LaToya Jackson & Barbara Walters (AP Photo/ABC Donna Svennevik)
La Toya Yvonne Jackson is a singer-songwriter, musician, author, television personality and actress. She is the fifth child of the famous Jackson family.
Jackson has had a career as a singer throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and returned to music in 2004 with her Billboard charting songs "Just Wanna Dance" and "Free The World". A forthcoming album, Startin' Over, has yet to be released.
In 1976 and 1977, La Toya and her sisters Rebbie and Janet appeared in all twelve episodes of "The Jacksons", a variety program on CBS. Along with their brothers, La Toya and her sisters sang, danced and performed skits. In 1978 during the filming of her brothers movie The Wiz La Toya traveled with her brother to New York, the first time either of them had lived elsewhere as adults. The two shared an apartment in New York. La Toya and her brother Michael were very close through younger years. Michael and La Toya did not move out of the family's Encino home until they were 30 and 32 respectively.
By 1979, La Toya and her sisters had formed a short-lived girl group. However, they never performed live and soon separated due to creative differences about the act's future direction. As a consequence no related material was ever released by the trio. The next year she began work on her first solo album.
On January 10, 2007, the reality TV show Armed and Famous premiered on CBS starring Jackson and other celebrities. The program documented Jackson's basic training and service as a reserve police officer with the Muncie Police Department. Jackson maintains her badge by continuing to volunteer as a deputy.
On the show, Jackson demonstrated her phobia of cats, after she began hysterically screaming and locked herself in a squad car. This fear, she revealed, was due to a childhood memory in which a relative was attacked by a cat. She underwent on-screen therapy to try to relieve her of this phobia. A single entitled "Armed and Famous" was planned, but the title was changed to "I Don't Play That" shortly before it was sent to radio stations, where it failed to take off, on January 29, 2007, due to CBS' cancellation of the show.
In January 2009, Jackson appeared as a contestant on the British television program Celebrity Big Brother. She was the second member of the Jackson family to be on the show, the first being her brother Jermaine in 2007.
In 2009 it was heavily rumored that Jackson would appear in a season of Strictly Come Dancing. She denied the rumors for the 2009 season but did not rule out that she would eventually appear on the show or in Dancing with the Stars.
Also in 2009 Jackson made a series of television appearances following the passing of her brother Michael Jackson - including The View and 20/20 - to discuss the circumstances surrounding his death and her tribute single to him.
A few past Jackson clan or Michael Jackson-related "tid bits" ~ Jackson clan in comedy, moonwalking, Michael Jackson's children, Capt. EO, a Michael Jackson tribute, Madame Tussauds
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