Nelly Kim Furtado was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a decade after her Portuguese parents, António José Furtado and Maria Manuela Furtado, immigrated to Canada in the late 1960s.
She was named after Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim.
Nelly was surrounded by music, and she started writing songs at age 12. It was Nelstar, the trip-hop duo that she formed in 1995 with rapper Tallis Newkirk, that established her unique medley of pop, hip-hop, and R&B.
Nelly Furtado turned down a role in the 2002 comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a decision she later came to regret. In a Facebook Live chat for ET Canada, she revealed:
"I was supposed to be in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. That was a fail. I was supposed to be one of the sisters or something. I'm Portuguese and I can pass as Greek. I must have been really busy or something. I don't know what happened! You never know what's what. I don't think I ever read the script."
Despite starring in hit TV shows such as 90210 and CSI: NY, Nelly Furtado finds acting challenging. She explained: "I've done a few films, a few TV shows. It was fun but actually really hard. I find it very difficult. I don't know if I find I'm very natural at it."
Nelly Furtado once turned down $500,000 to pose fully clothed in Playboy.
Nelly gave birth to her daughter Nevis on September 20, 2003. The child's father is the singer's then-boyfriend Jasper Gahunias - he and Nelly broke up in 2005.
Nevis and Nelly are very close and have collaborated. They wrote four songs together on Nelly's 2024 album 7.
She married the sound engineer Demacio Castellon in 2008, but they split in the summer of 2016. She then dated the rapper Hodgy (Gerard Damien Long, also known as Jerry), and had two children with him before they split.
Nelly took some time out between her 2012 album The Spirit Indestructible and The Ride in 2017. During this period out of the spotlight she worked at her daughter's school library sorting books, took playwriting and ceramics classes, and helped out at a friend's record store. Speaking on the UK television program Loose Woman, Nelly said she was craving real-life experiences after the success of her first few albums.
"Touring on the road with my daughter became really tiring and I just craved to be home," she stated. "Being a mother, on the road, and managing a relationship while making music (was hard). Although I like to be on stage, I'm actually shy too and I need my quiet time. It's all about self-care, we kind of have to find that balance in our lives."
She took another break after The Ride when her second and third children were born, returning in 2024 with the album 7.
So how does Furtado write her songs? "I turn the mic on and then it's just whatever comes out of my mouth,"
she told The Guardian. "Usually a lyric and melody comes together or sometimes I just mumble until a melody and rhythm emerges. It's like a fusion of rapping and singing, but I always press record otherwise I forget what comes out. Sometimes I jam for hours and go back and pick bits or sometimes it comes in the first five minutes."
On October 24, 2025, Furtado posted that she was going to "step away from performance for the foreseeable future and pursue some other creative and personal endeavors that I feel would better suit this next phase of my life." Her last show was on August 30, 2025 at the Superbloom festival in Munich.
