Annette Funicello Biography

Actress. Born October 22, 1942, in Utica, New York. Funicello and her family moved to Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley when she was four years old. Best known for her role in the Mickey Mouse Club and in teenage beach movies of the early 1960s.

Walt Disney saw Funicello dancing the lead in Swan Lake at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank, California, and invited her to audition for his new children's show, The Mickey Mouse Club (1955). Funicello got her start on the program at age thirteen, soon becoming the most popular "Mouseketeer" on the show.

After leaving the Mickey Mouse Club, Funicello remained under contract to Disney and appeared in the TV shows Zorro (1957), The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca (1958), and starred in the Disney feature films The Shaggy Dog (1959), Babes in Toyland (1961), The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964), and The Monkey's Uncle (1965).

In the early 1960s, Annette starred in a series of beach party movies with Frankie Avalon, including Beach Party (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965). During this time, she recorded a series of hit top-40 pop singles, including "Tall Paul," "First Name Initial," "How Will I Know My Love," and "Pineapple Princess."

In 1987, Funicello again teamed up with Frankie Avalon to co-produce and star in Paramount's Back to the Beach as parents of a pair of troublesome teenagers. In 1989 and 1990, Avalon and Funicello staged a nostalgic concert tour, performing the beach party music and pop hit singles they made famous in the 1960s.

In 1992, Funicello announced that she had been battling multiple sclerosis, a degenerative neurological disease, since 1987. To assist in fundraising to fight neurological disorders, she founded The Annette Funicello Teddy Bear Company, which markets a line of collectible bears, and developed her own perfume line, Cello, by Annette. A portion of the proceeds from these products goes to The Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases.

Funicello was married to Jack Gilardi from 1965 until their divorce in 1981. The couple had three children. She married current husband, Glen Holt, in 1986.