Walt Disney saw Funicello dancing the lead in Swan Lake at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank, California, and invited her to audition for his new children's show, The Mickey Mouse Club (1955). Funicello got her start on the program at age thirteen, soon becoming the most popular "Mouseketeer" on the show.
After leaving the Mickey Mouse Club, Funicello remained under contract to Disney and appeared in the TV shows Zorro (1957), The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca (1958), and starred in the Disney feature films The Shaggy Dog (1959), Babes in Toyland (1961), The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964), and The Monkey's Uncle (1965).
In the early 1960s, Annette starred in a series of beach party movies with Frankie Avalon, including Beach Party (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965). During this time, she recorded a series of hit top-40 pop singles, including "Tall Paul," "First Name Initial," "How Will I Know My Love," and "Pineapple Princess."
In 1987, Funicello again teamed up with Frankie Avalon to co-produce and star in Paramount's Back to the Beach as parents of a pair of troublesome teenagers. In 1989 and 1990, Avalon and Funicello staged a nostalgic concert tour, performing the beach party music and pop hit singles they made famous in the 1960s.
In 1992, Funicello announced that she had been battling multiple sclerosis, a degenerative neurological disease, since 1987. To assist in fundraising to fight neurological disorders, she founded The Annette Funicello Teddy Bear Company, which markets a line of collectible bears, and developed her own perfume line, Cello, by Annette. A portion of the proceeds from these products goes to The Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases.
Funicello was married to Jack Gilardi from 1965 until their divorce in 1981. The couple had three children. She married current husband, Glen Holt, in 1986.The "sweetheart" of TV's The Mickey Mouse Club, American entertainer Annette Funicello began performing at age 10. The Disney people themselves sensed that Funicello had star quality, building several musical numbers around her on The Mickey Mouse Club and fashioning her own Club show-within-a-show miniseries, appropriately titled "Annette." Funicello's post-Mickey_Mouse career was far more successful than that of many of her fellow Mouseketeers--and the reasons cannot be charged up to looks alone. She also was guest-starred on the Disney TV series Zorro and Wonderful World of Color, and was given sizeable roles in such Disney theatrical features as The Shaggy Dog (59) and Babes in Toyland (61).
While still under contract to Disney, Funicello began appearing in American-International's Beach_Party series, usually co-starring with Frankie Avalon. Though these films were distinguished by undulating, bikinied females, Walt Disney decreed that Funicello never be involved in any "suggestive" sequences--nor were her two-piece bathing suits permitted to uncover her navel. After playing an extended cameo role as Davy Jones' sweetheart in The Monkees' film vehicle Head (68), Funicello cut down on her professional appearances, preferring to spend time with her family. During the 1970s, she became spokeswoman for a popular brand of peanut butter, her commercial appearances constituting the bulk of her on-camera time during this period. In 1987, she and onetime cohort Frankie Avalon co-financed and starred in the nostalgic musical film Back to the Beach.
In recent years, Funicello has been struggling against the ravages of multiple sclerosis; her courage and high spirits in the face of intense pain and decreasing mobility have been inspirational, as well as beneficial in helping to raise funds for further research of degenerative diseases. In 1994, Annette Funicello published her autobiography, the tone of which perfectly reflected the actress herself: discreet, ladylike and boundlessly cheerful.