Early Life
Yaron Cohen was born in Tel Aviv to a Jewish family of Yemenite and Romanian descent. In an interview, she said her grandfather originated from Transylvania (Romania). Her paternal grandparents lived in Petah Tikva. She was the youngest of three children, and was named after an uncle who had been killed during a terrorist attack.
Though born male, she identified as a female from a very young age. She wanted to become a singer since the age of eight, when she watched legendary Israeli singer Ofra Haza perform her song "Chai" in the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest. Although the family was quite poor, her mother worked to pay for her music lessons, and she claims that her childhood was happy. She came out as transsexual at the age of 13.
The first tragedy in Dana International's life was the death of her best friend Daniel, who died in a car accident. She asserts that Daniel had prophesied that she would someday have a successful singing career, and claims that Daniel's prediction is what pushed her to become the singer she wanted to be. The stage name she adopted, Dana or Danna, is the feminine version of Daniel's abbreviated name, Dan or Danny.
Read more about this topic: Dana International
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“I don’t like your miserable lonely single “front name.” It is so limited, so meagre; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one relation, one blood relation, in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)