IRENE CARA
(18 March 1959 - 25 November 2022)
The American singer-songwriter and actress Irene Cara initially found fame in, well, Fame, Alan Parker's 1980 film. She played Coco Hernandez, one of the students at the High School for Performing Arts in New York City. Not only did Cara make her mark in the musical drama, but she also had a global hit with the movie’s title song. She went on to write and sing ‘Flashdance - What a Feeling’ for the 1983 film Flashdance and shared an Academy Best Original Song award with her co-writer Keith Forsey and composer Giorgio Moroder. She also won a Grammy, a Golden Globe and an American Music Award, having hits with ‘Breakdance’ and ‘You Were Made for Me’. She also appeared in stage musicals, television series and other films as well as recording three studio albums and some hit singles. Sadly, she succumbed to an early death at the age of 63.
Irene Cara Escalera was born in New York City, the youngest of five children to a steel worker and former musician, Gaspar Cara, and his wife Louise. Winning a Little Miss America pageant at the age of three, she started learning the piano and studying acting and dance at the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan. She was on TV from the age of five and later played dramatic roles in Roots: The Next Generation and Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones. Irene was her own TV series in the 1980s and she was in Maya Angelou’s Sister, Sister.
On stage she played in Ain’t Misbehavin’, The Me Nobody Knows, The Wiz and Maggie Flynn with Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy. She also toured in Jesus Christ Superstar as Mary Magdalene. Some of the other films she made include Sparkle, a musical drama based on the lives of The Supremes, Killing 'em Softly with George Segal, Aaron Loves Angela with Moses Gunn and Kevin Hooks, Joel Schumacher’s D.C. Cab, City Heat with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, and Certain Fury with Tatum O'Neal.
Irene Cara married the stuntman and film director Conrad Palmisaano in 1986 but they divorced in 1991.
MICHAEL DARVELL