'Dancing With the Stars' Season 14: Getting to Know Katherine Jenkins
Katherine Jenkins makes the complicated moves look easy.
Jenkins, one of the breakout favorites on season 14 of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," has wowed judges and the audience with her dancing skills and personal charm.
Her life, though, wasn't always as perfect as it might appear today.
In an interview with "Good Morning America"'s Cameron Mathison, she revealed that high school was a difficult time.
"I was such a geek in school," the 31-year-old Welsh opera singer said.
She lost her father to cancer when she was 15 years old, and made waves when she confessed to the Daily Mail that she had used cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis.
In the 2008 interview, Jenkins told the Mail that her drug use was due to peer pressure and ignorance.
"I was young and silly and never really thought about the consequences,' the mezzo-soprano said, adding: "I did not know I'd ever become famous, and I was at an age where you don't care about the future much, do you?"
But when she got her big break in the music business, she left the drug use behind.
She's since released eight albums and sold six million of copies.
Her musical interests are diverse.
"I sing a mixture of everything from opera, folk music, Broadway. It's a mix of things," she said.
She got hooked on the classics after learning to sing at church as a child in Neath, the Welsh town where she and her sister were raised.
Her career soared over the years, and her personal life blossomed. Jenkins fell in love with British TV host Gethin Jones, but the pair called off their engagement last year.
"What kind of guy - what is your typical type, if you have a type?" Mathison asked her.
She replied: "Oh, somebody that's going to make me laugh. I think that's the most important thing."
Jenkins' dancing skills have placed her at the top of the leader board for the first two weeks of the competition.
Judge Bruno Tonioli raved about her sexy jive on Monday, but during the rehearsals for that particular dance, Jenkins' partner Mark Ballas - a two -time "Dancing" champion - found it a challenge to get her to do the sexy moves.
Of the sensual image she projected that night on the dance floor, she told Mathison: "This is not me at all!"
The rehearsals have been hard work for Jenkins.
"I was just amazed by how much my … feet are aching; blisters everywhere, you know, all over my feet," she said.
When she has downtime, Jenkins loves to indulge her guilty pleasures, which include pizza and what she calls "trashy TV."
She also loves to run, and plans to compete in a half-marathon this year in London.
