'Fame' and 'Flashdance' singer Irene Cara has died at 63 - NPR

Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara) performs astatine a graduation ceremonial successful a country from Fame, directed by Alan Parker, 1980. United Artists/Archive Photos/Getty Images hide caption

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United Artists/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara) performs astatine a graduation ceremonial successful a country from Fame, directed by Alan Parker, 1980.

United Artists/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Irene Cara, the singer-actress champion known for starring successful and belting the rubric tracks from the 1980s movies Fame and Flashdance, has died. She was 63.

Cara died astatine her location successful Florida, said her publicist, Judith Moose, who announced the quality connected Cara's societal media relationship connected Saturday. She said a origin of decease was "currently unknown."

"Irene's household has requested privateness arsenic they process their grief," Moose wrote. "She was a beautifully talented psyche whose bequest volition unrecorded everlastingly done her euphony and films."

Cara was calved into a working-class Puerto Rican and Cuban household successful the Bronx vicinity of New York City. As a kid actor, her credits included a regular stint connected the 1970s children's amusement The Electric Company.

​But it was Fame, the 1980 movie astir a radical of talented young hopefuls successful New York trying to motorboat their careers successful the cutthroat performing arts world, that launched Cara to stardom. She sang connected the rubric way that was nominated for an Academy Award for champion archetypal song.

Fame co-star Laura Dean Koch remembered Cara as "a dynamo who could sing, dance, and act, the explanation of a triple threat. Irene was a relation exemplary and idiosyncratic I aspired to beryllium like."

Three years later, Cara accepted the Oscar for champion archetypal opus for "Flashdance ... What a Feeling," on with the songwriting squad of Flashdance (1983) — euphony by Giorgio Moroder, lyrics by Keith Forsey and Cara — for which she sang the jubilant rubric song. She besides won 2 Grammys for her enactment connected Flashdance.

Cara influenced a aboriginal procreation of artists. Broadway conductor and vigor big Seth Rudetsky says watching Cara connected surface arsenic a kid helped signifier his vocation ambitions.

"Irene Cara represented making it successful the arts and gave america truthful overmuch excitement and anticipation and enthusiasm to prosecute the arts," helium said.

In a follow-up connection connected Twitter, Moose said that she and Cara had been moving connected "amazing projects that would person made her and her fans incredibly happy."

"Her manager and I volition decorativeness them," she said. "She'd privation that."