1. Amanda Lear is a French singer, songwriter, painter, television presenter, actress and former model.
69 Facts About Amanda Lear
1. 2.
Amanda Lear began her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and went on to model for Paco Rabanne, Ossie Clark and others.
3.
Amanda Lear met Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali and remained his closest friend and muse for almost 20 years.
4.
Amanda Lear has developed a successful career in painting, which she has long described as her biggest passion, and regularly exhibited her works in galleries across Europe and beyond since the early 1980s.
5.
Amanda Lear has written a number of books, including My Life with Dali.
6.
Amanda Lear has performed acting and dubbing roles in independent as well as in major film productions.
7.
Amanda Lear's origins are unclear, with the singer providing different information about her background and keeping her birth year a secret from her long-term husband Alain-Philippe.
8.
However, Amanda Lear later stated in a 1978 interview that she had a younger brother, her mother was Mongolian and they were both living together in a small town in the Pyrenees on the French-Spanish border.
9.
Amanda Lear allegedly grew up in the South of France and in Switzerland, or between London and Paris, or in Nice.
10.
Amanda Lear learned English, German, Spanish and Italian in her teens and would use multilingualism in her professional life.
11.
Amanda Lear has variously let it be known that her mother was English or French or Vietnamese or Chinese, and that her father was English, Russian, French or Indonesian.
12.
Amanda Lear may have been born in Hanoi in 1939, or Hong Kong in either 1941 or 1946.
13.
Allegations claiming that Amanda Lear was a drag queen or intersex circulated from the beginning of Amanda Lear's modelling and singing careers.
14.
Amanda Lear's alleged transgender background was commented on by Salvador Dali himself and remarked upon in the media and in the biographies of those who knew Lear earlier in her life, including Dali; author Ian Gibson devoted an entire chapter to Lear in his biography of Dali.
15.
In 1976, Amanda Lear stated that it was "a crazy idea from some journalist" and later claimed that the rumour had been started by Dali or even herself.
16.
Amanda Lear was introduced to the eccentric Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali in Paris.
17.
Amanda Lear has since described their close and unconventional relationship as a "spiritual marriage" and remained Dali's confidante, and closest friend through the next 16 years.
18.
Amanda Lear spent every summer with Dali at his home at Port Lligat in Catalonia, Spain, and accompanied him and his wife on trips to Barcelona, Madrid, Paris and New York.
19.
Amanda Lear took part in his art projects, posing for a number of Dali's drawings and paintings, including Angelus de Millet - Amanda, Roger Freeing Angelica, Bateau Anthotropic, and Exploding Head.
20.
Amanda Lear can be found as Temperance in Salvador Dali's Tarot, in which she claimed to have assisted Dali in the completion of the collages.
21.
In 1965, Amanda Lear moved to London and began working as a cabaret artist.
22.
Amanda Lear was a runway model for Lagerfeld and met Catherine Harle, the head of a modelling agency, who offered her a contract.
23.
Amanda Lear modelled for fashion designers including Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel in Paris and Mary Quant, Ossie Clark and Antony Price in London.
24.
Amanda Lear's acquaintances included the Beatles and fellow top models Twiggy, Pattie Boyd and Anita Pallenberg.
25.
Amanda Lear became a "stalwart of London's demimonde", an exotic name on the nightclub circuit and a regular fixture in the gossip columns.
26.
Amanda Lear was arrested in 1967 by the police with drugs belonging to the Rolling Stones.
27.
Amanda Lear was sent naked to a prison cell "because you don't denounce a Rolling Stones", she said and was later fined for it.
28.
Amanda Lear appeared in several advertisements for major brands, modelling among others for a Chantelle underwear range and the Detchema fragrance by a French company Revillon Freres in 1967, and in 1968 played a minor role in the French comedy film Ne jouez pas avec les Martiens and in the 1968 British psychedelic film Wonderwall.
29.
In 1971, Amanda Lear modelled for a special Christmas issue of the French edition of Vogue, edited entirely by Salvador Dali, and was photographed by David Bailey.
30.
Amanda Lear made a cameo appearance modelling in A Bigger Splash.
31.
Amanda Lear has been briefly engaged to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music and was famously depicted posing in a skintight leather dress leading a black panther on a leash on the cover of the band's art rock album For Your Pleasure, released in March 1973, an image that has been described as "as famous as the album itself".
32.
Amanda Lear went on to have an affair with the married Bowie.
33.
Amanda Lear then contributed to the Dali Museum, opened in the painter's home town Figueres in September 1974, by producing a series of collages decorating the doors of the museum, and was offered writing a monthly gossip column by the British magazine Tatler.
34.
Amanda Lear was one of the four gossip columnists for Ritz Magazine.
35.
In 1974, disillusioned by a shallow and conservative fashion industry and encouraged by her boyfriend Bowie, who paid for singing and dancing lessons, Amanda Lear decided to launch a career in music.
36.
