American singer-songwriter Joan Jett was BOTD in 1958. Born Joan Marie Larkin in Penn Wynne, Pennsylvania, she started guitar lessons at 13, quitting when her instructor encouraged her to play folk songs. She and her family moved to Los Angeles, where she became a founding member of all-female rock band The Runaways, recording three albums including the hit single Cherry Bomb and touring worldwide. She left the group in 1979, forming Joan Jett and the Blackhearts with Kenny Laguna. Their first album Bad Reputation, released in 1980 via their own label Blackheart Records, generated the Top 20 hit Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah). The following year, Jett achieved international success with a rock cover of The Arrows’ song I Love Rock ’n’ Roll, followed by a bestselling album of the same name. Four further albums followed throughout the 1980s, including 1988’s Up Your Alley, garnering the hit single I Hate Myself for Loving You. In 1987, Jett made her acting debut in Paul Schrader’s film Light of Day, co-starring with Michael J. Fox as warring siblings in a rock band. In the 1990s, Jett appeared in the independent films The Sweet Life and Boogie Boy, and had an amusing cameo in the TV sitcom Ellen with the newly outed Ellen DeGeneres. 40 years on, Jett and Laguna continue to perform with The Blackhearts, and produce other bands via the Blackheart Records label. In 2015, the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Despite frequent speculation, Jett has never publicly defined her sexuality, though former Runaways bandmate Lita Ford later revealed that Jett had a relationship with band member Cherrie Ann Currie. In 2010, Jett co-produced the biopic The Runaways, starring Kristen Stewart as Jett and Dakota Fanning as Currie, focusing on the band’s formation and Currie’s drug addiction, in which the characters share a passionate kiss. Jett’s life and work was later profiled in the 2018 documentary Bad Reputation, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Journalist Trish Bendix criticised the film’s inclusion in that year’s OutFest film festival programme, on the basis that Jett had not publicly declared her sexuality. Jett responded to the criticism in a New York Times interview, gesturing to her necklace and tattoos of two women’s symbols crossing each other and stating “I don’t know how much more you can declare”. A long-time resident of Long Beach, New York, her relationship status is unknown.