Donovan, Jason

Born 1 June 1968 in Australia, Jason Donovan started his carreer in the mid-80’s when he accepted the part of Scott Robinson in the Australian daily soapserie ‘Neighbours’. He played alongside Kylie Minogue, who played the part of Charlene Ramsey. They left the series after 4,5 years, to pursue singing careers.
Both Kylie and Jason were contracted by the producerstrio Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Jason launched his carreer when he sang a duet with Kylie, who had already had a few hit singles in 1988.
This duet, called ‘Especially for You’, stormed the charts worldwide in the spring of 1989, and paved the way for a successful solo carreer for Jason. He enjoyed many top 10 hits in the United Kingdom, including charttoppers like ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’, ‘All Around the World’, ‘Any Dream Will Do’ and ‘Sealed With a Kiss’, a cover of the Bobby Vinton song.
After three albums and one greatest hits compilation Jason decided to focus on acting and performing in musicals. He performed in films like ‘Shadows of the Heart’, ‘Blood Oath’ and ‘Rough Diamonds’, and the musicals ‘Camelot’, ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ and ‘The Rocky Horror Show’.

Jason sang a duet with Kim Wilde for an anniversary show for Amnesty International called ‘The big 30’ on December 28, 1991. They performed the track Harvest for the World together.

Donovan later admitted that by 1995 he had a serious drug problem, taking around three grams of cocaine a day. In early 1995, he attended model Kate Moss’s 21st birthday party at The Viper Room in Los Angeles, where he suffered a drug overdose. It took him several years to become ‘clean’, but he has been drug-free since his first child was born, daughter Jemma in March 2000. He continued to act on stage and television, and had a role in the medical-legal television drama MDA (2003–05), on Australia’s ABC network. Since 2003, Donovan has also lent his voice to the Buzz! series of quiz video games.

In late 2004, he was headlining in the stage musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He finished his original run on 13 March 2005, but was then invited back from June onwards to play in the final two months of the show, until its closure on 4 September 2005. Following this, he has toured the UK performing a few gigs and returned to the stage in January 2006 to star in a UK tour of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Sweeney Todd’. After this, he returned to Melbourne to star in David Eldrige’s Australian transfer of the London drama ‘Festen’.

In March 2012, Donovan released a new album of cover versions, ‘Sign of Your Love’,  which peaked at number 36 in the UK Albums Chart. Later that year he toured the UK and Europe in a new version of Jeff Wayne’s ‘War of the Worlds’, playing Parson Nathaniel.

Since 2015, Donovan has presented ‘Jason Donovan’s 80s Rewind’ (known as All 80s from 2015 to 2017) on Heart Radio, which airs on Sunday evenings from 7 pm until 10 pm. In 2016, Donovan toured the UK with his ‘Ten Good Reasons and Greatest Hits Tour’.

In April 2019, both Jason Donovan and Kim Wilde recorded commercials for Cadbury Darkmilk chocolate.