FKA Twigs Artistfacts

January 17, 1988
FKA Twigs was a dancer before she was a singer. She trained in a number of dance styles when she was young, and started getting freelance dance gigs when she was 13. She got work as a backup dancer in videos for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Ed Sheeran, Taio Cruz and Jessie J.
She was just Twigs until 2014, when just before her first US tour, a group from that country called The Twigs took legal action against her. She responded by adding FKA (Formerly Known As) to her name.
Her real name is Tahliah Barnett. She got the name "Twigs" when she was young because her joints would make cracking sounds (like twigs) when she danced.
Twigs has a very metaphysical worldview. "We're so much more than our vessels," she told Rolling Stone. "I'm a tiny light inside my chest, which is filled with endless love and possibilities."
Her distinctive look owes to her heritage: her mother is English with Spanish ancestry, and her father is Jamaican. Growing up in rural Tewkesbury, England, there were no other kids who looked like her, and she was often self-conscious about her appearance. She would avoid social gatherings with her classmates, retreating instead into her vivid imagination.
As you can tell from her 2019 "Cellophane" video, she's a really good pole dancer. She first started pole dancing under less-than-ideal conditions when she was a 19-year-old cabaret performer. Years later she used it as part of a fitness regimen, training for up to two hours a day under choreographer Kelly Yvonne.
She took up the Chinese martial art of Wushu in 2016, which taught her how to handle a sword. In 2019, she showed off those skill on tour and in her video for "Sad Day." She named her sword Lilith, after the biblical figure said to be Adam's first wife who was banished from the Garden Of Eden when she refused to be subservient to him. This is the same Lilith of the Lilith Fair.
She started acting in 2019 with a role in the film Honey Boy. Her first big movie was the remake of The Crow in 2024, where she has a lead role. In 2025 she starred in The Carpenter's Son with Nicolas Cage.

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