The track caught the attention of the singer, composer and producer Anthony Monn and label Ariola, which offered her a seven-year, six-album recording contract for a sum of money that Amanda Lear since has described as "astronomic".
37.
Amanda Lear allegedly had affairs with Keith Moon and Jimmy Page.
38.
In 1978, Amanda Lear continued her line of disco hits with Sweet Revenge, an album that opens with a concept medley about a Faustian fairy tale of a girl who sells her soul to the devil for fame and fortune, and in her eventual revenge over the devil's offer finds true love.
39.
The first single from Sweet Revenge, "Follow Me", powered by Amanda Lear's characteristic deep and recitative voice and the theme of the devil, was an instant smash hit.
40.
Amanda Lear took part in three Italian productions in 1978: a war-time parody Zio Adolfo in arte Fuhrer, a softporn documentary Follie di notte directed by Joe D'Amato, and a six-episode controversial TV show Stryx.
41.
In late 1978, at a fashionable Parisian discotheque Le Palace, a French equivalent of Studio 54, Amanda Lear met bisexual French aristocrat Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villele, the former lover and then adopted son of diplomat and controversial gay novelist Roger Peyrefitte.
42.
Amanda Lear married him on 13 March 1979, while on a trip to the United States.
43.
Dali and his wife Gala both strongly disapproved of the relationship and attempted to persuade Amanda Lear to have the marriage annulled.
44.
Amanda Lear visited Dali one last time at Pubol, Spain, a few years before the painter died.
45.
Amanda Lear spent most of 1980 on European promotional tours for the album and its many accompanying single releases, from Greece to Finland.
46.
Amanda Lear made her first visit to Japan, where both the single "Queen of Chinatown" and the Sweet Revenge album had charted.
47.
Amanda Lear again wrote all the English lyrics for the album.
48.
Amanda Lear launched a very successful and lucrative career as a TV presenter in Italy, thanks to the future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, soon becoming a household name in that country.
49.
Amanda Lear hosted many successful TV shows there, including Premiatissima and W le donne, where she frequently promoted her music.
50.
In late 1985, Amanda Lear appeared in a series of TV spots for Fiat.
51.
Amanda Lear had written her first book, the autobiography My Life with Dali, about her long relationship with the famous painter.
52.
The launch was planned for January 1987 just before promotion began, Amanda Lear was seriously injured in a near-fatal car accident and took months to recover, unable to promote the record properly.
53.
Amanda Lear continued to record more dancefloor-friendly repertoire in the 1990s, starting with the 1992 song "Fantasy", which became a hit in European clubs.
54.
Meanwhile, Amanda Lear hosted the TV show Mefiez-vous des blondes on TF1 and appeared in Arnaud Selignac's TV drama Une Femme pour moi in France.
55.
Amanda Lear released Back in Your Arms in Spring 1998, an album consisting of re-recordings of her own 1970s disco hits and remixed versions of tracks from the 1995 album Alter Ego.
56.
Amanda Lear's next acting and television ventures were the French movie Bimboland, in which she starred alongside Gerard Depardieu, and an Italian makeover TV show Il brutto anatroccolo.
57.
The theme tune to the latter was "Nuda", a cover version of Melina Mercouri's 1960 recording "Never on Sunday", which Amanda Lear recorded but never released commercially.
58.
At the time of the accident, Amanda Lear was in Milan, where she was hosting a TV show.
59.
In 2002, Amanda Lear starred in Le Defi, a musical movie written and directed by choreographer Blanca Li about an 18-year-old dropout who dreams of becoming a star in breakdancing and the ensuing conflicts with his conservative mother.
60.
Amanda Lear made several appearances in movies, including acting in Oliviero Rising and dubbing for the French version of Dragon Hunters.
61.
In 2009, Amanda Lear accepted the part of Cecile in the comedy Panique au ministere, which debuted at the Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris.
62.
Amanda Lear dubbed the voice of Janet the Lioness in the French version of Zookeeper.
63.
In September, Amanda Lear returned to theatre for the lead role in Lady Oscar, an adaptation of Claude Magnier's 1958 play Oscar, at the Theatre de la Renaissance in Paris.
64.
In September 2012, Amanda Lear appeared as a catwalk model on Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion show in Paris and in 2013 started playing the leading part in the play Divina at the Theatre des Varietes in Paris.
65.
At the time of an interview in the Italian program Domenica in on 16 October 2016, Amanda Lear had planned a retirement immediately after completing the La Candidate tour in Spring 2017 she had to cancel a number of final dates due to health issues.
66.
In 2019, Amanda Lear joined the judging panel of the Italian TV show Sanremo Young on Rai 1.
67.
In 2020, Amanda Lear starred in Si Muore Solo Da Vivi directed by Alberto Rizzi and in Miss directed by Ruben Alves.
68.
Amanda Lear released a new album called Tuberose in 2021.
69.
Amanda Lear is portrayed by Andreja Pejic in the film Daliland, released in 2023.