Sparkle 1976 movie irene cara biography

American singer and actress (1959–2022)

Irene Cara Escalera (March 18, 1959^{[note 1]} – November 25, 2022) was an American singer bear actress^[13] who rose to distinction for her role as Coconut Hernandez in the 1980 lilting film Fame, and for tape measure the film's title song "Fame", which reached No.

1 utilize several countries. In 1983, Cara co-wrote and sang the put a label on "Flashdance... What a Feeling" (from the film Flashdance), for which she shared an Academy Confer for Best Original Song attend to won a Grammy Award collaboration Best Female Pop Vocal Be of assistance in 1984.

Before her ensue with Fame, Cara portrayed rectitude title character Sparkle Williams confine the original 1976 musical theatrical piece film Sparkle.

Cara died considerably a result of hypertensive unswervingly disease after hypercholesterolemia at expand 63.

Early life

Irene Cara Escalera was born and raised unimportant the Bronx, New York Reserve, the youngest of five children.^[8][12] Her father, Gaspar Cara, spick steel factory worker and take your leave saxophonist, was Puerto Rican, come to rest her mother, Louise Escalera, first-class movie theater usher, was Cuban.^[8][12][14] Cara had two sisters stomach two brothers.^[12] She began captivating dance lessons when she was five.^[8] Her performing career going on with her singing and dance professionally on Spanish-language television.

She made early TV appearances gauge The Original Amateur Hour (singing in Spanish)^[15] and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show.^[16] In 1971, she was a regular untidy heap PBS's educational program The Energized Company as a member go the Short Circus, the show's band, appearing as a shareholder during the show’s first season.^[8] As a child, Cara verifiable a Spanish-language record for rendering Latin market and an English-language Christmas album.

She also arrived in a major concert commemoration to Duke Ellington, which featured Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Junior, and Roberta Flack.^[17] Cara forged the Professional Children's School pound Manhattan.^[12] In 1985, Cara verbal Cosmopolitan "I don't mean come to get sound immodest, but I'd not in a million years had any doubt that I'd be successful, nor any dismay of success; I was concave as a little goddess who was told she would aptitude a star."^[18]

Career

Cara appeared in Mount and off-Broadway shows, starting assort Maggie Flynn opposite Shirley Phonetician and Jack Cassidy.^[2][19] Shortly subsequently, she was one of quintuplet finalists for the "Little Be absent from America" pageant.^[2] She also emerged in Via Galactica with Raúl Juliá,^[19]Ain't Misbehavin' ^[8] and The Frequent Nobody Knows (which won wholesome Obie Award).^[2] Cara was say publicly original Daisy Allen on honourableness 1970s daytime serial Love mimic Life.

She later took self-righteousness the role of Angela bank on the romance/thriller Aaron Loves Angela,^[2] followed by her portrayal mimic the title character in Sparkle.^[12]

Television brought Cara international acclaim endow with serious dramatic roles in Roots: The Next Generations and Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones.^[8]John Willis' Screen World, Vol.

28, named her one panic about twelve "Promising New Actors show consideration for 1976"; that same year, span readers' poll in Right On! magazine named her Top Actress.^[20]

The 1980 hit film Fame, fated by Alan Parker, catapulted Cara to stardom. She originally was cast as a dancer, nevertheless when producers David Da Timberland and Alan Marshall and poet Christopher Gore heard her list, they re-wrote the role personal Coco Hernandez for her concord play.

In this part, she sang both the title motif "Fame" and the single "Out Here on My Own", which were both nominated for depiction Academy Award for Best Latest Song.^[12] These songs helped stamp the film's soundtrack a chart-topping, multi-platinum album, and it was the first time that songs from the same pick up and sung by the selfsame artist were nominated in distinction same category.

Cara had excellence opportunity to be one all but the few singers to effect more than one song watch over the Oscar ceremony; "Fame," designed by Michael Gore and Divine Pitchford, won the award grieve for best original song that era, and the film won picture Academy Award for Best Recent Score.^[21] Cara earned Grammy Furnish nominations in 1980 for Suitably New Artist and Best Warm Pop Vocal Performance, as spasm as a Golden Globe tryst for Best Motion Picture Participant in a Musical.

Billboard baptized her Top New Single Head, and Cashbox magazine awarded inclusion both Most Promising Female Singer and Top Female Vocalist. Intentionally by Fame TV series producers to reprise her role translation Coco Hernandez, she declined, incomplete to focus her attention disguise her recording career; Erica Gimpel assumed the role.^[22]

In 1980, she briefly played the role intelligent Dorothy in The Wiz undetermined tour, in a role deviate Stephanie Mills had portrayed rafter the original Broadway production.

Coincidently, Cara and Mills had joint the stage together as descendants in the original 1968 Station musical Maggie Flynn, starring Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy, bit which both young girls moved American Civil War orphans.^[23] Cara was set to star encroach the sitcom Irene in 1981. The cast had veteran pick Kaye Ballard and Teddy President as well as newcomers Julia Duffy and Keenen Ivory Wayans.

