A string of controversies and a career that began at 14: The life of Kerri-Anne Kennerley.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley is TV royalty.

While her most recent stint on screen has been a few days in the South African jungle for I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, the 69-year-old journalist and media personality has been a main fixture on Australian television screens for more than 50 years.

Kennerley – or KAK, as she's known – kicked off her career when she was just 14 years old as a host on children's show Everybody In. But it was in 1981, when she scored her co-hosting gig on Good Morning Australia, that KAK became a household name. 

Watch: Kerri-Anne on No Filter. Post continues after video. 

From a young age, it was clear she was meant for a career in the entertainment industry.

"The only advice I could ever give her is to stay natural and be herself," her mother, Grace, said on This Is Your Life. 

KAK moved to the US for a short time and while there, married record producer Jimmy Miller, whom she alleged some years later had been violent towards her during their marriage. The abuse was so life-threatening, she claimed, that Kennerley had pulled a gun on him to stop the beatings.

"You know, you just realise that when somebody is 6ft2, crazy off their head – it doesn’t matter which room you run into, all you do is close your eyes and wait for it to be over," she told Sunday Night in 2017.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley on Sunday Night. Image: Sunday Night.

"It’s pointless. I think eventually you just go, 'I think I will be dead.'"

Upon recollection, Kennerley said he was "slightly mad" and "almost exotic" in nature. 

"He was this really almost exotic, slightly mad, born-and-bred New Yorker. He built recording studios where I could record," she explained. "It was terribly glamorous. And I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and got reeled in."

The TV star sought support from her friend John Kennerley, who helped her leave the abusive marriage. In 1984, the pair married. He had two children from a previous marriage.

Of course, the role that saw KAK crowned as Australia's small-screen queen was as co-host of Good Morning Australia. In 1981, at just 28 years of age, Kennerley was snapped up by Network 10 for the career-making gig. 

She was the face of the show for more than a decade.

Despite her success, Kennerley insists breakfast television was not taken seriously in the 1980s. 

"In those days, people thought you had to be a moron to actually watch TV in the morning," she told TV Week. "It was cartoons for the kids while you got dressed for work."

Kennerley also put her singing talents in the spotlight in 1995, releasing a self-titled album, followed by a Christmas album. In 1996, she joined daytime TV show Midday, staying with the series for two years and scoring herself three Gold Logie nominations.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley's self-titled album. Image: Ten.

In 2002, Kennerley was given something many can only dream of: her very own show. Mornings With Kerri-Anne became an instant hit with morning TV viewers and remained popular until it finished up in 2011.

The nine-year hosting stint was eventually replaced with Mornings, hosted by Sonia Kruger and David Campbell.

Listen to this episode of No Filter with Kerri-Anne Kennerley. Post continues after audio. 

But we saw Kennerley again in 2012 on Dancing With The Stars, with Perth-born dance partner Carmelo Pizzino. The pair barely glided through the competition.

"Apart from physically standing up to do this for three, four, five hours a day, you then have to remember the technique and the steps all in a row, so I sort of ended up spinning the wheel for a week and a half just thinking, 'What have I done, this is never going to happen,'" she told The West in 2012. 

"Yes, I did a bit of singing, a bit of dancing, but nothing to do with this discipline; it's completely different."

After her stint in the dancing competition, Kennerley was planning her big return to TV with a new prime-time program for Channel Seven. However, tragedy struck when she learnt she had breast cancer, putting a hold on her career. 

"I was in the Channel 7 studio post-Dancing With the Stars, and I had already had a biopsy the day before. I was waiting for the results the next day," she told 7 News in 2020. "I knew I had it. It was just typical. I just knew. I got in early — mine was very, very early, so I’m one of the lucky ones.

"But I remember I was in the studio dancing around, and I was still scared to death because I knew what the result would be."

Kerri-Anne Kennerley on Dancing With The Stars. Image: Seven.

