Julianne Hough (born July 20, 1988) is an American professional ballroom dancer, country music singer and actress. She is most widely known for being a two-time winner of ABC's Dancing with the Stars. She earned a Creative Arts Primetime Emmy nomination in 2007 for choreography. ABC's 20/20 called her one of the "very best dancers on the planet." Hough's brother, Derek, is also on Dancing with the Stars and is a three-time winner himself. Hough was signed to Mercury Nashville Records in December 2007. Her self-titled debut album was released May 20, 2008, debuting at #1 on the Billboard Country Album chart and #3 on the Billboard 200. It sold 67,000 copies its first week, and has sold over 320,000 total copies. On October 12, 2008, she released a holiday album, Sounds of the Season: The Julianne Hough Holiday Collection, which as of January 5, 2009, had sold 157,000 copies. She is starring in her first major motion picture film remake of Footloose that is scheduled for release on October 14, 2011 in theaters.Hough was born in Sandy, Utah. She grew up the last of five children in a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) family in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Her parents are Mari Anne (née Heaton) and Bruce Robert Hough, who was twice chairman of the Utah Republican Party. Her brother, Derek Hough, is also a professional dancer. She also has three older sisters, Sharee, Marabeth, and Katherine. All four of Hough's grandparents were dancers, and her parents met while on a ballroom dancing team in college, in Idaho.
