Amanda Lear facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Amanda Lear
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Lear in France, 2010
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Amanda Tap(p) |
| Born | 18 June or 18 November, 1939 (age 83–84) Saigon, French Indochina (present-day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) |
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| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1965–present |
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| Associated acts | Salvador Dalí |
Amanda Lear (née Tap or Tapp; born 1939) is a French singer, songwriter, painter, television presenter, actress, and former model.
Early life
Lear's origins are unclear, with the singer providing different information about her background and keeping her birth year a secret. Most sources claim she was born on 18 June 1939.
As for her birthplace, Saigon and British Hong Kong appear to be most credible versions, but places like Singapore, Switzerland, and even Transylvania have been rumoured as the singer's birthplace. She was reportedly the only child of her parents, who later divorced. Most sources, including Lear's 1965 wedding certificate from the Chelsea registry office, confirm that her father was a French army officer (possibly of British origin). Her mother appears to have had a Russian-Asian background.
Lear allegedly grew up in the South of France and in Switzerland, or between London and Paris, or in Nice. She learned English, German, Spanish and Italian in her teens, and would use multilingualism in her professional life.
Career
Lear began her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s, and went on to model for Paco Rabanne, Ossie Clark, and others. She met Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, and remained his closest friend and muse for the next 15 years. Lear first came into the public eye as the cover model for Roxy Music's album For Your Pleasure in 1973. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, she was a million-album-selling disco queen, mainly in Continental Europe and Scandinavia, signed to Ariola Records. Lear's first four albums earned her mainstream popularity, charting in the top 10 of European charts, including the best-selling Sweet Revenge (1978). Her bigger hits included "Blood and Honey", "Tomorrow", "Queen of Chinatown", "Follow Me", "Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me)", "The Sphinx", and "Fashion Pack".
By the mid-1980s, Lear had become a leading media personality in Italy, where she hosted many popular TV shows. Although television took priority over musical activity, she continued to record, experimenting with different genres and trying to revive her career by re-recording and remixing earlier hits to various levels of success. Lear has also developed a successful career in painting, which she has long described as her biggest passion, and regularly exhibited her works in galleries across Europe and beyond since the early 1980s. She has also written a number of autobiographies, including My Life with Dalí.
Since the 1990s, her time has been divided among music, television, movies, and painting. Despite regular album releases, she failed to achieve major success in charts with her music, but her television career has remained stellar, and she has hosted numerous primetime TV shows, mostly in Italy and France, occasionally making guest appearances in TV series. She has performed acting and dubbing roles in independent, as well as major, film productions. In the late 2000s, Lear reinvented herself as a theatrical actress, performing in long-running stage plays in France. To date, she allegedly has sold over 27 million records worldwide. Lear is also a widely recognized gay icon.
Discography
- Studio albums and main compilations
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Filmography
- Ne jouez pas avec les Martiens (1967)
- Wonderwall (1968)
- Follie di notte (1978)
- Loggerheads (1978)
- Grottenolm (1985)
- L'amour est à réinventer (1997)
- Bimboland (1998)
- La Défi (2002)
- Oliviero Rising (2007)
- Bloody Flowers (2008)
- 8th Wonderland (2010)
- Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)
- Metti una notte (2017)
- Miss (2020)
- Si muore solo da vivi (2020)
Images for kids
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Salvador Dalí had a profound impact on Lear's painting career as well as her personal life.
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Lear performing on a Dutch TV show at the height of her singing career, 1978
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Amanda Lear at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990
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Amanda Lear in 2010
See also
In Spanish: Amanda Lear para niños
