Actors - Xuxa

	Actors - Xuxa

Xuxa born (Maria da Graça Meneghel) on March 27, 1963 in Santa Rosa, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) is a Brazilian television actress, singer and children's television show host. Her various shows have been broadcast in Portuguese, Spanish, and English languages.

Xuxa is of German, Austrian, Italian and Polish descent and was the first Brazilian to appear on Forbes Magazine's list of richest artists in 1991, taking 37th place with an annual gross income of US$19 million. Xuxa has dated Pelé and the late Ayrton Senna, both regarded as important figures in Brazil. Xuxa's personal life has often been very public and sometimes scandalous. She had a daughter, Sasha, in 1998 whose birth was televised live. Sasha studies at Brazil's most expensive school, the bilingual "Escola Americana do Rio de Janeiro" (EARJ), also known as American School of Rio de Janeiro, with a tuition of about $2,000 a month. Xuxa's maternal habits are often criticized, particularly as she has been very indulgent with Sasha, throwing her lavish parties. One, for instance, involved a rented theme park, which cost around $1,000,000.

Rise to Stardom

While performing at nightclubs, she graced the centerfold of Playboy magazine's Brazilian edition in December 1982, which led to her being cast in the motion picture Amor Estranho Amor (Love Strange Love, ) in which she plays a prostitute who seduces a 13 year old boy. Some scenes with underage actors in this movie would not be allowed by current Brazilian laws concerning child pornography. After becoming famous for dating soccer star Pelé, she started hosting a kids show on Manchete called 'Clube da Crianca' (Children Club). The show was popular and she was hired by TV Globo, the biggest net in Brasil.

Xou da Xuxa

Xou da Xuxa is probably the most famous children show ever in Brasil. In the show, aired every weekday morning, Xuxa presented cartoon and games, did interviews and performed some of her songs. The show created a kids shows frenzy in Brasil and till late 90s, most TV networks had at least one kids shows in the XOU DA XUXA style. Not only in Brazil, but in the whole Latin America, XOU DA XUXA-type shows became popular (show with a beautiful host, usually blondie, who presented cartoons, etc).

The audience of the show was of kids that jumped the whole show. The colorfull pompons the kids at the audience shaked were one of the trademarks of the show. But the biggest trademark was the pink spaceship. Every show Xuxa started getting out of the spaceship and at the end, she would go back to the spaceship (that's one of her biggest trademarks till now).

Every year she released a new album for kids, the 1988 one 'Xou da Xuxa 3' with her biggest hit 'Ilarie' (who was #1 in the radio in almost every Latin-America country) is her best-selling album selling 3 million copies in Brazil alone.

Also, every year she did a new movie. They were all big office hits, with the Lua de Cristal from 1989 being the most popular one. The theme song for the movie was also a big hit. Her second biggest B.O. was with Super Xuxa Contra o Baixo Astral, that included her hit song Arco-Íris (Rainbow), a hit across Latin America that was the biggest box office success of the year in Brazil.

Shows

Xou da Xuxa ended in 1993 because Xuxa wanted to invest in her international carreer (Xou da Xuxa in Spanish and shows accross Europe and one in U.S.). In the year, she had big health of problems because of stress: everyday of the week, she spented at least 7 hours taping shows for the whole month and on the weekdays she traveled to Argentina where she taped the Spanish version of the show.

XUXA - The American version of Xou da Xuxa flopped and was cancelled after the first season. The show was more than 2 hours in length in Latin American, but was only 30 minutes in the US and the live children audience didn't jump and dance through the songs.

XUXA PARK - Spanish gameshow she presented. It had good ratings. The theme song of the shoe 'Sabor de la Vida' was a big hit in Spain, topping the song charts. Her 'Xuxa Park` album also sold well, being certificated gold. But the show was cancelled when TeleCinco decided to renew their shows.

XUXA PARK (Brasil) - The Brazilian Xuxa Park didn't have any relation with the Spanish one. It was shown from 1997 to 2000 on Saturday mornings and was a modern version of Xou da Xuxa. It was cancelled after a big fire occured on the set caused some kids to get hurt. After the incident, Xuxa was very depressed and didn't appeared in the media for months.

Xuxa Hits - A teenage show, it was shown just after Xuxa Park on Saturday mornings. The show had musical guests and games and was later moved to Sunday and renamed 'Planeta Xuxa' (Xuxa Planet).

Planeta Xuxa - The show was a big hit and was shown on Sunday afternoons with musical guests. The most popular segment was 'Intimecy' where Xuxa interviewd a celebrity about their sexual habits. The show went on hiatus after the fire on Xuxa Park, it came back and was later canceled because Xuxa wanted to work with kids again.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Xuxa ]

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