Elaine Paige
Elaine Paige is a British stage actor, singer, and recording artist, born on 5 March 1948 in Barnet, England.
Her training began at the Aida Foster Theatre School, where she developed the performing foundations that would carry her through a career spanning stage, recording studios, and radio. As a stage actor and singer, she has worked across theatrical productions that drew on both her dramatic and vocal abilities, earning recognition substantial enough to bring her before award panels and honours committees alike.
Among the formal acknowledgements of her work, Paige received a Laurence Olivier Award and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, the latter representing a recognition by the United Kingdom — the country of which she is a citizen — of her contributions to the performing arts. Her activities have not been confined to the stage or the recording studio; she has also worked as a radio personality, extending her presence in the entertainment world beyond live performance. As a recording artist, she has committed her vocal work to releases that exist alongside, rather than merely in support of, her theatrical career.
The through line of Paige's professional life is the convergence of voice and performance in a theatrical context — a combination rooted in the training she received at Aida Foster and sustained across the several disciplines, stage acting, recording, and broadcasting, in which she has remained active. Her career reflects a consistent engagement with musical and dramatic material delivered to audiences through multiple forms, and it is this range across interconnected performing arts that characterises the body of work she has built since the beginning of her professional life.
Quotes by Elaine Paige
My first singing role was as Susanna in a school production in a shortened form of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. I loved to sing and I was given lots of encouragement by a wonderful music teacher Mrs Ann Hill and by my parents who suggested I go to drama school.
I did miss the music a bit – but only in the wings, when I was waiting to go on. It seemed dreadfully quiet, rather unnerving. But the wonderful thing was that one didn’t have to be quite so obsessive about one’s health, and one’s voice.
You couldn’t even write me a paper about the roles you would dream of playing in modern musical theatre.
Actors already striving in the theatre wouldn’t dream of putting themselves on these shows; it means that only about 10% of the talent out there is being auditioned for parts.
I’ve never been very good at manipulating my career, but fortunately I haven’t needed to.
If you are in a play, and you catch a cold, you are able to muddle through. If you are carrying a musical, it’s a different thing altogether. It’s the great fear of any singer’s life.
I don’t listen to so much music now. I did when I was younger. Music is so much part of my work. I like peace and quiet now when I go home.
If you’re a serious actor, you wouldn’t put yourself up for one of those shows in case you got bumped off the first week and all your colleagues saw it.
Just because you are successful in one area does not necessarily mean you’re going to be successful in another.
But you know, I’m not 25 anymore, and I have always said musical theater in particular is a young person’s game. It requires energy, mentally and physically, to do it.