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Amanda Lear (née Tapp; born 18 November in 1939 or 1946) is a French singer, lyricist, painter, television presenter, actress and former model. Lear grew up in the South of France and in Switzerland, and studied art in Paris and at Saint Martin's School of Art in London. She began her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and went on to model for Paco Rabanne and Ossie Clark among others. Around that time she met the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and would remain his closest friend and muse for the next 15 years. Lear first came into the public eye as the cover model for Roxy Music's album ''For Your Pleasure'' in 1973. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, she was a million-album-selling disco queen, mainly in Continental Europe and Scandinavia, signed to Ariola Records. Lear's first four albums earned her mainstream popularity, charting in the Top 10 on European charts, including the best-selling ''Sweet Revenge'' (1978). Her biggest hits included "Blood and Honey", "Tomorrow", "Queen of Chinatown", "Follow Me", "Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me)" and "Fashion Pack". In the mid-1980s Lear positioned herself as one of the leading media personalities in mainland Europe, especially in Italy and in France where she hosted many popular TV shows. She had also developed a successful painting career, regularly exhibiting her works in galleries across Europe for the next three decades, and continued to make music, earning minor hits such as "Incredibilmente donna" and "Love Your Body". Amanda's 1980s musical output saw her experimenting with different genres and trying to revive her career by re-recording earlier hits to various levels of success. 1980s also saw her release two books: an autobiography ''My Life with Dalí'' and a novel ''L'Immortelle''. Since the 1990s her time has been divided between music, television, movies and painting. Despite frequent album releases, she failed to achieve success on charts with her music. However, her television career remained successful, with Lear hosting numerous prime time TV shows, occasionally making guest appearances in French and Italian TV series. She has also performed acting and dubbing roles in independent as well as major film productions. In the late 2000s Lear would reinvent herself as a theatrical actress, performing in long-running stage plays in France. To date, she has sold over 25 million singles and 15 million albums worldwide. Lear is also a widely recognized gay icon. ==Early life== Lear's origins are unclear, with the singer herself providing different information regarding her background and keeping her birth year a secret even from her long-term husband. Contested facts include her birth date and place, her birth sex, names and nationalities of her parents and the location of her upbringing. Most sources claim 18 November 1939 to be her birth date, including GEMA, but in a 1996 interview with Marc-Olivier Fogiel the singer revealed her birth year was 1946. Another recurring version is also 1948. However, in 2010, during an interview with a French newspaper ''Libération'', Lear presented her identity card to a journalist, which read: "born 18 November 1950 in Saigon". As for her birthplace, Saigon and British Hong Kong appear to be most credible versions,〔 but places like Singapore, Switzerland or even Transylvania have also been rumoured as the singer's birthplace by different sources. Amanda herself has long claimed to have British nationality. She was an only child to her parents who later divorced. Most sources claim her father was a French army officer of British origin and mother had Russo-Asiatic background. In a 1976 interview with Carmen Thomas for a German television show, Lear confirmed that her father was British and mother was Russian, and that they had already both died. However, she would later claim her mother had a French background.〔 Lear's alleged transsexual background has been commented upon in the media and in the biographies of those who knew Lear earlier in her life, including Salvador Dalí, with Ian Gibson even devoting an entire chapter to her. April Ashley, a famous transsexual entertainer, has long claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, she and Lear, whose birth name she claimed was Alain Tapp, were working together in transvestite revues in Paris, Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book, ''April Ashley's Odyssey'', she recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name Peki d'Oslo. Similar facts have been reported by Romy Haag, a transsexual artist living in Germany, who ran a popular nightclub Chez Romy in Berlin and knew Amanda closely, and Bibiana Fernández, a Spanish transsexual actress and singer. Some sources even insinuate that it was Dalí himself who sponsored Lear's sex change operation in Casablanca in 1963, carried out by doctor Georges Burou. Rumours claiming that Lear was an actual man in drag or even referring to her as a hermaphrodite were circulating at the beginning of her singing career, but they cleared off after she posed nude for ''Playboy'' in the late 1970s. Despite Lear herself contradicting transsexual rumours already in the 1970s and explaining they were a part of strategy to draw public attention, they have persisted to date. When asked by Carmen Thomas in a 1976 interview whether it was true that she was born a male, Lear replied that it was "a crazy idea from some journalist".〔 She would later claim in ''Interview'' magazine that it was David Bowie who started the rumour. She would also address these rumours in her songs "Fabulous (Lover, Love Me)" and "I'm a Mistery" (deliberately misspelled as to reference the word "mister"). Despite some sources claiming her transsexual background is an open secret, she would always flatly deny it, even when confronted by the Dalí biographer Ian Gibson during a TV show. However, an excerpt from an article from an Italian newspaper surfaced online in November 2011, including a reproduction of a copy of Lear's birth certificate, which states that she was born Alain Maurice Louis René Tap on 18 June 1939 in Saigon, and a picture of Lear as a young man. It is believed she spent her early childhood in Switzerland. Raised speaking French and English, she learned German, Spanish and Italian in her teens, languages she later was able to use in her professional life. She relocated to Paris at the end of elementary school to study at Académie des Beaux-Arts, then went to Saint Martin's School of Art in London in 1964. On 11 December 1965, she married Paul Morgan Lear, a Scottish architecture student, receiving the name Lear from him and obtaining British citizenship. The name of the bride was registered at the Chelsea registry office as "Amanda Tapp daughter of André Tapp, retired Captain of the French army".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Amanda Lear」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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