Sheena Easton
Sheena Easton is an actor, born 1959.
Easton became famous as television content before that was a career path. In 1980 a British series followed her attempt to land a record deal, and viewers watched her sign with EMI more or less in real time. The hits came fast after that: "9 to 5", retitled "Morning Train" in America, then the theme to For Your Eyes Only, then a run through the 1980s that put her in the room with Prince, Kenny Rogers, Nile Rodgers, and Babyface. Her awards on file are a Grammy for Best New Artist and a Grammy in a Mexican and Mexican-American album category, which says something about how far outside pop she was willing to work.
Her most-seen screen moment is the one her credit barely acknowledges. On For Your Eyes Only she appears inside the title sequence itself, logged here as an uncredited turn as herself, an odd footnote for the most conspicuous thing a Bond singer has ever been asked to do. Miami Vice handed her a dramatic part as Caitlin Davies. The horror anthology Body Bags cast her as Megan. Indecent Proposal used her as Sheena Easton, which by then was its own kind of role.
The durable stretch, and the least discussed one, is animation. She voiced Sasha La Fleur across two All Dogs Go to Heaven features and the spin-off series, Robyn Correy in Gargoyles, Trixie in The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, the Groomer in Road Rovers, and a professor in a Scooby-Doo mystery. A singer whose fame was built on 1980s gloss ended up with a second career that runs almost entirely on her voice.
Movies (9)
TV (7)
Music (1)
Where to start with Sheena Easton
The obvious entry point is For Your Eyes Only, where you can watch her sing over the credits and then go looking for her in the sequence itself. It is the cleanest illustration of what she was in 1981: a voice attached to a very large piece of pop machinery.
For the acting, Miami Vice is the serious attempt and Body Bags the strange one, an anthology horror part that trades entirely on her being recognisable. Then move to the animation, which is where the real body of work sits: All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 gives her a lead role and a song, and Gargoyles drops her into a much darker cartoon than its afternoon slot suggested. Two documentaries close the loop, The Sound of 007 on the Bond songbook and Prince: Sign 'o' the Times on the collaborator who shaped her mid-career sound.