Pinoy Pride: Lea Salonga

She's said to be the Philippine's living national treasure.


Lea Salonga (born February 22, 1971) is a Filipina singer and actress. She started performing professionally in the Philippines at age 7, but she gained international exposure just a decade later as a teenager when she landed the role that would propel her onto the global stage. Lea played Kim, a young viatnamese woman in Miss Saigon, a role for which she earned the Olivier, Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, and Theater World awards. She was the first Asian to play the roles of Éponine and Fantine in the musical Les Misérables on Broadway. She also provided the singing voice of the two Asian Disney "princesses": Jasmine inAladdin (1992), and Fa Mulan in Mulan (1998) and Mulan II (2004).


Here is Lea recording Disney's "A Whole New World" for Alladin:

Lea Salonga in her extraordinary rendition of "I Dreamed A Dream" as Fantine during the 25th year anniversary of Les Miserables:

In 2004, she got married to Robert Charles Chien, a Chinese-Japanese managing director based in Los Angeles. They have a daughter, Nicole Beverly, who was born on May 16, 2006. In 2008, she became a columnist for a national paper, The Philippine Daily Inquirer. She's been performing ever since, one of the recent ones is the role of Drizabella in the Manila run of of the Asia-Pacific tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. On 15 October 2010, Lea Salonga was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).


A famous Philippine DJ, Mo Twister, calls Lea "hands-down, the most intelligent celebrity I've met." She is also an avid video game enthusiast, and has mentioned her love for the hobby in several of her print articles. 


Lea is a world-renowned singer-actress, mom, columnist, model, endorser and even a gamer! That is the embodiment of Filipino talent and pride - a living national treasure indeed. Thank you Lea for making us proud to be Filipino.


This is PinoyTunes the Podcast on Lea Salonga: 

For Lea Salonga's Official Website, click here.