Lea Salonga Biography
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Lea Salonga-Chien (born Maria Ligaya Carmen
Imutan Salonga on February 22, 1971 in the Philippines) is a multi-awarded
Filipino singer and actress who is best known for her acclaimed portrayal
of Kim in the musical Miss Saigon. In the field of musical theater,
she is recognized for having won the Olivier, Tony, Drama Desk, Outer
Critics, and Theatre World Awards, the first to win various international
awards for a single role. She was also the first Asian to play Eponine
in the musical Les Misérables on Broadway.
In 2007, Salonga released her first studio
album in seven years called "Inspired," which has been certified platinum,
and finished another stint in the musical Les Misérables on Broadway,
this time as Fantine. She is slated to appear in a number of musical
events scheduled in different countries until 2008.
Lea Salonga started as a child star in
the Philippines, making her professional debut in 1978 at the age of
seven through the musical The King and I by Repertory Philippines.
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She became the lead star of Annie and joined
other productions such as Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Fiddler On The Roof, The
Rose Tattoo, The Sound of Music, The Goodbye Girl, Paper Moon, and The Fantasticks.
She began her recording career at the age of
ten with her first album, Small Voice, which received a gold certification.
A song on the album, the duet "Happiness," marked her first recording collaboration
with her younger brother Gerard Salonga who would, years later, work with
her either as musical director or creative director in her concerts and recordings.
Her second album, "Lea," was released in 1988.
In addition to performing in musical theater
and recordings, Salonga hosted her own musical television show, Love, Lea,
and was a member of the cast of German Moreno's teen variety show That's Entertainment.
She likewise acted in films, which included the family-oriented Tropang Bulilit,
Like Father, Like Son, Ninja Kids, Captain Barbel and Pik Pak Boom. She opened
for international acts such as Menudo and Stevie Wonder in their concerts
in Manila in 1985 and in 1988, respectively.
As a young performer, Lea Salonga received a
Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS) award nomination (the
Philippine equivalent of an Oscar nomination) for Best Child Actress and three
wins from the Aliw (literally, "entertainment") Awards as Best Child Performer.
Salonga's big breakthrough came when she was
selected to play Kim in the mega hit musical Miss Saigon in 1989. Unable to
find a strong enough Asian actress/singer in the United Kingdom, the producers
scoured many countries looking for the lead role of this major British production.
For her audition, the 17-year-old Salonga chose to sing Boublil and Schönberg's
"On My Own" from Les Misérables and was later asked to sing "Sun and Moon"
to test her voice quality's compatibility with the songs in the musical. The
members of the panel were impressed with Salonga's rendition of the songs,
noting that from Salonga's very first note, they already knew they had a potential
Kim. Salonga competed with childhood friend and fellow Repertory Philippines
performer Monique Wilson as they were tested with songs from the musical,
which included "Too Much for One Heart," a number replaced by the duet "Please"
right before the musical opened. Salonga was offered the lead role, with Wilson
as the alternate (who was also assigned the role of bar girl Mimi).
For her performance as Kim, Salonga won the Olivier
for Best Performance by an Actress in a Musical for the 1989/1990 season.
From its original London home, Miss Saigon moved to Broadway in April 1991.
Salonga subsequently garnered the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and
the Theatre World Awards for the same role. Between 1993 and 1996, she was
asked periodically to play Kim on Broadway to boost ticket sales. In 1999,
she was invited back to London to close the musical, and in 2001, at the age
of 29 and after doing the Manila run of the musical, Salonga returned to Broadway
to close the Broadway production.
Between opening Miss Saigon in 1989 and closing
it on Broadway 12 years later in 2001, Salonga became involved in other musical
productions and projects:
- In 1990, she performed in a major homecoming concert in
Manila entitled A Miss Called Lea.
- In 1993, upon completion of her initial stint as Kim on
Broadway, Salonga played the role of street waif Eponine in the Broadway
production of Les Misérables, and later flew to Los Angeles to perform the
song "A Whole New World" of Disney's Aladdin (Salonga is the singing voice
of Princess Jasmine) with Brad Kane at the 65th Annual Academy Awards, where
the song won an Oscar. That same year, she released her self-titled international
debut album with Atlantic Records, which had modest sales in the USA but
went platinum in the Philippines and sold 3 million copies worldwide.
