Diane Warren
Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times
North side of the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard
Diane Warren

Diane Warren

Born Sept. 7, 1956 in Van Nuys, CA

You may not know Diane Warren’s name, but if you listened to pop music in the 1990s, you know her songs. She penned such hits as “Un-Break My Heart” for Toni Braxton, “Because You Loved Me” for Celine Dion, “I Don't Want to Miss a Thing” for Aerosmith and “How Do I Live” for both LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood.

“The thrill is in sitting down with a blank piece of paper and coming up with ideas and then seeing someone in the car next to you at a stoplight listening to your song on the radio,” she told The Times’ Robert Hilburn in 1998. “I'll honk at the stoplight and yell, 'I wrote that.' I've done that a bunch of times. Mostly people go, 'Yeah, sure,' but sometimes people actually believe me.”

Warren was fascinated by music as a small child but said she was never interested in being on stage. By her teens she was writing songs and visiting music publishers with her father, but with no success. Finally, in her mid-20s, she got a job with singer Laura Branigan’s producer, who asked her to write English lyrics for a French song; “Solitaire” became a Top 10 hit for Branigan in 1983.

But because she had written only the lyrics, Warren said she considered her real chart debut to be “Rhythm of the Night,” a 1985 hit for the group DeBarge.

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    Academy Awards

    Year Category Work
    1987 Best Song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" from Mannequin Nomination*
    1996 Best Original Song "Because You Loved Me" from Up Close and Personal Nomination
    1997 Best Original Song "How Do I Live" from Con Air Nomination
    1998 Best Original Song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from Armageddon Nomination
    1999 Best Song "Music of My Heart" from Music of the Heart Nomination
    2001 Best Original Song "There You'll Be" from Pearl Harbor Nomination
    * A joint nomination shared with other people.
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