Angelica Hale

Angelica Hale is a Filipino-American singer, songwriter, musician, and actress born on July 31, 2007, in Atlanta, Georgia. Her path to performance was shaped in part by a serious medical crisis she faced at age four, when a severe bacterial pneumonia led to septic shock and multiple organ failure, including kidney failure, along with permanent scarring on her right lung. She was placed in a medically-induced coma and transferred between two Children's Healthcare of Atlanta facilities before being put on ECMO life-support. After twelve days on ECMO and eighty days total in the hospital, she was discharged on April 24, 2012. A year and a half of dialysis followed before she received a kidney transplant from her mother, Eva, on September 13, 2013. Following her recovery, Hale began vocal training with coach Tara Simon in Alpharetta, Georgia, won a singing competition for children ages five through nine, and performed for charitable organizations including Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

Hale rose to national prominence in 2017 as a competitor on season 12 of America's Got Talent. Her audition featured a performance of Andra Day's "Rise Up," which advanced her past the first round. In the Judge Cuts round, guest judge Chris Hardwick awarded her a golden buzzer after she performed Alicia Keys' "Girl on Fire," sending her directly to the live shows. Her subsequent performances included Zedd and Foxes' "Clarity" in the Quarterfinals, David Guetta's "Without You" in the Semifinals, and Clean Bandit and Zara Larsson's "Symphony" in the Top 10 finals. For the finale, she performed Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" alongside Clarkson and fellow contestant Kechi Okwuchi. Hale finished the competition in second place behind winner Darci Lynne, becoming the youngest runner-up in the show's history. She later appeared on America's Got Talent: The Champions, where judge Howie Mandel gave her a golden buzzer following her performance of Rachel Platten's "Fight Song," though she ultimately placed in the bottom seven of the top twelve.

Following her America's Got Talent run, Hale performed for a crowd of 7,000 in Tuckahoe, New York, and joined Darci Lynne, Light Balance, and Preacher Lawson for the AGT live shows in Las Vegas from November 2 through 5. She performed "Girl on Fire" at the 2017 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, marking her debut at that event. Additional performances that year included the 2017 NFL game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Dallas Cowboys at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, and the national anthem at Heinz Field on December 11, 2017, for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens game. She was also named the first child ambassador of the National Kidney Foundation. In March 2018, she performed at Celebrity Fight Night alongside David Foster and appeared on Little Big Shots. On March 29, 2018, the Ottawa Senators invited her to perform both "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "O Canada" before a game against the Florida Panthers. She sang the national anthem on October 8, 2018, in Atlanta for Game 4 of the National League Division Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers. On December 16, 2018, she performed "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" from her Christmas album Christmas Wonder during the halftime show of the NFL game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Arizona Cardinals at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. On July 4, 2019, she performed on the annual PBS special A Capitol Fourth, and that same month she joined the Filipino boy band TNT Boys on their world tour.

As a recording artist, Hale released her debut single "Feel the Magic," a pop song she wrote herself at age eleven. The music video premiered in May 2019 on YouTube and Facebook. Her discography also includes the Christmas album Christmas Wonder. In spring 2018, she was named national spokesperson for Sepsis Alliance's "It's About TIME" campaign, which promotes awareness of sepsis as a medical emergency.

Hale's acting work includes filming the movie American Reject over the summer of 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana, with an anticipated release in 2019, and voicing the title character in the animated series Maya Unstoppable, which premiered in 2019. She made her Broadway debut in 2025 in BOOP! The Musical, reprising a role she had first performed in the show's pre-Broadway production at Chicago's CIBC Theatre, which ran from November 19 through December 24, 2023. The Broadway production opened on April 5, 2025.