Sarah Brightman
b. 14 August 1961, England. An actress and singer who first came to notice in 1978 when, with the dance group Hot Gossip, she made the UK Top 10 with the disco-pop single ‘I Lost My Heart To a Starship Trouper’. It was all a far cry from her childhood ambition to become a ballet dancer. Three years later she won a part in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats, and was noticed again—this time by the composer himself—and they were married in 1984. The marriage lasted for six years, and, during that time, Sarah Brightman became established as one of the premier leading ladies of the musical theatre. After CATS, she appeared for a season at the Old Vic in Frank Dunlop's 1982 adaptation of MASQUERADE, and later in the year she was in Charles Strouse's short-lived musical NIGHTINGALE. All the while she was taking singing lessons, training her superb soprano voice so that she could undertake more demanding roles than those in conventional musical comedy. In 1984 she appeared in the television version of Lloyd Webber's Song And Dance, and also sang on the Top 30 album. A year later, she made her operatic debut in the role of Valencienne in THE MERRY WIDOW at Sadlers Wells, and gave several concerts of Lloyd Webber's REQUIEM in England and America, which resulted in another best-selling album. It also produced a Top 5 single, Pie Jesus, on which Brightman duetted with the 12-year-old Paul Miles-Kingston. In 1986 she scored a great personal triumph when she co-starred with Michael Crawfordin The Phantom Of The Opera, and recreated her role two years later on Broadway. She had UK Top 10 hits with three songs from the show, The Phantom Of The Opera (with Steve Harley), All I Ask Of You (with Cliff Richard), and Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again. In the late '80s and early '90s, she toured many parts of the world, including Japan and the UK, in a concert production of THE MUSIC OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER. In December 1991, at the end of American leg of the tour, she took over the leading role of Rose in Aspects Of Love for the last few weeks of the Broadway run. She also joined the West End production for a time, but, while her presence was welcomed and her performance critically acclaimed, she was unable to prevent its closure in June 1992. In the same year Brightman was high in the UK chart again, this time duetting with opera singer José Carreras on the Olympic Anthem, Amigos Para Siempre (Friends For Life), which was written, inevitably, by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyric by Don Black. In 1993 she made her debut in the straight theatre with appearances in TRELAWNY OF THE WELLS and RELATIVE VALUES. Experienced West End observers expect Lloyd Webber to write a musical for her based on the life of Jessie Matthews, the graceful star of many '20s and '30s musicals, and to whom she bears an uncanny facial resemblance.