- In 1994, Salonga played in various musical theater productions
in the Philippines and Singapore. She starred as Sandy in Grease, as Sonia
Walks in They're Playing Our Song, and as The Witch in Into The Woods.
- In 1995, Salonga, back in the U.S., played the role of
Geri Riordan, an 18-year-old adopted Vietnamese American child in the movie
Redwood Curtain, which starred John Lithgow and Jeff Daniels. She then flew
back to the Philippines to star with Filipino matinee idol Aga Muhlach in
the critically-acclaimed film Sana Maulit Muli, which gave her second Filipino
Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS) award nomination, this time for
Best Actress.
- In 1996, Salonga was in Les Miserables once again, in various
ways. She played Eponine in the London production of the musical, then continued
on to do the role in the musical's U.S. national tour in Hawaii. She capped
her Les Miserables comeback with an invitation from Sir Cameron Mackintosh
to play the same role in the musical's legendary 10th anniversary presentation
called Les Miserables in Concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. Salonga
performed as part of a "dream cast" composed of Colm Wilkinson, Michael
Ball, Judy Kuhn, and Philip Quast.
- From 1997 to 2000, Salonga kept herself busy with recordings
and concerts in the Philippines and another engagement in London, in addition
to her periodic returns to Miss Saigon in London and on Broadway. In 1997,
she released "I'd Like to Teach The World to Sing" (recordings from her
childhood days) to gold sales in the Philippines. That recording was followed
by "Lea...In Love" in 1998 and "By Heart" in 2000, with both albums reaching
multiple platinum statuses in the Philippines. In addition to the release
of these albums, she participated in the major tribute concert to Sir Cameron
Mackintosh in London called "Hey Mr. Producer: The Musical World of Cameron
MacKintosh," where she did numbers from different musicals mounted by the
famous producer. She also performed in four concerts: The Homecoming Concert,
The Millennium Concert, The Best of Manila, and Songs from the Screen -
the last two being benefit shows. Salonga closed the millennium with a grand
Miss Saigon "homecoming" via the Manila production of the musical staged
at the Cultural Center of the Philippines at the end of 2000.
After Miss Saigon's closing on Broadway in 2001, Salonga recreated
the role of Lien Hughes originally played by Ming-Na Wen in the soap opera
As The World Turns. (After completing her contract that year, she was asked
to return to the role in 2003.) She also made a guest appearance in the Christmas
episode of the medical drama E.R., playing the role of a patient with lymphoma.
- In 2002, Salonga returned to Broadway to play the role
of a Chinese immigrant in a reinterpretation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's
Flower Drum Song opposite Jose Llana. This was after the reinvented musical
had a very successful run at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2001
with Salonga playing the lead role and with the show garnering multiple
nominations, including Lead Actress in a Musical for Salonga, and wins from
the Theatre Los Angeles Ovation Awards. The show, given a brand new libretto
and considered one of the 10 best plays on Broadway in 2002 by Time Magazine,
garnered Tony Award nominations for Best Book, Best Costume Designer, and
Best Choreographer, and earned nominations from the Outer Critics Circle,
the Drama League, the Astaire Awards, and Broadway.com's Audience Awards
and Broadwayworld.com's Fans' Choice Awards as well. The Salonga-led Broadway
revival cast album was also a top contender at the 2003 Grammy Awards for
Best Musical Show Album. While Ms. Salonga's performance was received positively
by theater critics such as Matthew Murray, Heather Cross, Patrick Purdon,
and John Simon, among others, she was not nominated at the Tony Awards for
her brief stint on Broadway that season, although she did get nominations
for Distinguished Performance from the Drama League, for Favorite Lead Actress
in a Broadway Musical from Broadway.com's Audience Awards, and for Best
Lead Actress in a Musical from Broadwayworld.com's Fans' Choice Awards.
Between the 2001 Los Angeles and 2002 Broadway productions of Flower Drum
Song, she performed in a non-musical theatrical production for the first
time, playing the role of Catherine in the stage play Proof in Manila. This
was followed by a major concert, The Broadway Concert, at the Philippine
International Convention Center.
