Birth name: Simon Phillip Cowell
Birth place: Brighton, East Sussex, England
Birthday: October 7, 1959
Profession: A&R executive and TV producer
Most Recent Role: Judge on American Idol
Simon Cowell is known to us all as the judge on “American Idol”. Simon is well known for being brutally honest to the contestants. Well, but this position did not come easy to him, Simon struggled and worked hard to be at the position where he is now.
Simon was born to Eric Philip Cowell, an estate agent developer and music industry executive, and Julie Brett, a former ballet dancer. Not interested in studies, Simon left school early at the age of sixteen and started taking up menial jobs, but could not stick to any one of them until his father got him a job at EMI records, where he started with working at the mail room.
It was at EMI records that Simon really got interested in knowing how this music industry works and worked hard. Soon he was promoted to a position in the music publishing department. There he learnt what all it takes to create a hit music video. Soon afterwards he left his job at EMI to open E&S Music with Ellis Rich, a former executive at EMI, but the company could not stand for long in the market, forcing Simon to take his job back at the EMI.
Simon did not lose hope and once again went ahead to open his own label under the name “Fanfare’ with partner EMI executive, Iain Burton. Simon was then offered the position of A&R consultant for BMG. While still at BMG, Simon became known for giving the music industry some of the biggest hits of all times. He was responsible for bands like Five, Westlife, Robson & Jerome, and Ultimate Kaos. It was at this time that recognition started coming to him. Simon started another label under the name Syco Records, in 2002 which later became part of Columbia Records and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
From its very first season Simon has been a Judge on the American Idol Tv show , which also was his first formal appearance on television. Simon agreed to stay as a judge on American Idol after being offered £20 million ($29 million) per season for another five years.
Other television shows that Simon has been a part of are “The X Factor”, “Britain’s Got Talent”, “American Inventor”, “Celebrity Duets” and a number of others.
Coming down to his personal life, Simon was dating his long time girl friend Terri Seymour. Later it was in news that Simon cheated on her by being with model and socialite Jasmine Lennard. In 2006, it came out that the couple has broken up. Once Simon was noted saying that he did not want to get married as who so ever he would marry, that person would end up hating him.