Rita Ora

Rita Ora is a British singer, songwriter, television personality and actress, born Rita Sahatçiu on 26 November 1990 in Pristina, in today's Kosovo, to Albanian parents. Her mother, Vera, is a psychiatrist, and her paternal grandfather, Besim Sahatçiu, was a film and theatre director. The family moved to London in 1991, when she was a baby, and later added Ora, the Albanian word for "time", to the surname so that it would be easy to say.

She grew up in Notting Hill, attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School and sang at open-mic nights around London, sometimes in her father's pub. In 2008 she entered the BBC show Eurovision: Your Country Needs You but withdrew after a few episodes, feeling she was not ready, and in December of that year she became one of the first artists signed to Jay-Z's label Roc Nation.

Her breakthrough came as the guest voice on DJ Fresh's "Hot Right Now", which entered the UK Singles Chart at number one in February 2012. "R.I.P." with Tinie Tempah and "How We Do (Party)" also went to the top, and her debut album, Ora, entered the UK Albums Chart at number one in August 2012. In 2014 she had another UK number one with "I Will Never Let You Down" and reached number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 as a guest on Iggy Azalea's "Black Widow".

After leaving Roc Nation she signed with Atlantic Records in 2016. "Your Song" (2017) opened the way to her second album, Phoenix (2018), which also carried "Anywhere" and "Let You Love Me"; the latter made her the first British female solo artist with thirteen UK top-ten songs, a record previously shared by Shirley Bassey and Petula Clark. Her third album, You & I, came out in 2023 and entered the UK chart at number six.

Beside music she played Mia Grey in the three Fifty Shades films, coached on The Voice UK and The Voice Australia, and has judged The X Factor UK and The Masked Singer in Britain and the United States. In 2015 she was named an honorary ambassador of Kosovo, and in 2016 she sang in Rome at the vigil for Mother Teresa's canonisation, accompanied by the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra.