Lori Singer
Lori Singer is an actor, born 1957.
Music came first, and it came seriously. Lori Singer was born in Corpus Christi in 1957, the daughter of the conductor Jacques Singer, and grew up in Portland, where her father led the Oregon Symphony from 1962 to 1972. She made her debut as a cellist with that orchestra at thirteen, went on to Juilliard, and left it as the school's youngest graduate.
Acting arrived through television. She was Julie Miller on Fame, which began in 1982, and two years later she was Ariel in Footloose, the preacher's daughter picking fights with a town that has banned dancing. The performance is better than the film's reputation allows: Ariel is written as a provocation, and Singer plays her as genuinely reckless rather than merely rebellious, which is the harder and less likeable choice.
The mid 1980s ran hot, with Lana in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Maddy in the comedy The Man with One Red Shoe (1985) and Georgia in Alan Rudolph's Trouble in Mind (1985). Then Robert Altman cast her in Short Cuts (1993) as Zoe Trainer, a cellist, and let her actually play. The credit reads "Cello, The Trout Quintet", and the two halves of her life finally occupy the same frame.
Work since has been sparse and chosen: Sydney Bloom in the science-fiction series VR.5 (1995), the horror picture Warlock (1989), and later roles in When Will I Be Loved (2004), Experimenter (2015) and The Institute (2017).
Movies (12)
TV (2)
Where to start with Lori Singer
Go to Short Cuts first, and not only because it is the best film here. Altman built the role out of what she actually is, a cellist in a house full of noise, and the playing is hers, which makes it a rare case of a performer's biography being used rather than decorated.
After that, Footloose for the obvious reasons, and because Ariel is a much stranger creation than the soundtrack suggests. Trouble in Mind is the deep cut worth the effort, Alan Rudolph in full stylised mood, and The Falcon and the Snowman is the serious drama of the period, a true story about two young Americans selling state secrets. Fame shows the television version of the same casting instinct, VR.5 is the mid-1990s cyber-thriller that has aged into a curiosity, Warlock is far more fun than it has any right to be, and Experimenter is the quiet late one.