Sexy Celebrity Dancer Willa Ford Photos, Willa Ford' s Biogr
Willa Ford, whose real name is Amanda Lee Williford, appeared as a ``celebrity dancer'' last year on ABC's ``Dancing With the Stars'' and has hosted several reality television shows.
Born on January 22, 1981, in Ruskin, FL, Willa Ford (born Amanda Lee Williford) began singing at the age of eight with the Tampa Bay Children's Choir and by the time she was 11, she joined her first professional group, the Tampa-based performing arts troupe Entertainment Revue.
The group, which consisted of 20 girls ranging in age from five to 16, performed throughout the region at fairs and conventions, as well as at Walt Disney World and Busch Gardens. At 15, she briefly became part of a vocal quartet called FLA but soon left them for a solo career. Performing under the name Mandah, she was signed to MCA, who intended to market her as a clean-cut teen act. During her time at the label, she changed her stage name to Willa Ford to avoid confusion with Mandy Moore. MCA later dropped her, in part because of the negative publicity that conflicted with their intended good-girl image; Ford signed with Atlantic, who placed one of her songs on a Pokémon soundtrack and then released her debut album, Willa Was Here in 2001. The music is pure teen pop with its use of vocoders, pop/R&B grooves, and dance beats, but the lead single, "I Wanna Be Bad," and the highly sexualized cover art seem to indicate that Atlantic is embracing Ford's bad-girl image instead of trying to counter it.
Not long after her debut album Willa Was Here became a hit, the then 20-year-old singer decided to put her music career on hold. "Music became this corporate world where you have to compromise everything, and I'm uncontrollable," she says. "I was recording in New York, and I got in a cab, called home and said, 'I'm finished. I’m not doing this anymore.' I mean, I had so much more fun taking my clothes off for Playboy than I ever had sitting in a studio writing a song."
Recently Willa focused on her television career and hosted the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. Additional television credits include featured spots on HBO's The Mind of the Married Man, MTV's I Bet You Will, and WB's Raising Dad.
Willa, has decided to go back to her musical roots and is currently in the studio completing her latest album.
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