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;">Irene Cara (born March 18, 1959)[1] is an American singer
and actress. Cara won an Academy Award in
1984 in the category of Best
Original Song for co-writing "Flashdance...
What a Feeling". She
is also known for her recording of the song "Fame",
and she also starred in the 1980
film Fame.
She married Hollywood stuntman Conrad Palmisano in 1986.[2] They divorced in 1991. They had one daughter Carmen (born 1988)
together.
Early life
Cara's father, Gaspar Cara, was Puerto Rican and
Cara's mother, Louise, was an
American of Cuban descent. Cara has two
sisters and two brothers. At age three, Irene Cara was one of five
finalists for
the 'Little Miss America' pageant. At age five, Cara began to play the
piano "by
ear". Soon thereafter, she began seriously studying music, acting, and
dance.
Cara's performing career started when she was a child on Spanish-language
television, professionally singing and dancing. She made early TV
appearances on
the Original
Amateur Hour (singing in
Spanish) and Johnny
Carson's The
Tonight Show. She was a regular on PBS’s educational program The Electric
Company, which starred Bill Cosby, Rita
Moreno, and Morgan Freeman.
As a
child, Cara recorded a Latin-market Spanish-language record; an English
Christmas album soon followed. She also appeared in a major concert
tribute to
Duke Ellington (with Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr. and Roberta Flack).
[edit] Professional career
[edit] Pre-Fame
Cara appeared in on-and off-Broadway theatrical shows including the
musicals
Ain't
Misbehavin', The Me Nobody
Knows (which won an Obie award), Maggie
Flynn opposite Shirley Jones and Jack
Cassidy, and Via Galactica with Raul Julia.
She was the original Daisy Allen on the 1970s daytime serial Love
of
Life.Aaron Loves
Angela,Sparkle, Television brought Cara international acclaim for serious dramatic roles
in two
outstanding mini-series, Roots:
The Next Generations and
Guyana
Tragedy: The Story of
Jim Jones. Next came her role as Angela in romance/thriller followed by her portrayal of the title character in
John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 28, named her one of twelve
"Promising New
Actors of 1976;" that same year, a readers' poll in Right On! magazine
named her Top Actress.
Cara graduated from the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, a
rival
of the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art. Coincidentally,
LaGuardia High
was the inspiration for the performing arts school in her third movie,
Fame, along with The Juilliard School.
When she attended high school, it was called the School of Performing
Arts.
In 1984 the High School of Music & Art was merged with the School of
Performing Arts (founded in 1948 by Mayor Fiorello H.
LaGuardia) to become LaGuardia High.
Fame and
subsequent
roles
The 1980 hit movie Fame catapulted Irene Cara to stardom.
Cara was originally cast as a dancer, and when production heard her
voice they
re-wrote the role of Coco Hernandez. As Coco Hernandez, she sang both
the title
song "Fame"
and the film’s second hit single
"Out
Here on My Own". These songs, the only hit songs from the movie,
helped make
the film's soundtrack a chart-topping, multi-platinum album. Further
history was
made when at the Academy Awards that year: It was the first time
two songs from one film were nominated in the same category ("Fame" and
"Out
Here on My Own") and both were sung by Cara. Thus, Cara had the
opportunity to
be one of the few singers to perform more than one song at the Oscar
ceremony.
(Note: Robert Goulet,
who sang all the Oscar-nominated songs in 1963, is among several singers
who had
done so in the past.) "Fame," written by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford,
won the award that year.
The motion picture Fame earned Cara Grammy nominations in 1980 for Best New Female Artist
and Best New Pop Artist, as well as a Golden
Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture
Actress in a Musical. Billboard
Magazine named her Top New
Single Artist, while Cashbox Magazine awarded her both Most
Promising Female Vocalist and Top Female Vocalist.
Asked by the Fame TV series' producers to
reprise her role as Coco Hernandez, she declined so as to focus her
attention on
her recording career. As a result, newcomer Erica Gimpel played
the role. However, Cara did
make a special guest appearance on the series in 1983 as a "successful
alumna"
of the performing-arts school portrayed in the series, singing her
then-current
hit single, "Why
Me?".
In 1982, Cara earned the Image Award for Best
Actress when she co-starred with Diahann Carroll and Rosalind Cash in
the NBC Movie
of the Week, Maya Angelou's Sister,
Sister. Cara portrayed Myrlie
Evers-Williams in the PBS TV movie about civil
rights leader Medgar
Evers, For
Us the Living: The
Medgar Evers Story; and earned an NAACP Image Award Best
Actress nomination. She also
appeared in 1982's Killing
'em Softly.
Cara was also slated to star in her own sitcom,Irene, on NBC
in 1981.
