Irene Cara

Irene Cara Escalera, born March 18, 1959, in the Bronx, New York City, was an American singer, actress, and songwriter whose career spanned Broadway, film, and recording. The youngest of five children, Cara was the daughter of Gaspar Cara, a Puerto Rican steel factory worker and retired saxophonist, and Louise Escalera, a Cuban-born movie theater usher. She began dance lessons at age five and launched her performing career through singing and dancing on Spanish-language television. As a child, she recorded a Spanish-language record for the Latin market and an English-language Christmas album, and made early television appearances on The Original Amateur Hour and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. She attended the Professional Children's School in Manhattan. In 1971, she joined the cast of PBS's educational series The Electric Company as a member of the Short Circus, the show's band, during its first season. She also appeared in a major concert tribute to Duke Ellington that featured Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr., and Roberta Flack.

Cara's Broadway career ran from 1968 to 1992 and included several productions. Her stage work began with Maggie Flynn, in which she appeared opposite Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy, playing an American Civil War orphan alongside a young Stephanie Mills. She subsequently appeared in Via Galactica, which featured Raúl Juliá, as well as Got Tu Go Disco and Jesus Christ Superstar. Off-Broadway, she appeared in The Me Nobody Knows, which won an Obie Award, and in Ain't Misbehavin'. In 1980, she briefly took on the role of Dorothy in a touring production of The Wiz, a role that Stephanie Mills had originated on Broadway.

On television, Cara served as the original Daisy Allen on the daytime serial Love of Life and earned recognition for dramatic roles in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations and Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones. In 1982, she co-starred with Diahann Carroll and Rosalind Cash in the NBC Movie of the Week Sister, Sister, for which she received the NAACP Image Award for Best Actress. She also portrayed Myrlie Evers-Williams in the PBS television film For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story, earning an NAACP Image Award Best Actress nomination.

Her film career gained momentum with the 1976 musical drama Sparkle, in which she portrayed the title character Sparkle Williams, and the same year John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 28 named her one of twelve Promising New Actors of 1976. A readers' poll in Right On! magazine that year also named her Top Actress. She appeared in the 1976 film Aaron Loves Angela in the role of Angela before achieving international stardom with the 1980 musical film Fame, directed by Alan Parker. Originally cast as a dancer, Cara was re-written into the role of Coco Hernandez after producers David Da Silva and Alan Marshall and screenwriter Christopher Gore heard her sing. In the film she performed both the title song "Fame" and "Out Here on My Own," the first time two songs from the same film sung by the same artist were nominated in the same Academy Award category for Best Original Song. "Fame," written by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, won that award, and the film also won the Academy Award for Best Original Score. Cara received Grammy Award nominations for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical, and was named Top New Single Artist by Billboard. Cashbox magazine awarded her both Most Promising Female Vocalist and Top Female Vocalist. She declined an invitation from the Fame television series producers to reprise the role of Coco Hernandez, choosing to focus on her recording career; the role was subsequently taken by Erica Gimpel.

In January 1981, Cara appeared in a primetime NBC special commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Mitch Miller's Sing Along with Mitch, performing "Out Here on My Own" and a song-and-dance number with choreographer Victor Griffin. That same year, she was set to star in the sitcom Irene alongside Kaye Ballard, Teddy Wilson, Julia Duffy, and Keenen Ivory Wayans, but the pilot was not picked up for the fall season.

Cara reached the peak of her recording career in 1983 with "Flashdance... What a Feeling," the title song for the film Flashdance. She co-wrote the lyrics with Keith Forsey during a car ride in New York on the way to the studio to record it, while Giorgio Moroder composed the music. The song became a hit in multiple countries and brought Cara the 1983 Academy Award for Best Original Song, shared with Moroder and Forsey, making her the first Black woman to win an Oscar in a non-acting category and the youngest person to receive an Oscar for songwriting at that time. She also won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, the 1984 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and American Music Awards for Best R&B Female Artist and Best Pop Single of the Year. In 1983, she appeared as herself in the film D.C. Cab, contributing the song "The Dream (Hold On to Your Dream)" to its soundtrack, which peaked at No. 37 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1984. In 1984, she appeared in the comedic thriller City Heat alongside Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, performing the standards "Embraceable You" and "Get Happy" and co-writing the film's theme song, sung by jazz vocalist Joe Williams. That May, she scored a Top 40 hit with "Breakdance," which reached No. 8 on the charts. In 1985, she co-starred with Tatum O'Neal in Certain Fury.

Cara died on November 25, 2022, at the age of 63, as a result of hypertensive heart disease after hypercholesterolemia.