- In 2003, Salonga was back in Manila to do her first "all-Filipino"
concert called Songs from Home, which later won for her another Aliw Award
as Entertainer of the Year (she had won it the year prior). Upon her return
to the U.S., she performed in several shows at the Mohegan Sun in Montville,
Connecticut. This was followed by a Christmas concert in the Philippines
called Home for Christmas at the end of the year, which captured the critics'
notice at the 18th Aliw Awards, and performances at the Lenape Regional
Performing Arts Center in Marlton, New Jersey the following year, in 2004.
Later that year, she was back on the stage as Lizzie in the Manila production
of the musical Baby, which earned her yet another nomination from the Aliw
Awards.
- In 2005, Salonga played her first US concert tour in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlantic City, and Chicago. Concert dates in Washington,
D.C. and Norfolk, Virginia followed. Later that year, Salonga performed
with a 26-piece ensemble to a sold-out crowd at the Isaac Stern Hall in
Carnegie Hall for the benefit of Diverse City Theater Company. Between her
concerts, the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS) bestowed
her with the Golden Artist Award at the 53rd FAMAS Awards in honor of her
international achievements. That same year, too, Salonga did voice work
for Disney's English dub of Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro as Mrs.
Kusakabe (Salonga's other Disney film credits include the singing voice
of Princess Jasmine for Aladdin in 1992 and Fa Mulan for Mulan and Mulan
II in 1998 and in 2004, respectively).
- In 2006, at the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, Salonga
concluded the closing ceremony with the song "Triumph of The One" before
an audience of 50,000 people at the Khalifa Stadium.
- In early 2007, Salonga received the Order of Lakandula
Award from Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in recognition of
her excellence in her craft and for using her talents to benefit Philippine
society. It was also announced that she would return to Broadway in the
musical Les Misérables, replacing Daphne Rubin-Vega as Fantine on March
6.Her tenure started, however, on March 2, four days earlier than planned.
Her casting on the show has been credited with boosting the musical's ticket
sales on Broadway. On September 27, 2007, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,
who was in New York, watched Salonga in her new role in the musical, whose
cast that night included Filipino Americans Adam Jacobs as Marius and Ali
Ewoldt as Cosette. Her contract with the musical ended on October 21, 2007,
and for her performances in this revival, Salonga recently made it again
to the short list of Broadway.com's Audience Award favorites -- this time
for Best Replacement for her new role as Fantine. She performed in two events
soon after: at the US Military Academy Band's concert in West Point where
she sang four songs and an encore -- On My Own from Les Miserables, I Enjoy
Being A Girl from Flower Drum Song, Nothing from A Chorus Line, Reflection
from Mulan, and One Voice -- and in her own concert at the Tarrytown Music
Hall in New York.
- As of November 2007, a number of performances were scheduled
for the rest of the year and for 2008, including a Christmas presentation
in Manila, concerts in other parts of the Philippines and in California,
Hawaii, and Hong Kong, and the lead role in Broadway Asia Entertainment's
international tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella. In her 30-year
career thus far, Salonga has performed for five Philippine presidents (from
Ferdinand Marcos to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), three American Presidents
(George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush), and for Princess
Diana and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Lea Salonga is the eldest child of Feliciano Genuino Salonga
and Ligaya Alcantara Imutan and spent the first six years of her childhood
in Angeles City before moving to Manila. She is a sister of composer Gerard
Salonga and granddaughter of former Senate President Jovito Salonga.
She studied at the Operation Brotherhood Montessori School
in Greenhills, Metro Manila, where she was a Bergamo 1 Student and an active
participant in school productions. She also attended the University of the
Philippines College of Music's extension program aimed at training musically
talented children in music and stage movement. She was a college freshman
at the Ateneo de Manila University when she auditioned for Miss Saigon and
attended Fordham University when she was in New York.
On January 10, 2004, Salonga married Robert Charles Chien,
a Chinese-Japanese managing director of an entertainment software company
in Los Angeles, California, whom she met while doing Flower Drum Song. They
have a daughter, Beverly Nicole, born on May 16, 2006 and named after Salonga's
late mother-in-law, Beverly Chien.
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