While she's enjoyed a successful career in the limelight, Kennerley has also been criticised several times over for making offensive remarks.

In 2010, a year before her daytime show ended, reports began to circulate about Kennerley calling women who socialise with footballers "strays". At the time, she was discussing sexual assault allegations made against two Collingwood Football players.

Later, in 2016, Kennerley spoke out in support of Sonia Kruger, a TV host on Channel Nine who was publicly criticised for calling for a ban on Muslim immigration. 

In spite of the controversy, Kennerley was announced as a new co-host on Studio 10 in September 2018, which only served to give her another platform for her opinions. In January 2019, the TV host argued with guest panellist Yumi Stynes about Invasion Day protestors and argued that First Nations activists should pay more attention to "five-year-olds being raped" in the Outback — an abhorrent comment Stynes did not take lightly. 

But she didn't stop there. 

During climate-change protests related to the Extinction Rebellion in October 2019, Kennerley said that people should run over the protesters with their cars as a solution to stopping the campaign from oncoming traffic.

"No emergency services should help them, nobody should do anything. Leave them there, and you just put little witch's hats around them or use them as speed bumps," she said on Studio 10. 

Kennerley also implied they could be starved in prison.

She later doubled down on the comments,saying she would "not be put upon by woke people".

"I'm so last century. I am so not woke and I will not be put upon by woke people," she explained to Now To Love in 2022. "I will not be told how to live, how to speak, how to be by other people who won't tolerate who I am.

"I never intended on being controversial," she continued. "But I think people were surprised because for 30 years prior, I was the interviewer – and all of a sudden, I got to Studio 10 and they wanted my opinion and people were like, 'She said what?!' But they can tweet away all they want – I don't read it, so it doesn't exist. 

"I've grown very used to myself, and I quite like who I am. Nobody can take me down."

In 2019, Kennerley found herself facing loss with the death her husband. His passing came three years after a life-altering fall left him in a coma for weeks.

"It’s with a heavy heart and awful sadness that I let you know that my beautiful husband John passed away last night," she wrote on Instagram following his death. 

"As you all know, John has faced some tremendous challenges over the past few years and with each he has been extraordinarily brave and determined to overcome those hurdles and live a normal life. I want to thank everyone at St Vincent’s Hospital for the beautiful care they have provided to John in his last days.

"John passed away peacefully with his son Simon and me by his side," she added.

“John, you were the love of my life."

Kerri-Anne and John Kennerley. Image: Instagram @kerriannekennerley.

A few months later, in 2020, it was announced that Kennerley was one of 25 Network Ten stars who would be made redundant because of network budget cuts. 

Months on from her husband's death, the star admitted to feeling "cheated" after losing him so soon, at the age of 78.

"I feel cheated, not just for myself and my loss but also for John and the life that he should have continued to live. He was always such a vital, energetic man and he loved life. His father lived to be 100 years old, so there was no reason that John shouldn't have lived on for many, many more years," she told Now To Love. 

"So anger, as a word, doesn't even begin to cover what I feel. I have lost the person who underpinned everything I have done and achieved in my life. Everything.

"I would not be the person I am without John. But he is gone. And I am angry at how unfair it is. John had so much love, so much energy and spirit that was taken away from him before his time," Kennerley continued.

The TV star's most recent stint was on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Here. She ended up quitting within days of arriving in the jungle, after refusing to take part in two challenges. Despite being initially confident about the discomfort that comes with being on the reality show, Kennerley wasn't sure she would be able to withstand it.

"It was a hard choice because I'd love to stay, but it's never going to work," she told her campmates ahead of her departure. "This just morphed into something that it shouldn't have been." 

Kennerley later told The Daily Telegraph, "I am very disappointed that I couldn't stay. I am a tough old bird but that doesn't mean what people say isn't hurtful.

"I also just wanted the camp to know I am not a horrible person. But you can't have regrets as it's not how life works."

Feature Image: Getty Images.