Laura Dean

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Laura Dean (born May 27, 1963 in New York , New York ; actually Laura Francine Deutscher ) is an American dancer, actress and voice actress. She gained fame through her participation in the feature film Fame - Der Weg zum Ruhm (1980).

biography

The daughter of Barbara German, a high school -Teacher for stenography and typewriting , grew up with two older sisters. Laura Dean's parents separated when she was two years old. The family suffered from financial difficulties, whereupon the mother involved her daughters early on in earning a living and had them appear in television commercials and children's beauty competitions. Her grandmother made Dean two years younger so that at the age of five she could sign her first contract for a tour of The Sound of Music (only when she was seven you could join the American actors 'union Actors' Equity ). She also went on tour with the pieces Bye Bye Birdie , The Me Nobody Knows and Gypsy . Between the ages of 10 and 15, Dean sang with the New York City Opera and appeared in Carmen , La Bohème , Die tote Stadt and Mefistofele . When she was 13, she was the understudy for the title role of Annie (Goodspeed Opera House, Connecticut). As a soloist, Dean appeared as Flora in Benjamin Britten's Turn of the Screw and in John Guares' Landscape of the Body at the New York Public Theater (1978).

Dean later attended the New York High School of Performing Arts . International fame brought her Alan Parker's Fame - The Road to Fame in 1980 . The musical film describes in five episodes (entrance exams and four semesters) the careers of a group of students from the New York High School of Performing Arts . Dean took on the role of the naive ballet student Lisa Morgan, whose talent is not enough for a dance career. She was the youngest member of the cast around Irene Cara , Paul McCrane , Maureen Teefy , Antonia Franceschi , Eugene Anthony Ray , Barry Miller and Lee Curreri and still a student at the High School of Performing Arts. "Fame represented a living yearbook for me, as so many of the supporting characters were my classmates," said Dean, who started her training at the art school together with Ray.

Fame , which shows the worries, needs and dreams of aspiring dancers, singers, actors and musicians, was very popular with audiences and received praise from critics. The film won two Oscars and a Golden Globe Award and was followed by works on a similar theme ( Flashdance , 1983; Footloose , 1984) and a television series of the same name (1982-1987). In 1980, Dean successfully sued her mother for embezzlement for $ 250,000 in damages; a sum that the then 17-year-old stated as previous income from show business. After graduating from the High School of Performing Arts , she dropped out of college after just four days. She also turned down many similar role offers after Fame . In 1983 she took on the critically acclaimed part of the simple-minded blonde cheerleader Boopsie in the world premiere of the Broadway musical Doonesbury at New York's Biltmore Theater .

She appeared in other feature films such as the television production Soup for One (1982) or the romantic comedy Nothing Like Away (1985), but could not build on the early film success. In 1993, Dean was the understudy of Mrs. Walker in the original performance of the hit Broadway musical The Who's Tommy (St. James Theater). In 1997 she got the recurring part of Sophie in the series Friends . In 2002 Dean was part of the female ensemble in the Oscar- winning musical Chicago . Since the mid-1980s, she has mainly worked as a voice actress for television animated films and series such as My Little Pony , Galaxy Rangers (both 1986) and Starla und die Kristallretter (1995).

Laura Dean is married to a doctor and lives in New York. She is the mother of two children.

Filmography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b cf. Brown, Joe; Kennedy, John: Personalities . In: The Washington Post, September 19, 1980 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft )
  2. ↑ a b c d cf. Robertson, Nan: New Face . In: The New York Times, Dec. 30, 1983, Section C, p. 5
  3. ↑ a b c d cf. The 'Fame' gang: Laura Dean at usatoday.com, September 23, 2009 (accessed June 4, 2010)
personal data
SURNAME Dean, Laura
ALTERNATIVE NAMES German, Laura Francine (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dancer, actress and voice actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , New York