Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara) Dies at only 63 (She made me feel I had Wings to fly off Ignorance)
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| Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara) performs at a graduation ceremony in a scene from Fame, directed by Alan Parker, 1980. |
United Artists/Archive Photos/Getty Images
I still feel I'm dancing to her music at a club name Styx on the East side of Manhattan. Red leather jacket, tight Jordache jeans (brand new brand and a hit with youngnger guys. Black tee) DJ most liked her music and he played often and it was there when I first heard her music. Her music gave me a sense of ownership of myself because in any situation dealing with who I was I can spring my wings and fly away. No need to listen to bs or things that made no sense to the person saying it but still wanted me and others like me to go by it. I'm dressed my usual there to work at a jewelry store but not for the disco but this was at the same time.
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| Adam with my loving nephew Harry |
Irene Cara, the singer-actress best known for starring in and belting the title tracks from the 1980s movies Fame and Flashdance, has died. She was 63.
Cara died at her home in Florida, said her publicist, Judith Moose, who announced the news on Cara's social media accounts on Saturday. She said the cause of death was "currently unknown."
"Irene's family has requested privacy as they process their grief," Moose wrote. "She was a beautifully gifted soul whose legacy will live forever through her music and films."
Cara was born into a working-class Puerto Rican and Cuban family in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City. As a child actor, her credits included a regular stint on the 1970s children's show The Electric Company.
But it was Fame, the 1980 movie about a group of talented young hopefuls in New York trying to launch their careers in the cutthroat performing arts world, that launched Cara to stardom. She sang on the title track that was nominated for an Academy Award for best original song.
Fame co-star Laura Dean Koch remembered Cara as "a dynamo who could sing, dance, and act, the definition of a triple threat. Irene was a role model and someone I aspired to be like."
Three years later, Cara accepted the Oscar for best original song for "Flashdance ... What a Feeling," along with the songwriting team of Flashdance (1983) — music by Giorgio Moroder, lyrics by Keith Forsey and Cara — for which she sang the jubilant title song. She also won two Grammys for her work on Flashdance.
Cara influenced a future generation of artists. Broadway conductor and radio host Seth Rudetsky says watching Cara on screen as a kid helped shape his career ambitions.
"Irene Cara represented making it in the arts and gave us so much excitement and hope and enthusiasm to pursue the arts," he said.
In a follow-up statement on Twitter, Moose said that she and Cara had been working on "amazing projects that would have made her and her fans incredibly happy."
"Her manager and I will finish them," she said. "She'd want that."
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