THE late Irene Cara had risen to fame in the 1980s, acting in Fame and songwriting for Flashdance, but before that she spent her childhood on the rough streets of New York City.
Cara, who passed away at the age of 63 on Friday, began her life of stardom at the early age of three as a finalist for the Little Miss America Pageant in 1962.
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She was born in the Bronx and the youngest of five from her Puerto Rican and Cuban-American parents.
Cara grew up with the late singer and songwriter Luther Vandross.
In her podcast – The Irene Cara Music video podcasts: The Back Story – Cara called Vandross her “beloved mentor and dearest friend.”
She said she met him when she was 15 and that she grew up on the “rough streets of New York City, together, with him and so many of our other singers and producer friends.”
Cara was trained in music, dance and acting as a child and appeared on stage and TV – including appearances on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show at a young age in the 1970s.
She appeared on Spanish-language TV shows before she became a regular on The Electric Company, a PBS educational program.
The young star performed in off-Broadway and Broadway shows and landed her first big acting role as Sparkle Williams in Sparkle, the 1976 musical drama film.
She was only 13 years old when she was casted for the role in the film about three Black sisters who create a singing group in the late 1950s.
The cast was “very respectful of me being a minor,” Cara recalled during an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Cara also starred in the 1979 sequel to the Roots TV miniseries before reaching peak fame in the 1980s.
She shot to stardom when she was cast in the 1980 musical Fame.
Cara was initially cast as a dancer – but then she had the role of Coco written for her and famously sang the title track.
When she began making Fame, she wanted to rebel against her parents after losing out on her childhood, she told the Times.
“I left home,” she said. “I got an apartment near where we were filming. I wanted to be my own woman and all of this.”
“I started hanging out in nightclubs, and I was sowing my oats.”
She then won two Grammys in 1984 from the title track to Flashdance – What a Feeling, which she co-wrote and performed.
“If you look at that period, Irene Cara captured the zeitgeist of that early 1980s,” music film historian Jon Burlingame told the Times.
“I think she was so much a part of the pop music and culture of the time.”
The star continued with her acting and music career, appearing in films such as D.C Cab and City Heat, while also performing in live theatre and films.
She also formed an all-female band – Hot Caramel – in 1999.
“I wanted to present a super group of extraordinarily talented women musicians and singers and songwriters,” she told the Times.
She added: “I started searching for really prominent women artists who were the whole package in my mind.”
In 2011, the band released an album called Irene Cara Presents Hot Caramel.
Cara received two honors in 2004 with an induction into the Ciboney Cafe’s Hall of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement Award presented at the annual Prestige Awards.
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