Courtney Love biography

Love soon began to meet and befriend more influential musicians such as Michael Stipe of REM and Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins.

Tumultuous Marriage to Kurt Cobain

The year before Hole's album release, Love met Kurt Cobain from the band Nirvana at the Satyricon club in Portland. They later ran into each other at another show in 1991. Two months after the release of Nirvana's huge hit album, Nevermind, the couple started up a whirlwind romance. They were married on a Hawaii beach in February 1992. This was her second marriage, having been wed very briefly to James Moreland in 1989. In August 1992, the couple welcomed their first and only child, daughter Frances Bean. As the wife of an alternative rock icon, Love received a boost to her own music career, with major record labels suddenly began to take more serious notice of Love's work.

The couple soon found themselves in legal hot water. Love told Vanity Fair that she used heroin while unknowingly pregnant with Frances. The story touched off an official investigation by social services. But in the end, Love and Cobain retained custody of their daughter.

Love's joint drug abuse with her husband began to accelerate at a rapid pace, culminating in the tragic events of April 5, 1994. Cobain, deeply depressed, committed suicide using a shotgun to his head. His death was thought to be a suicide, and Love made the brave and public step of reading out the note he left behind to hoards of distressed fans at his memorial service a few days later.

Cobain's suicide came just before Hole's first huge commercial album release Live Through This (1994). And while still grieving for her husband, Love was then forced to endure more emotional torment when Hole's bassist Kristen Pfaff overdosed on heroin and died just two months later.

Film Roles

Rumors circulated that Cobain had co-written a large part of Hole's second album but Love vehemently denied this. To protect the band and Cobain's name, Love maintained a fairly professional relationship with the remaining Nirvana band mates and formed a partnership with them in 1997 called Nirvana LLC which would control all Nirvana related releases and try and protect the interests of all parties. However, the relations between Love and the group eventually became strained and by 2001, Love sought to terminate the company.

Not one to sit back and crumble, Love picked herself up and recruited a new replacement for Pfaff before touring with Hole internationally in 1995, appearing at worldwide festivals including Reading. Live Through This had become a critical success and the song "Doll Parts" did well on the pop and modern rock charts.

Still interested in acting, Love took on the role of Althea Flynt, the wife of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt in The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996). Woody Harrelson portrayed her on-screen husband in the film, which was directed by Milos Forman. Love's performance won great acclaim and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.