A Voice Outside the Pantages, Lea Salonga Becomes the First Filipina With a Walk of Fame Star
Ming-Na Wen, Brandy Norwood and Darren Criss saluted the Miss Saigon star as she received the 2,855th star.
On September 4, Lea Salonga received the 2,855th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6255 Hollywood Boulevard outside the Pantages Theatre. She was honored in the Live Performance category, and she is the first Filipina to receive a star. Velvet also covered Flowers on Hollywood Boulevard, Nia Long Gets Her Star.
Sibley Scoles emceed, and the guest speaker was Ming-Na Wen, who shares a role with Salonga. Both lent their voices to Mulan in the Disney film, with Salonga as the singing voice. “So who is that girl I see?” Wen said, borrowing a line from “Reflection.” She added, “With a voice that soars into people’s hearts, Hollywood is brighter because of your star here today.”
Brandy Norwood, who played Cinderella in the 1997 television film, spoke about the princesses Salonga sang. “Through Jasmine and Mulan, she did more than give princesses their songs. She gave children who had been waiting outside the fairy tale a way inside,” she said. Darren Criss, who grew up admiring her, added, “She loves what she does, and it is a gift to us all.”
Salonga looked back to a stage in the Philippines. “If you had told seven-year-old Lea Salonga, making her stage debut in a production of ‘The King and I’ in the Philippines, that nearly 50 years later, she would be standing on Hollywood Boulevard in front of this iconic theater, surrounded by so many wonderful friends, family, and colleagues receiving a star on the Walk of Fame, she would have said, ‘huh, what’s that?’” she told the crowd.
At 17 she moved to London to play Kim in the original West End Miss Saigon, a role that won her both the Olivier and the Tony. She was the first Asian actress to play Éponine in Les Misérables on Broadway, and Disney named her a Disney Legend for Jasmine and Mulan. Most recently she starred on Broadway in Old Friends with Bernadette Peters, and she stars as the lead villain in DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island, which the Walk of Fame said would open September 26.
She closed on the next generation. “I hope that someday a young Filipino kid comes to Hollywood, sees my name, and thinks, ‘oh, maybe I can get here too,’” she said.
