About Him
Early Life
Troye Sivan Mellet was born on June 6, 1995 in Johannesburg, South Africa. His family moved to Australia when he was two years old due to rising crime in South Africa. Sivan currently lives in Perth, Western Australia with his parents and three siblings Steele, Sage and Tyde. He is Jewish (his father was born to a Jewish family and his mother converted). Troye attended Carmel School until 2009 when he started distance education (home school). Troye’s middle name is “Sivan” and has embraced it as his stage name.
Sivan is openly gay. He came out to his family in 2010 at the age of 15 and publicly via a YouTube video on August 7, 2013.
Music
Troye sang at the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Channel Seven Perth Telethon. His 2006 performance included a duet with Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian. Sivan made it to the grand finals of StarSearch 2007. His debut EP, Dare to Dream, was released in February 2008. In February 2010, he opened “We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube Edition)”, the collaborative music charity video produced by Lisa Lavie to help raise money for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
On 5 June 2013, Troye was signed to EMI Australia, a Universal Music Australia label (but kept it a secret until a year later). On 15 August 2014 he released a five-song EP entitled TRXYE, led by its first single “Happy Little Pill”, which was released on 25 July 2014. TRXYE debuted at No. 1 on iTunes in over 55 countries. The album debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 the following week, scoring Sivan his first Top 10 album. “Happy Little Pill” peaked at number 10 on the ARIA Singles Chart and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association for shipments exceeding 35,000 copies. Troye released his second major-label EP, Wild on 4 September 2015. During September and October 2015, he released a music video trilogy with a continuous theme entitled Blue Neighbourhood Trilogy comprising the three songs “Wild”, “Fools” and “Talk Me Down”. Troye gave us a taste of his debut studio album Blue Neighbourhood with his 2015 tour, Troye Sivan Live . The album was released on 4 December 2015. Troye went on a longer world tour in 2016 including bigger venues.
Acting
In 2007, Troye starred as Oliver Twist in a production of Oliver! at the Regal Theatre. In 2008, he was cast in a West Australian short film, Betrand the Terrible. In February 2008, Sivan was cast as young James Howlett in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Troye got the part after videos of his telethon performance were posted on YouTube, catching the attention of a Hollywood agent who contacted him and asked to send in an audition tape. In July 2009, he auditioned successfully for the lead role in Spud as John “Spud” Milton, a film adaptation of the 2005 novel by South African author John van de Ruit. Filming took place in South Africa from early March to mid-April 2010. The film was released in South Africa on 3 December 2010 and was later nominated for six SAFTAs, including a Best Lead Actor in a Feature Film nomination for Sivan.
Troye appeared in the West Australian season of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot which opened on 28 May 2010. Sivan shared the role of “Boy” with Craig Hyde-Smith, alternating nights. In June 2012, he returned to South Africa reprise his role as John “Spud” Milton in Spud 2: The Madness Continues, which was released in South Africa on 21 June 2013. Sivan also starred in the third film in the series, Spud 3: Learning to Fly, released on 28 November 2014.
YouTube
In September 2012, Troye began creating video blogs on the video sharing site YouTube, after having only sung on the site since 2007. At the time of posting his first vlog, he had accumulated 27,000 subscribers in his five years since joining YouTube on 1 October 2007. As of October 2015, Sivan has over 3.6 million subscribers and over 213 million total views across his YouTube videos. His YouTube channel is the 3rd most subscribed channel in Australia and the 271st most subscribed channel overall.