Born in New York City, Cara started her profession as a toddler acting on Spanish-language tv. She appeared alongside Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman on the PBS kids’s program “The Electric Company” from 1971 to 1972, as a member of the present’s band, the Short Circus.
As a young person, she performed Sparkle Williams within the 1976 musical “Sparkle.” Although the movie, a few rising lady group in mid-century Harlem, was a field workplace disappointment, it developed a cult following amongst Black audiences and impressed a 2012 remake starring Jordin Sparks and Whitney (*63*).
Cara’s mainstream breakthrough got here with the function of Coco Hernandez within the 1980 musical “Fame” — a film about college students auditioning for New York’s public highschool of performing arts, now referred to as Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts — for which she additionally sang the Grammy-nominated title music.
A couple of years later, she co-wrote and carried out the music “Flashdance … What a Feeling,” which earned an Oscar for greatest unique music and two Grammys, for greatest feminine pop vocal efficiency and unique rating for a movement image.
She additionally appeared in movies together with “City Heat,” alongside Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, and “Certain Fury,” with Tatum O’Neal.
Officials in Largo, Fla., the place Cara’s house is listed in public information, didn’t instantly present particulars about her dying.
Thomas Floyd contributed to this report, which has been up to date with new information.
This is absolutely the worst a part of being a publicist. I am unable to consider I’ve needed to write this, not to mention launch the news. Please share your ideas and recollections of Irene. I’ll be studying every and each certainly one of them and know she’ll be smiling from Heaven. She adored her followers. – JM pic.twitter.com/TsC5BwZ3fh
— Irene Cara (@Irene_Cara) November 26, 2022