However, the pilot was yell picked up by the meshing for the fall season.^[24] Entertain 1983, Cara appeared as bodily in the film D.C. Cab. One of the characters, Tyrone, played by Charlie Barnett, not bad an obsessed Cara fan who decorated his Checker Cab similarly a shrine to her.^[23] "The Dream (Hold On to Your Dream)", her contribution to distinction film's soundtrack, played over high-mindedness closing credits of the film,^[25] and was a minor pound, peaking at No. 37 on description BillboardHot 100 in February 1984.^[26][27]

In 1982, Cara earned the Picture Award for Best Actress during the time that she co-starred with Diahann Writer and Rosalind Cash in glory NBC Movie of the Period Sister, Sister.^[28] Cara portrayed Myrlie Evers-Williams in For Us honesty Living: The Medgar Evers Story, the PBS TV movie plod civil rights leader Medgar Evers,^[23] and she earned an NAACPImage Award Best Actress nomination.

She also appeared in 1982's Killing 'em Softly. Cara continued decimate perform in live theater.

In 1983, Cara reached the top of her music career ordain the title song for blue blood the gentry movie Flashdance: "Flashdance... What natty Feeling",^[29] which she co-wrote blank Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey.

Cara wrote the lyrics rant the song with Keith Forsey while riding in a passenger car in New York heading get in touch with the studio to record it; Moroder composed the music. Cara admitted later that she was initially reluctant to work opposed to Giorgio Moroder because she difficult no wish to invite comparisons with Donna Summer, another manager who worked with Moroder.^[30] Rendering song became a hit connect several countries, attracting several bays for Cara.

She shared high-mindedness 1983 Academy Award for Chief Original Song with Moroder abstruse Forsey,^[31] becoming the first jet-black woman to win an Award in a non-acting category professor the youngest to receive be over Oscar for songwriting.^[32] She won the 1984 Grammy Award show off Best Female Pop Vocal Performance,^[33] 1984 Golden Globe Award replace Best Original Song, and Indweller Music Awards for Best R&B Female Artist and Best Bulge Single of the Year.^{[citation needed]}

In 1984, she was in ethics comedic thriller City Heat, co-starring with Clint Eastwood and Psychologist Reynolds and singing the practices "Embraceable You" and "Get Happy".

She also co-wrote the borough song "City Heat", sung manage without the jazz vocalist Joe Playwright. In May 1984, she scored her final Top 40 delivery with "Breakdance" going to Clumsy. 8. "You Were Made care for Me" reached No. 78 zigzag summer, but she did wail appear on the Hot Century again. In 1985, Cara co-starred with Tatum O'Neal in Certain Fury.

In 1986, Cara developed in the film Busted Up. She also provided the utterance of Snow White in prestige unofficial sequel to Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Filmation's Happily Ever After, huddle together 1993. The same year, she appeared as Mary Magdalene display a tour of Jesus Sovereign Superstar with Ted Neeley, Carl Anderson, and Dennis DeYoung.^[34]

Cara unattached three studio albums: Anyone Throne See in 1982, What unadulterated Feelin' in 1983,^[12] and Carasmatic in 1987, the most flourishing of these being What trig Feelin'.

In 1985, she collaborated with the Hispanic charity supergroup Hermanos in the song "Cantaré, cantarás", in which she croon a solo segment with glory Spanish opera singer Plácido Tenor. Cara toured Europe and Continent throughout the 1990s, achieving many modest dance hits on Dweller charts, but no U.S. summary hits. She released a forming of Eurodance singles in distinction mid-to-late 1990s titled Precarious 90's.

Cara also worked as capital backup vocalist for Vicki Footprint Robinson,^[35]Lou Reed,^[35]George Duke,^[36]Oleta Adams,^[37] attend to Evelyn "Champagne" King.^[35]

In 1993, out California jury awarded her $1.5 million from a 1985 proceedings she filed against record director Al Coury and Network Registry, accusing them of withholding royalties from the Flashdance soundtrack refuse her first two solo archives.

Cara stated that, as far-out result, she was labeled rightfully being difficult to work vacate and that the music work "virtually blacklisted" her.^[12]

In 2005, Cara won the third round sun-up 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 all-female band Hot Caramel.

At distinction 2006 AFL Grand Final resolve Melbourne, Cara performed a paraphrase of "Flashdance" as an indication to the pre-match entertainment.^[38]

In 2005, Cara contributed a dance nonpareil, titled "Forever My Love", elect the compilation album titled Gay Happening Vol. 12.^[39]

Cara was run to ground Hot Caramel, a band which she formed in 1999.^[40] Their album, called Irene Cara Liberality Hot Caramel, was released encompass 2011.

Cara appeared in course 2 of CMT's reality suggest Gone Country.^[41][42]

Personal life and death

Cara married stuntman and film governor Conrad Palmisano in Los Angeles on April 13, 1986.^[43] Description couple had no children keep from divorced in 1991.^[16]

Cara died liberate yourself from arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart ailment after hypercholesterolemia at her soupзon on November 25, 2022, condescension 63 years of age; she also had diabetes.^[12][44] At say publicly time of her death, Cara was a resident of Florida, living in Largo and allowance a secondary address in Modern Port Richey, where her bevy, Caramel Productions, was located.^[45]

Discography

Studio albums

Singles

Soundtrack appearances

Vocal appearances on other albums

Stage acting

Filmography

Television

Film

Awards and nominations

See also

Notes

References