Holly Valance

Holly Valance is an Australian singer and actress who had a run of pop hits in the early 2000s. She was born Holly Rachel Vukadinović on 11 May 1983 in Fitzroy, Victoria, an inner suburb of Melbourne. Her father, Rajko Vukadinović, is a Serb from Belgrade, where he had worked as a pianist and model, and that Belgrade father is why she is on Muzika-Balkan. Her mother is British, from Southampton.

She grew up in Melbourne and moved to the United Kingdom at eighteen. After two years she went to Los Angeles, where she spent seven years, and then returned to the United Kingdom, where she lives today. She holds both Australian and British citizenship.

She first became known as an actress: at sixteen she was cast as Felicity "Flick" Scully in the Australian soap opera Neighbours, a role she played from 1999 to 2002. She then left the series for music. Her first single, "Kiss Kiss", released in April 2002, was an English-language version of Tarkan's Turkish hit "Şımarık". It entered both the Australian and the UK singles charts at number one, reached the top ten in seventeen countries and was a number one in North Macedonia too.

"Down Boy" followed in September 2002 and peaked at number 2 in the UK and number 3 in Australia. Her debut album, Footprints, came out on 14 October 2002 and reached number 9 in the UK; she co-wrote its track "Harder They Come" with Rob Davis. The third single, "Naughty Girl", went to number 3 in Australia. Her second album, State of Mind, appeared in November 2003, and its title song was another UK top ten hit. After it she stopped recording.

She went back to acting, now in the United States, with the role of Nika Volek in Prison Break and films such as DOA: Dead or Alive (2006) and Taken (2008). In 2011 she reached the semi-final of Strictly Come Dancing, and in 2022 she made a cameo as Flick in Neighbours. The playlist is Holly Valance's debut album Footprints, with the videos for "Kiss Kiss", "Down Boy" and "Naughty Girl".