Keep watching to see how Celine Dion's son is all grown up and seriously handsome.
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00:00International superstar Celine Dion had three children with her late husband René Angélil,
00:06younger twins Nelson and Eddie, and eldest son René Charles. Time has flown, and René
00:12Charles is all grown up. Here's a look at how Celine Dion's oldest son became the gorgeous
00:17young man he is today.
00:19Celine Dion didn't start planning to have a family until she was in her 30s,
00:23which is widely considered by the medical community to be a more difficult age to conceive a child.
00:29What's more, her husband René Angélil was diagnosed with cancer in 1998 and was
00:34undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, forcing the couple to freeze some of his sperm.
00:39However, his sperm count was apparently already too low for standard IVF treatment.
00:44After a specialized procedure known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection,
00:49Dion finally completed a successful pregnancy. René Charles Angélil was born in Palms West
00:55Hospital in Loxahatchee, Florida, on January 25th, 2001. According to David Foster,
01:02a record producer and close family friend, it was a long-awaited joy.
01:06The Dion family goes much farther than just Celine and her children. Dion is the youngest
01:11of 14 kids. The amount of children no doubt stressed the family's already struggling financials,
01:17as their father worked as a butcher for $167 a week.
01:22But we were never poor. I think they gave us the essentials."
01:26Dion told Vanity Fair,
01:28"[We were safe and warm and taken care of. Three or four of us in the same bed was normal to us.
01:33We were given love and affection and support. What else did we need?"
01:36It all appears to have been for the best, though, as now René Charles has a whopping
01:4013 aunts and uncles to dote on him. Dion's sister Liette told People,
01:45"[Celine won't be seeing much of her little boy. Everyone will want to hold him."
01:50Nearly 10 years after René Charles' miraculous birth, his mother gifted him with not one but
01:55two siblings. Dion gave birth to twin boys on October 23rd, 2010. At the age of 42,
02:01Celine was starting to feel the exhaustion of motherhood and had to focus on the babies over
02:06René Charles. She told Hello Canada,
02:09"[My little boy, René Charles, has a fever and I want to be there for him,
02:12but I am breastfeeding the babies every two and a half hours."
02:16Even at the young age of 10, René Charles showed he was mature enough to be a supportive big
02:20brother. Dion said to Oprah magazine,
02:22"[He was an amazing trooper, very sensitive. For every trial, he was with us emotionally."
02:28However, he was hilariously less than impressed with his new siblings when they finally arrived.
02:33Dion admitted,
02:34"[René Charles is looking at them like,
02:36Mom, the only thing they do is look around and cry."
02:38It looks like he eventually came around to the value of family, however.
02:42Celine's Instagram is full of loving photos of the entire family together.
02:47The regional Quebec press had a very weird fascination with René
02:51Charles' hair when he was growing up. Articles constantly asked why Dion let
02:56her sons grow their hair so long. What's more, in 2013, Dion went on Katie, Katie Couric's talk
03:02show, and revealed that one of the twins, Nelson, liked running around in high heels. Dion joked,
03:07"'I don't know how he does it, but I'm not the only one in the family who loves shoes,
03:11believe me.'" The internet responded with its usual tact, but Dion didn't,
03:16and still doesn't, seem to care. In 2018, she launched her gender-neutral line of children's
03:21clothing, Celinununu. As she told CNN, she was inspired by her experiences raising René
03:27Charles and the twins.
03:29"'I thought they were going to go for, you know, the big superheroes. They were looking at
03:35princesses.'" She told CNN,
03:38"'They all wanted to be Minnie Mouse. And I end up saying to myself,
03:41you know what, it's okay. You know why it's okay? Because they're talking,
03:45they're finding themselves."
03:47René Charles was able to grow up without a hard focus on gender expectations.
03:52Dion made sure René Charles and his brothers got to have as much of a normal upbringing as
03:56possible. She told Oprah,
03:58"'I always say to the bodyguards when we go bowling, for example,
04:01if the fans come, don't tell them no, but ask them if they can wait because I'm having a moment
04:06with my child, and if they don't mind waiting, I will be pleased to give them an autograph if
04:10they want.'" Furthermore, she apparently built a private home in Florida where the entire family,
04:15including her parents and 13 siblings, could enjoy each other in peace.
04:19René Charles likely didn't have to suffer through sharing one bathroom with all of them, though.
04:23René Angelil had recovered from his initial battle with throat cancer in 1999,
04:28but in 2013, the horrible disease reared its ugly head again. He underwent surgery
04:33to remove the tumor in winter of that year, but the cancer did not subside. For the last
04:38two years of his life, he would eat through a feeding tube as his health steadily declined.
04:43At the time, René Charles was still just a young teenager.
04:46Celine opened up about her son's experience to Us Weekly, saying,
04:50"'I have tremendous respect for my oldest, René Charles, because he's showing strength
04:54to see his dad this way, because he's been his anchor. When he was younger,
04:58he knew his dad was older, but they bonded a lot. I'm sure it's hard for him."
05:02René Angelil sadly passed away at the age of 73 on January 14, 2016.
05:10René Charles gave the eulogy at his own father's funeral, demonstrating strength and maturity at
05:15such a young age. His speech showed nothing but love in the face of tragedy. He said to the
05:20congregation,
05:21"'Fifteen years is not a long time for a son to get to know his father. You had a busy life,
05:26but we were communicating through golf, hockey, poker, and smoked meat,
05:31and a lot of other wonderful food, bonding more and more as time went by."
05:35He went on to assure loved ones that he would keep his father's memory alive in the young twins,
05:40Nelson and Eddie.
05:41"'You left me now with enough good memories of you to share with my younger brothers.'"
