Madison Nicole Ziegler was born September 30, 2002 and is an American dancer, actress and model. She first became known for appearing in Lifetime’s reality show Dance Moms from 2011 (at age 8) until 2016. From 2014 to 2017, she gained wider fame for starring in a series of music videos by Sia, including “Chandelier” and “Elastic Heart”, which cumulatively have attracted more than 4 billion views on YouTube. Ziegler has appeared in films, television and concerts, and has modeled on magazine covers and in advertisements for Capezio, Ralph Lauren, Fabletics and Target, among other brands.
Ziegler was a judge on the 2016 season of So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation, toured with Sia in North America and Australia in 2016 and 2017 and toured in Australia and New Zealand with her sister, Mackenzie, in 2017 and 2018. Her 2017 memoir, The Maddie Diaries, was a New York Times Best Seller. She voiced the character Camille Le Haut in the animated film Ballerina (2016) and appeared as Christina Sickleman in the feature film The Book of Henry (2017).
Ziegler was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Melissa Ziegler-Gisoni and Kurt Ziegler, who owned a mortgage company. She is of Polish, German and Italian descent. Her parents divorced in 2011, and her mother married Greg Gisoni in 2013. Ziegler began taking dance lessons at age two and joined the Abby Lee Dance Company at age four, where she trained in tap, ballet, lyrical, contemporary, acro, jazz and aerial dance. Ziegler has a younger sister, Mackenzie, a dancer and singer who appeared with her on Dance Moms, two older half-brothers from her father’s previous marriage, and two older step-siblings from the previous marriage of her step-father, Greg Gisoni, a vice-president at Westinghouse Electric Company.
Ziegler attended Sloan Elementary School until 2013, when she left to be homeschooled. Ziegler and her family have long lived in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and also spend part of their time in Los Angeles. From early 2017 to mid-2018, Ziegler was dating Australian teenager Jack Kelly, the son of former New York Yankees infielder Pat Kelly.
In 2012, Ziegler, along with her mother and sister, partnered with Starlight Children’s Foundation to help raise awareness for chronically ill youth. In 2016, Ziegler and her sister made a public service announcement for DoSomething.org’s Birthday Mail campaign, which enables people to send homemade birthday cards to children living in homeless shelters. The same organization placed the Ziegler sisters on their 2016 list of charitable young celebrities. Ziegler also performed with Travis Wall at Nigel Lythgoe’s Dizzy Feet Foundation gala in 2016 to raise funds for dance education programs for low-income children and scholarships for talented students at dance schools in the U.S.
Since 2016, Ziegler has partnered with Dancers Against Cancer, appearing in public service announcements to raise awareness and funding for people battling cancer. She starred in a 2017 ASPCA Public service announcement, set to Sia’s song “Puppies Are Forever”, to encourage people to adopt shelter and rescue dogs. In 2018, Ziegler teamed up with Sia and MAC Cosmetics, with an ad, choreographed to Sia’s song “Helium”, for a lipstick with all proceeds to benefit the company’s AIDS Fund. She appeared on Celebrity Family Feud on July 7, 2019, together with her sister, mother, aunt and dancer Charlize Glass, playing for “My Friend’s Place”, where they have volunteered in the past, which provides meals for homeless youth in Los Angeles.
