Shania Twain to Receive Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

Shania Twain will receive the 2,442nd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today in the category of recording.

She will be honored for becoming the top-selling female country artist of all time with more than 57 million albums sold in the U.S. and Canada; multi-platinum album sales in 32 countries; the eighth-biggest selling album of all time in the U.S. and 18 top ten songs, eight of which reached No. 1.

Actress Bo Derek and Rob Light, head of Creative Artists Agency's music division, will join Twain in speaking in the 11:30 a.m. ceremony in front of the W Hollywood hotel at 6270 Hollywood Blvd.

The ceremony comes nearly a month after the release of her best-selling memoir From This Moment On and the premiere of a documentary series Why Not? With Shania Twain on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.

Born Eilleen Regina Edwards on Aug. 28, 1965 in Windsor, Ontario, she and her two sisters were adopted by her mother's second husband, Jerry Twain, who legally changed their last names to Twain.

Twain began singing in bars when she was 8 years old to help her impoverished family make ends meet. When she was 13, she performed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. television series the Tommy Hunter Show. She performed with several bands both before and after graduating from high school.

Her mother and stepfather's deaths in a car accident in 1987 prompted her to return to her hometown of Timmins, Ontario, to care for her younger siblings. Twain changed her first name to Shania, an Ojibwa word which means "on my way," in the early 1990s.

She released a self-titled debut album in 1993 that reached 67th on the U.S. country album charts.

Twain became a star thanks to her second album, The Woman In Me, released in 1995, which unlike her first, included songs she wrote herself. It went on to sell more than 12 million copies, breaking the record previously held by Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits, and winning a Grammy Award in 1996 for best country album. Twain's third album, Come on Over, released in 1997, sold 20 million copies in the U.S., the most by a woman in any genre of music. Twain's other Grammys are for best country song in 1998 and 1999 for You're Still The One and Come On Over and best female country vocal performance for You're Still The One and Man! I Feel Like a Woman! also in 1998 and 1999.

- City News Service contributed to this report.