Even though the pilot aired and
received favorable reviews,
the network did not pick it up for its fall season. It also starred
veteran
performers Kaye Ballard and Teddy Wilson, as
well
as newcomers Julia Duffy and
Keenan Ivory
Wayans.
In 1983, Cara appeared as herself in the film D.C. Cab, which is a
film about a group of
cabbies. The movie stars Mr. T. One of
the characters, Tyrone played by Charlie Barnett, is an obsessed Cara
fan who
decorated his Checker Cab as a
shrine to her.
In addition to her music and film work, Cara also continued to
perform in
live theatre during this period. In the summer of 1980, she briefly
played the
role of Dorothy in The
Wiz on tour, in a role that Stephanie Mills had first portrayed in the
original Broadway production. Coincidentally, Cara and Mills had shared
the
stage together as children in the original 1968 Broadway musical Maggie
Flynn, starring Shirley Jones and Jack
Cassidy, in which both
young girls played Civil War orphans.
[edit] Flashdance...
What A
Feeling
In 1983, Cara reached the peak of her music career with the title
song for
the movie Flashdance:
"Flashdance... What A Feeling", which she co-wrote with Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey. Cara
penned the
lyrics to the song with Keith Forsey while riding in a car in New York
heading
to the studio to record it; Moroder composed the music.
Cara admitted later that she was initially reluctant to work with
Giorgio
Moroder because she had no wish to invite further comparisons with
Moroder's
most famous client, Donna
Summer, [3],
but it paid off, as
the result was a record that topped the charts around the world and
garnered
numerous accolades for Cara. She won: the 1983 Academy
Award for Best Song (Oscar); 1984 Grammy
Award for
Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, 1984 Golden
Globe Award for
Best Original Song, Top Female Vocalist - Pop Singles; Black
Contemporary
Female Vocalist - Pop Singles; Top Pop Crossover Artist - Black
Contemporary
Singles; Pop Single of the Year; American Music
Awards for Best
R&B Female Artist and Best Pop Single of the Year.
"Flashdance..." was re-recorded by Cara twice. The first time was in
1995 as
a track in the original soundtrack for the movie "The Full Monty;" the
second
time was in 2002, as a duet she recorded with successful Swiss artist DJ BoBo.
Post-Flashdance
In 1984, she was in the comedic thriller City Heat, in
which she sang the standards "Embraceable You"
and
"Get Happy." She also co-wrote the theme song "City Heat", which was
sung by the
jazz vocalist Joe Williams. In 1985, Cara co-starred with Tatum
O'Neal in Certain Fury, a
notorious
box office and critical flop about women escaping prison. In 1986, Cara
appeared
in the film Busted
Up. She also provided the voice of Snow White in the unofficial
sequel
to Disney's Snow
White and the
Seven Dwarfs, Filmation's
Happily
Ever After, in 1993.
That same year, she appeared as Mary Magdalene in the record-breaking
anniversary tour of Jesus Christ
Superstar opposite Ted Neeley, Carl
Anderson, and Dennis
DeYoung.
Also in the 1990s, Cara won a bitter lawsuit against her old record
company
over unpaid royalties and other career issues.
Additional
recordings
Along with her career in acting and several hit singles, Cara has
released
three albums thus far. Those albums are Anyone Can See in 1982, What A
Feelin' in 1983, and Carasmatic in
1987, the most successful of these
being What A Feelin. In 1985 she collaborated with the Hispanic
megagroup
Hermanos in the song Cantaré,
cantarás in which she
sings a solo segment with the Spanish opera singer Plácido Domingo. She
also
released a compilation of Eurodance singles in
the mid to late 1990s entitled
Precarious 90's. Cara recently contributed a dance single, titled
"Forever My Love", to the compilation album titled Gay Happening Vol.
12, in
2006.
Cara has also worked as a backup vocalist for Vicki
Sue Robinson, Lou Reed, George
Duke, Oleta Adams, and Evelyn
"Champagne" King.
Recent activities
Cara toured Europe and Asia throughout the 1990s, scoring several
modest
dance hits on European charts, but no US chart hits.
Cara received two prestigious honors for her career in March 2004,
with her
induction into the Ciboney
Cafe's Hall of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement Award presented at
the sixth
annual Prestige Awards.
In June 2005, Cara won the third round of the NBC television series Hit Me
Baby One More Time,
performing "Flashdance (What a Feeling)" and covered Anastacia's
song "I'm Outta Love" with her current
all-female band, Hot Caramel. At the 2006 AFL Grand
Final in Melbourne, Cara
performed "Flashdance (What a
Feeling)" as an opener to the pre-match entertainment.
Cara lives in Florida and works
with her band Hot Caramel. She appeared in season 2 of CMT's reality
show Gone
Country, but left the
show realizing she "was not cut out for reality television."