight number-one singles. His debut album, Ten Good Reasons, climbed to number five on the Australian charts.

In the early nineties Donovan turned toward acting, taking roles in the film Blood Oath and the mini-series The Heroes and Shadows of the Heart. He next appeared in stage productions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the former supplying the number-one single “Any Dream Will Do.” The year 1993 brought All Around the World, his initial release on Polydor Records, after which he largely set aside studio work for the next fifteen years to concentrate on performance. Following further appearances in musicals and on television, he returned to recording with the 2008 album Let It Be Me, a set of covers drawn from nineteen-fifties and sixties standards. Another collection of covers arrived in 2012 as Soundtrack of the 80s, featuring favorite tracks from that decade alongside three newly written songs.