Demi Lovato went from Barney & Friends to 30 million records sold
Demi Lovato's first screen job was on Barney & Friends. A Disney breakthrough in Camp Rock led to a run of chart albums and more than 30 million records sold, and along the way she turned her own struggles with an eating disorder and addiction into a memoir and several documentaries.
Lovato was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on August 20, 1992. Her mother, Dianna De La Garza, had been a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader; her father, Patrick Lovato, was an engineer and musician from a Nuevomexicano family rooted in the state for generations. The couple divorced in 1994, shortly after Demi turned two, and she later described him as abusive. After he died of cancer in June 2013, she said he had been mentally ill and set up a treatment scholarship programme in his name.
Television came first. She appeared on Barney & Friends from 2002 to 2004, then moved to Disney, where she headlined the sitcom Sonny with a Chance and played Mitchie Torres in the 2008 TV film Camp Rock. Its soundtrack carried This Is Me, her duet with Joe Jonas, to number nine on the Billboard Hot 100.
Signed to Hollywood Records, she released Don't Forget in 2008, which entered the Billboard 200 at number two, and topped the chart a year later with Here We Go Again. Later records shifted towards pop and R&B, and then soul; Confident, in 2015, brought a Grammy nomination, and Sorry Not Sorry reached number six in 2017. After a break she returned with Dancing with the Devil in 2021 and the rock-leaning Holy Fvck in 2022, and a ninth album arrived in 2025.
Outside music she spent two seasons as a judge on the American X Factor, appeared on Glee, and in 2024 co-directed Child Star, a documentary about growing up famous. She co-founded Safehouse Records with Nick Jonas in 2015 and made the Time 100 list in 2017. Her openness about self-harm, substance abuse and disordered eating shaped the 2013 memoir Staying Strong and films including Simply Complicated in 2017.
Source: Demi Lovato
