Stephanie Lawrence

Stephanie Lawrence (16 December 1949 – 4 November 2000) was a British musical theatre actress born in Newcastle, England, and raised on Hayling Island. Her father was a Welsh singer, and her mother was a classically trained dancer who founded a children's dance troupe called the Kent Babes. Lawrence trained at the Arts Educational School in Tring, Hertfordshire, and made her performing debut in The Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1962, joining the corps de ballet at the Royal Festival Ballet at the age of twelve. Her ambitions as a ballerina were interrupted when she contracted pneumonia at fifteen and was forced to miss a year of training.

Her West End debut came in April 1971, when she appeared as a rollerskating tap dancer in Forget-Me-Not Lane. Her first West End musical credit was Bubbling Brown Sugar. In 1980, she was cast as the alternate to Marti Webb in the role of Eva Peron in Evita, the musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, directed by Hal Prince. Webb had been brought into the production to perform twice weekly in anticipation of succeeding Elaine Paige, establishing a precedent that continued for the remainder of the London run. Lawrence advanced from alternate to principal performer in 1981.

Following Evita, Lawrence created the title role of Marilyn Monroe in Marilyn! the Musical, a performance that earned her the Best Actress of the Year Award from the Variety Club of Great Britain and a nomination from the Society of West End Theatre Awards. She was subsequently cast as Pearl, the lead female role, in the original London production of Starlight Express, performing the part on roller-skates. At the Bristol Old Vic, she played Lola-Lola in a musical adaptation of The Blue Angel, a character previously associated with Marlene Dietrich in the film of the same name. In 1986, she recorded and released "A Special Kind of Hero," written by Rick Wakeman for the official FIFA film of the 1986 World Cup. The following year she appeared as Louise in the first replacement cast of the Dave Clark musical Time, opposite David Cassidy, and then succeeded Nichola McAuliffe as Kate/Lili Vanessi in the RSC production of Kiss Me Kate at the Savoy Theatre. Over the Christmas period of 1988 into early 1989, she played the title role in the pantomime Cinderella, opposite Lionel Blair as Buttons. In 1990, she toured in Blues in the Night, playing The Woman of the World.

Lawrence also worked in dramatic theatre, taking on her first non-musical role in 1986 as Doris in a touring production of The Owl and the Pussycat alongside Peter Davison. Around the same time, she performed a one-woman show at the Oslo International Cabaret.

In 1990, Lawrence took the role of Mrs. Johnstone in the revival of Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, performing the part first at the Albery Theatre and then at the Phoenix Theatre in London. In 1993, she brought the role to Broadway in the original Broadway production at the Music Box Theatre, for which she received a Tony Award nomination and won the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut. She returned to the role on subsequent occasions, including a contribution to the 1995 London Cast Recording, before exhaustion forced her to withdraw from the production.

In 1998, Lawrence was cast as Grizabella in the West End production of Cats. During this period she sustained critical injuries after falling down a flight of stairs and was later dismissed from the production.

Her film work included the role of Frannie in the 1987 film Buster, opposite Phil Collins, Julie Walters, and Larry Lamb, in which her character was the wife of Great Train Robbery gang leader Bruce Reynolds. She also appeared in The Likely Lads in 1976 and played La Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera in 1989. On television, Lawrence portrayed Mary Magdalene in the 1983 ITV play Doubting Thomas and appeared in the BBC Two series The Vocal Touch in 1982. She was also featured in Night Music and Six Fifty-Five on the BBC in 1983, and made appearances on programs including The Two Ronnies, Wogan, and The Les Dawson Show. She was briefly a member of the dance troupe Pan's People during the late 1970s.

Her recording credits included a 1979 duet with Johnny Mathis, "You Saved My Life," which appeared on his Columbia Records album Mathis Magic. From 1990 onward, she contributed to Pickwick Records' The Shows Collection series, produced by Gordon Lorenz, and in 1993 Pickwick released Footlights: A Tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber, a solo album in that series.

Lawrence married Laurie Sautereau in September 2000. She died on 4 November 2000 at the age of fifty from liver disease and was found by her husband at their London home.