Elaine Paige
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Elaine Paige is an English actress, born in Barnet in 1948, most notable for her roles in musical theater.
She came to prominence playing Eva Peron in the musical Evita in 1978, but despite press claims of overnight success, she had been working in the theatre from an early age. She trained at the Aida Foster stage school in London before taking roles in the British tour of the show The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd and the original London production of Hair. She played Sandy in the London production of Grease and appeared as one of Michael Crawford's girlfriends in Billy. She has since said she was about to leave the acting profession, possibly to become a teacher before the role of Evita was offered to her.
Paige worried that her career had already peaked when she was out of work for some time after Evita, but when Judi Dench sustained an injury during rehearsals for Cats producers asked her to step it. They warned that the role "was not another Evita" and only involved singing one and a half songs. Fortunately, that song was "Memory", which was a top 10 hit for Paige and has become her signature song.
After Cats, she appeared in Abbacadbra, an ABBA compilation show said to be the forerunner to "Mamma Mia" and "Chess", also written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA but with lyrics by Tim Rice, co-writer of Evita. Having initially recorded a "concept" album of the latter show, Paige scored her only No.1 hit single to date, "I Know Him So Well", a duet with Barbara Dickson.
In 1989, she co-produced and starred in a revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes in London, which made a star of John Barrowman. In the early 1990s, a long term relationship with the lyricist Tim Rice broke up and Paige attempted an image change by recording an album with a California-based producer in the Bette Midler torch singer vein entitled Love Can Do That. Her solo albums had thus far been a mixed bag, many, strangely perhaps, having been produced by David Bowie's collaborator Tony Visconti, including the very successful Stages in 1983, featured tracks from musical theatre. In 1993, she returned to the United States to work with Peter Matz on an album called Romance and the Stage featured songs from earlier days of musical theatre. The following year, she recorded her last solo album to date, Piaf, which featured music inspired by the role she was playing in the Pam Gems play of the same name in London. Critics were impressed by her straight acting skills in that play, which Paige had wanted to be recognised for some time, however, in 1995 she returned to musical theatre, playing Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.
Sunset Boulevard enabled her to achieve her long-standing ambition of performing on Broadway but the exhaustion of the playing the role for more than a year let her to take an extended sabbatical on her return to the UK, where she didn't take on another role until 2000 with the King and I. Playing Anna is this production was Paige's last long running musical theatre part and she has spent the following few years playing concerts and more recently moving into television and radio work.
Paige was awarded an OBE in 1995 and is currently hosting a Sunday afternoon BBC Radio 2 show featuring music from the stage and film.
