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"I grew up around music. Three of my family were musicians." Lori Singer's time in the Hollywood spotlight was relatively short, but she has certainly left her thumbprint on film and television. In the early eighties she starred first in the TV series Fame (1982-83) as Julie Miller, a part written specifically for Lori, and followed this up with a leading role in the classic Footloose (1984), with Kevin Bacon. Although these would be her most high-profile roles in mainstream entertainment, she has stayed busy as an actress, as a producer and as a musician in the years since.

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Born into Music

It was inevitable that Lori Singer would be attracted to music. Daughter to concert pianist Leslie Singer and father Jacques Singer, a conductor who studied under Leopold Stokowski, Lori would meet a number of iconic musicians in her youth, including Leonard Bernstein. Lori was born November 6, 1957 in Corpus Christi, Texas, and would immediately dive into the life of a musician, eventually studying cello at the famous Juilliard School for the performing arts in Manhattan.

"It is an attention-getter. I mean, it's hard to ignore a woman lugging a cello around." Lori Singer was a fan-favorite during her run on Fame, playing dancer/cellist Julie Miller in the show's first two seasons. However, the show would not immediately propel her to the A-list. While she was on Fame, word got out of a "Paramount Pictures wild-girl" project, with casting agents scouting the New York theater scene for someone who could headline their movie. To fans of Fame, Lori was already famous. To Paramount, she was just one of literally thousands of actresses trying to get the part. During this time, Lori's time was split between Fame, the stage, and flying back and forth between LA and London for auditions.

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There was never any clear indication that Lori was definitely going to get the part in Footloose. The auditions and meetings with the director went on for weeks, and when the news came, she was as surprised as anyone to receive a bouquet of flowers from director Herb Ross, letting her know that she'd landed her first leading role in a major motion picture. After that night's performance of Fame, she flew back to LA to meet with co-star Kevin Bacon and start rehearsing for the movie.

Right away Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer had chemistry, both on set and off. Looking back on the experience, Singer remembers the film almost as a document of her own personal experiences. "I’m proud to be that rebel forever, it reminds me to carry that spirit with me. That experience blends with the reality of that time, and is always a part of my life."

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After Footloose

While Footloose remains Lori's most famous role, she has also earned fans for featuring in a number of cult films such as The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), The Man with One Red Shoe (1985) and starring in the science-fiction TV series VR.5 (1995), playing Sydney Bloom. The series was short-lived, but was considered innovative in its exploration of virtual reality and in its use of deliberate continuity errors to blur the line between the "real" and "virtual" events of the story.

Lori continues to act, featuring in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2011) and narrating the voice of Linda Bishop in God Knows Where I Am (2017), but in recent years her focus has primarily been on music, playing at the Royal Albert Hall, performing a piece by Bach for the Inspired by Bach (1997) series of short films by Atom Egoyan, and playing a solo in 2008 at Carnegie Hall, a hymn written for Martin Luther King Jr. by composer Karl Jenkins. She also featured her cello playing in a number of her movie and television roles, including Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), a role that would win her a Golden Globe.

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She has also branched out into production, executive producing Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2013), a documentary for HBO directed by Alex Gibney. The documentary went on to win a number of awards, including a Peabody.

While Lori Singer never went on to become a movie star following her performance in Footloose, she remains an active voice in the arts community, creating music and taking the occasional acting role as it suits her.

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"Every time I hear the song 'Footloose,' I feel a surge of rebellion. Kevin and I had a powerful connection while filming, and the fact that our experience of growing up and being rebellious was captured on film is astounding."