05:48He added,
05:48"'As they grow older, without you being around, I'll make sure to pass on what I've learned from
05:53you.'"
05:54The whole Angelil family appears to have kept this promise and keeps René's memory alive
05:59every single day. Dion told The Sun in 2017,
06:02"'We kiss him every night, actually. We have a little ritual where we say goodnight to him
06:07with a little picture and all that.'"
06:08She wrote to her eldest son in an Instagram post for his 18th birthday,
06:12"'Your father continues to guide you, helping you to make the right choices.'"
06:17Despite his celebrity parents, René-Charles grew into a pretty average teenage boy.
06:22He joined up with the local hockey teams, and he's also into golf.
06:25"'Very proud of him. He's into music, he loves it. He's into golf and he's into hockey as well.'"
06:32There's hilarious footage of Dion, darling of Canada and five-time Grammy winner,
06:36dancing it up hockey mom style at one of her son's games in Montreal.
06:40She's even sporting a jersey with his name and number on it. It's beyond adorable.
06:45René-Charles might have spent most of his childhood in Nevada,
06:48but there is Canadian blood running through his veins. Outside of that,
06:51he seems to enjoy hanging out with his friends, just like any other teen.
06:55It appears as if Dion's down-to-earth parenting has paid off,
06:59and she couldn't be more proud. She told Us Weekly,
07:02"'He's a wonderful young man. He's entered his teenage years and sometimes we can go
07:06really crazy, for some teenagers, but so far so good.'"
07:10As once evidenced by his Instagram, René-Charles is fluent in French,
07:15translating many of his posts into the Romantic language. It all makes perfect sense,
07:19though, given his parents' French-Canadian heritage. Grammy-winning producer David Foster
07:24recalled the first time he heard Dion sing. He said,
07:27"'She was belting out top 40 hits, singing words and she didn't even know what she was saying.
07:32She didn't speak hardly any English at all at that point."
07:35Since then, she has released several albums in both English and French. Dion, along with her
07:40large extended family, has been speaking to her children in French since they were young,
07:44introducing them early. Clearly, they all grew up in a two-language household.
07:48He may have had a down-to-earth upbringing, but René-Charles did get a few celebrity perks in
07:53his life. He attended the Billboard Music Awards in 2016, giving his mom the Icon Award in a
07:59surprise appearance. While witnessing his mom's emotional performance, he managed to rub elbows
08:04with other celebrities like Rihanna. A year later, he returned to the 2017 Billboard Music Awards
08:10and met up with even more stars. He met up with the popular band BTS after they had just won the
08:15award for Top Social Artist.
08:17Are you a fan of BTS?
08:19Yeah, they're pretty good. I like them, yeah.
08:22René-Charles' Instagram used to show off pictures of the young teen hanging with big
08:27names like Drake, DJ Khaled, and Miley Cyrus. Then in August 2018, he took a snapshot with
08:33rapper Post Malone and Khalid at the Yoshiaga Music Festival in Montreal. Considering all these
08:39appearances, it should come as no surprise that René-Charles has a passion for music
08:43and even released some of his own tunes under the name Big Tip.
08:47The music gene continues to be strong in the Dion family. In May 2018, René-Charles dropped six
08:54songs onto his SoundCloud — four original rap songs and two covers of The Weeknd's songs — under
08:59the name Big Tip. The covers hit number one on two of the Canadian SoundCloud R&B charts for
09:04that week. He quickly shared his success with Mom, telling the Montreal Gazette,
09:09"'I played it to her for the first time. I just felt like keeping it on the low,
09:14but she loved it. She was just kind of stunned at first because she'd never heard anything from me."
09:18Critics were skeptical of the teen's privilege as the son of a famous artist,
09:23but René-Charles is not interested in using his mom's connections. He said to the Montreal Gazette,
09:28"'I could have been like, hey mom, I'm kind of into this music stuff,
09:32let's do something about it. But I wanted to prove to myself that I'm able to do it,
09:36not just because my mom is who my mom is.'"
09:38There's no telling where his very young career will go.
09:41"'The girls are starting to come now. I'm starting to be stressed."
09:46"'How are you coping with that?'
09:48"'Do I have a choice?''
09:50It's possible Dion worries due to her own difficulties growing up
09:54and dating René Angélil, who was 28 years her senior. She admitted to Access Hollywood,
10:00"'If I reversed roles, I'll see, if I think of him and he comes to me with this lady who has kids
10:06and she's 45 and she thinks she knows best, I'd be like, take your hand off of my son.'"
10:12Mama Bear instincts aside, she trusts him enough to make good decisions.
10:16In an interview on Lorraine, she said,
10:18"'He does stuff sometimes that, I have to say,
10:21I don't necessarily agree with what he chooses to try,
10:23but as long as he's using his intelligence and his brain, I trust him.'"
10:27"'I trust him, but I'm very, very proud of him.'"
10:30"'You're a cool mom.'"
10:32In December 2020, René-Charles took to Instagram to share a tease that music was,
10:37quote, "'on the way.'"
10:38Less than a month later, Cassie No. 5 debuted. As People noted, his mother gushed over him
10:44in her Instagram stories, expressing how proud she was, saying,
10:48"'It touches me deeply that one of his passions is also one of mine.'"
10:52She also included a link to the EP. The Las Vegas Review-Journal infused,
10:57"'Al-Jaleel has produced an energetic, high-velocity verbal sprint,'
11:01peppered with references to his hometown of Las Vegas."
11:04His mother, however, seems to have always called him R.C. On the musician's 20th birthday,
11:10Celine posted a sweet photo of her placing her hand lovingly on his face, with a caption advising,
11:15"'Remember to never stop believing in yourself, because I believe in you.'"