Benji Levi Madden

With his twin brother Joel, guitarist Benji Madden rose to fame in the early 2000s with their band Good Charlotte, which generated three Top 10 albums and a slew of pop-punk hits before the siblings put the act on hiatus to form a new duo, The Madden Brothers. Born Benjamin Levi Combs in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Waldorf, Maryland, Benji Madden was one of four children by Roger Combs and his wife, Robin Madden. The family's early years were marked by poverty and personal strife: Roger Combs was frequently out of work due to his struggles with alcohol, which eventually prompted him to leave the family on December 24, 1995. Robin Madden was frequently unable to keep the family financially stable due to her health issues - she suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease- that required Madden and his identical twin brother, Joel, to earn money at a series of jobs. In 1996, the Madden brothers attended a concert by the alternative hip-hop act Beastie Boys, which inspired them to start their own band. With fellow La Plata High School students Paul Thomas and Billy Martin, the Maddens formed Good Charlotte and began performing on the Washington area club circuit. The release of their eponymous debut album in 2000 was followed by the band's true breakthrough disc, The Young and the Hopeless (2002), which sold more than 5 million copies on the strength of Green Day-inspired pop-punk anthems like "Girls & Boys" and "Hold On." Two more studio albums - 2004's The Chronicles of Life and Death and Good Morning Revival - followed the same path up the charts to the Top 10 as The Young and the Hopeless, which helped to mint Good Charlotte as one of the most popular acts of the pop-punk movement in the early 2000s. Both Madden brothers kept busy with music projects outside of their band - Benji wrote songs for Hilary Duff and provided backing vocals for tracks by Goldfinger, Ben Lee and Sean Kingston - as well as high-profile romances; between 2008 and 2010, Benji was linked to actress Sophie Monk, socialite Paris Hilton and Playmate Holly Madison. Good Charlotte went on hiatus following the release of their fifth studio album, Cardiology (2010), after which the Madden Brothers released Before the Fame (2011), a mix tape of music the siblings had composed outside of their band efforts. A collaboration with producer Pharrell Williams the following did not come to fruition, but by 2014, the first official Madden Brothers single, "We Are Done," performed moderately well on the Billboard Adult Top 40 and Mainstream Top 40 charts. The single and its accompanying album, Greetings from California (2014), was a huge hit in Australia, and the Maddens made frequent television appearances there, most notably as coaches for "The Voice Kids" (2014) on the Nine Network. That same year, Madden began dating actress Cameron Diaz, and the couple was wed in January 2015.