When was lea salonga in miss saigon

More than half her life has been spent onstage—all but the past two years in her native Manila. At seven she stage-debuted as the youngest and bounciest of the royal offspring in The King and I. Two years later, she took on the title role of Annie. Throughout her youth she feasted on all the major child roles provided by Philippine rep—from the no-neck monsters of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to the Trapp Family sunbeams of The Sound of Music.

At ten Salonga charged into a recording career, collecting a gold record for her first album, Small Voice , and this got her a local television show to host, Love, Lea , which was followed by Philippine films. But all this garland garnering and media switching did not really prepare Salonga for the adult demands of Miss Saigon.

Her incredible singing was never in doubt, but she turned out to be a better actress than she imagined, emerging first out of the 1, who auditioned for the London and Broadway productions. Once she landed this plum assignment, she swallowed hard and plunged into the part with determined abandon.

He exaggerates. You still have your chores to do. You gotta get up and do what you have to do to take care of yourself. Give her a good game of Scrabble or a challenging crossword puzzle any day. Discos give me a headache. Come next Feb. In March, unless the inimitable Mr. Lea Salonga Joan Marcus.

Lea Salonga and Brian R. Salonga would later describe the song as the song that changed her life. When the Broadway production was starting in , Salonga's citizenship became an issue, as she was neither British nor American and the Actors' Equity Association AEA wanted to give priority to its own members, initially preventing her from reprising her role from the West End production.

However, Mackintosh was unable to find a satisfactory replacement for Salonga despite the extensive auditions that he conducted in several American and Canadian cities. An arbitrator reversed the AEA ruling a month later to allow Salonga to star.

Salonga's portrayal of Kim was met with universal acclaim, catapulting her to international fame and becoming the first actress of Asian descent and only Filipino to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical.

After she left the Broadway production in , Salonga returned to play Kim from to , including the bootlegged Manila Production. On September 22, , Salonga appeared during the 25th anniversary gala performance on the West End alongside other original cast members Simon Bowman and Jonathan Pryce. Miss Saigon Wiki Explore.

Miss Saigon.