Celebrity Biographies
petula clark
He carries art in his veins. She began singing as a child and spread her voice throughout the world for more than seventy years. A queen of song in the 1960s, she eventually became an actress, a profession she was drawn to.
Although she participated in great films, Petula Clark’s artistic career is mainly related to the world of music, in which she has become an eminence. In fact, with more than 70 million records sold in her career, she holds the record for being the most prolific British singer.
Petula Clark was born on November 15, 1932 in Surrey, England. She is the daughter of a Welsh mother and an English father. From a very young age she already felt the call of art. In 1938, when she was six years old, she went with her father to see Flora Robson perform and she already knew what she wanted to be when she was older. She later went on to state that she dreamed of becoming Ingrid Bergman. However, her artistic paths were going to go the other way, because music then knocked on her door. From 1942 she performed hundreds of times in a radio program intended to entertain the troops during World War II and she even toured the United Kingdom as a children’s singer, accompanied by another girl named Julie Andrews .
He made his film debut at the age of twelve, in the war drama Medal for the General , which was followed by other small appearances in films such as I Know Where I’m Going (1945), by Poweell and Pressburger, or Vice versa (1948), by Peter Ustinov . Little by little, his roles began to have greater importance and in the 50s he participated in solid productions, such as Dance Hall (1950), by Charles Chrichton; The Card (1950), a Ronald Neame comedy with Alec Guinness ; or Made in Heaven (1952) and The Gay Dog (1954), where he already acquires leading roles.
Although during the fifties he continued to sing and obtain great successes, it was in the sixties when his popularity grew like foam, but not precisely because of the cinema but precisely because of his explosion in the world of music with songs like “Sailor”, which it became number one in England, or “Romeo” and “My Friend the Sea”. Although it was her song “Downtown” that would make her a true legend when she came out back in 1964. The song was number one in several countries, including the United States, and sold millions of copies.
After a typical sixties movie, in the style of spies ( Mission on the French Riviera ), she resumed her film career thanks to El valle del rainbow (1968), a musical comedy where she was accompanied by the incomparable Fred Astaire . And the following year she was splendid in what was perhaps her best work in front of the cameras, Goodbye Mr. Chips , a drama starring her compatriot Peter O’Toole . Although she reappeared in some productions of hers, her last relevant role took place in the family drama Never Never Land in 1980.