Name |
Kerri-Anne Kennerley |
Height |
|
Naionality |
Australian |
Date of Birth |
22-September-1953 |
Place of Birth |
Sandgate, Queensland, Australia |
Famous for |
Acting |
Kerri-Anne Kennerley is an Australian television personality. She is one of Australia's most seasoned light entertainment hosts. She is noted for her very professional and personable hosting style, and her ability to handle awkward guests and situations with gentle humour and composure. She is usually mentioned among the television industry as Australia's "Daytime TV Queen", because her television career is marked as hosting programs during the day.
Kennerley, known by her initials as KAK, has rarely been out of the public eye since her first television appearance in 1967 at the age of 13 on the children's shows The Channel Niners and Everybody's In on Brisbane's QTQ 9. Her audience stayed with her when she crossed to The Saturday Show on Network Ten, and when she tackled the New York cabaret circuit as a 19 year old singer. Upon her return to Australia in 1981 after a five year stint in the US, Kennerley met her future husband. In that year she landed her first adult role on Australian TV, as the dowdy Melinda Burgess in TV series The Restless Years, a teen-oriented soap opera. She hosted the breakfast TV program Good Morning Australia on Network Ten a role she held for 11 years. During the 1980s Kennerley also performed as a singer, and released a self-titled album (Kerri-Anne) as well as a Christmas album in 1985. Her cabaret singing style was parodied by singer and comedian Gina Riley on the TV comedy show Fast Forward. She also appeared on the television show and later record album Andrew Denton's Musical Challenge with a rendition of the AC/DC song Dirty Deeds.
In 2002 Kennerley returned to the Nine Network where she hosted Kerri-Anne (formerly titled 'Mornings with Kerri-Anne') for nine years, before it was cancelled and replaced with Mornings. She has garnered considerable media attention from the program's dance instruction segments featuring prominent Australian politicians – Peter Costello and the macarena, Cheryl Kernot and the Cha-cha-cha and Kevin Rudd and the rumba. Her more memorable interviewees included the normally reticent Priscilla Presley who discussed her ex-husband Elvis and daughter Lisa Marie.