Biography of Actress Lea Salonga

Lea Salonga Research Paper

Lea Salonga is a very talented actress and singer who is quite well known in the theatre world. She has done many things and is good example to people all around the world who she shows that no matter where you come from you can always make your dreams come true. I chose her because I really like her story of how she got started out and came from nothing and I love the show Miss Saigon.

She was born with the name Maria Lea Carmen Imutan Salonga on February 22, 1971 in the Philippines in a small town called Manila. Her parents names were Feliciano Genuino Salonga (her father) and Ligaya Alcantara Imutan (her mother). She was 6 years old when she moved from her home town of the town she was born in which is Angeles City to the town of Manila. She was just a little girl from a nobody town with big dreams. She started her singing when she was only 10 years old when she got to record an album called “Small Voice”. Lea studied/finished her second education in 1988 at a place called the O.B. Montessori Center in Greenhills, San Juan. She also went to school at the University of the Philippines in the music department, the program she was a part of is made specifically to train musically talented children in things like stage movement and music. She was a young child performer so she received a Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS).

Her first “debut” in the theatre field was when she got involved with the Repertory Philippines and did the play “The King and I”. After she started doing that she did lots of other plays and realized that she really enjoyed the whole theatre and singing thing, and she was pretty good at it too. After the play the King and I she did shows like “Fiddler On The Roof”...

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The show “Miss Saigon” was first on London’s West End and was then on Broadway years later. Lea Salonga was the lead role (Kim) in both of these shows for a while and came back every now and then for special performances. They would ask her to come back sometimes to try and raise box office numbers. The show was great and the people that saw it loved it. The only thing was that it had a limiting audience because people in the Vietnam war did not want to go back and relive that, and the loved ones of those who were lost in the war didn’t want to see it and think of their family who was lost in the war. The show did well though and some actors won Tonys for their performances.

Works Cited

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0758964/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lea_Salonga

http://www.filmbug.com/db/30683

http://www.stgt.com/stuttgart/saiglibe.htm