She additionally appeared in 4 Broadway musicals—Maggie Flynn, The Me Nobody Knows, Via Galactica and Got Tu Go Disco.
But it was the 1980 musical drama movie Fame that launched her to worldwide, nicely, fame. The movie centered round a performing arts highschool, Cara performed pupil Coco Hernandez and carried out 4 songs, together with the hit single “Fame,” for the film soundtrack.
The New York native went on to co-write and carry out the lead single “Flashdance… What a Feeling” for the soundtrack to the 1983 romantic drama dance movie Flashdance, starring Jennifer Beals as a dancer who aspires to turn into an expert ballerina. The track earned Cara a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, and an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song.
“Thank you brilliant Irene for your open heart and your fearless triple threat talent,” Beals wrote on Instagram after information of the singer’s dying was made public. “It took a beautiful dreamer to write and perform the soundtracks for those who dare to dream. #RIPirenecara.”
In 1984, Cara co-starred with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds within the film City Heat. Later, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Cara did voiceover work for kids’s animated movies, such because the film Happily Ever After. Her final onscreen position as in an episode of the TV collection Hearts Are Wild in 1992.
