Enrique "Ricky" Martín Morales (born December 24, 1971) is a Puerto Rican singer, actor and author. Martin began his career at age 12 with the all-boy pop group Menudo. After five years with the group, he released several Spanish-language solo albums throughout the 1990s. He also acted on stage and on TV in Mexico, where he achieved modest stardom. In 1994, he appeared on the US TV soap opera General Hospital, playing a Puerto Rican singer.\n', '

In early 1999, after releasing several albums in Spanish, Martin performed "The Cup of Life" at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards show, which became a catalyst in bringing Latin pop to the forefront of the U.S. music scene. Following its success, Martin released "Livin\' la Vida Loca", which helped him attain enormous success worldwide; it is generally seen as the song that began the Latin pop explosion of 1999 and made the transition easier for other Spanish-speaking artists to move into the English-speaking market. Since its release, the song has sold over 8 million copies, making it one of the best selling singles of all time. His first English-language album (also titled Ricky Martin), has sold 22 million copies and is one of the best selling albums of all time. His other studio albums include: Me Amarás (1993), A Medio Vivir (1995), Vuelve (1998), Sound Loaded (2000), Almas del Silencio (2003), Life (2005), Música + Alma + Sexo (2011), and A Quien Quiera Escuchar (2015). In 2018, he portrayed Antonio D\'Amico on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story for which he received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.\n', '

Martin was born on December 24, 1971, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Nereida Morales, an accountant, and Enrique Martín Negroni (son of Enrique Martín and Iraida Negroni Arizmendi), a psychologist. The second youngest of six children, he has four brothers and one sister. His parents divorced when he was two years old, and Martin spent much of his childhood shifting between his father\'s home in the suburbs of University Gardens, a suburban middle-class neighborhood of San Juan, and his paternal grandmother\'s house nearby. Martin has two older maternal half-brothers, Fernando and Ángel Fernández, two older paternal half-brothers, Eric and Daniel Martín, and a younger paternal half-sister, Vanessa Martín. Martin, in an interview with newspaper ABC, described his origins as Spanish, of Basque and Canarian descent and that the Martín’s left Spain for Puerto Rico in 1779. He also has some Corsican heritage through his paternal grandmother. \n', '

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