Fame and Flashdance singer and actor Irene Cara dies aged 63
The What A Feeling singer who won an Oscar and portrayed Coco Hernandez in the 1980 film Fame passed away at her Florida home.
Irene Cara, 63, has away. She was best known for singing the titles to the movies Fame and Flashdance.
Fame, a 1980 film starring Cara as Coco Hernandez, had Cara as the lead. From their initial auditions to their senior year, it followed students at the High School of Performing Arts in New York.
She sang Fame while walking through the streets of New York and riding atop one of the city’s iconic yellow taxis in the movie. Before the part of Hernandez was written for her, she was initially cast as a dancer.
She wrote Flashdance together three years later. What a Feeling for Flashdance, for which she took home two Grammy Awards for best female pop vocal performance and the original score for a motion picture, as well as an Oscar for best original song.
Both tracks reached the top 10 in both the US and the UK. … Flashdance What a Feeling was later re-recorded for The Full Monty, a 1997 movie after it had previously been used in TV, film, and commercials.
Cara received awards from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), including one for her performance in the 1982 film Sister, and was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for Fame. She had begun her career as a kid actor and singer, performing in a Duke Ellington tribute event and on the Johnny Carson program in the 1970s.
Cara passed away at her Florida home, according to a statement posted on the singer’s official Twitter account on Saturday morning by her publicist, Judith Moose.
This is the worst aspect of being a publicist, she declared. I’m shocked that I even have to write this and announce the news.
She was a stunningly talented person whose films and songs will live on forever.
Her cause of death is now unknown, but Moose added that information will be made public once it has been established. Funeral and memorial ceremonies will be scheduled later; her family has requested privacy.
Irene was a talented woman whose body of work is cherished by millions of people all across the world, continued Moose. She became a cultural icon for 1980s music fans and served as an inspiration for many of today’s most prominent singers, including Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. Although we shall all miss her, her legacy will be remembered as a bright spot in our lives.
