Lúcia Moniz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ana Lúcia Moniz, commonly known as Lúcia Moniz (pron. IPA: ['lusiɐ mu'niʃ]), is a singer and actress born on November 9, 1976 in Lisbon, Portugal. Her father, Carlos Alberto Moniz, is a famous conductor.
From 1990 to 1991], she studied at the Music Academy of Santa Cecilia. Afterwards, she spent a year at the Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota, United States of America, where she received the award for the best composer.
Lúcia was unknown to the Portuguese public when in 1996 she entered RTP da Canção, the Portuguese national pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, and won it. Afterwards, she went on to achieve 6th place in the Eurovision Song Contest 1996 – the best position ever for her homeland. Despite this accomplishment her song, "O meu coração não tem cor" (My heart has no colour), remained relatively unknown in Portugal.
After her participation in the contest, Lucia forged a career in theatre and soap operas, and became much more popular. She even co-hosted the RTP da Canção in 1998, and made a brief reappearance at the Eurovision Song Contest as Portugal's national spokeswoman during the voting.
In 1999, Lúcia released her first album Magnólia, which included pop songs in both English and Portuguese. Three years later, she released 67 and a third album was published in 2005, called Leva-me p'ra casa (Take me home).
Her break into the international scene occurred in 2003 when she played the role of Aurélia in the movie Love Actually, taking her place among a stellar cast that included Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, and Liam Neeson. Although essentially an English language film, the bulk of her own character's dialogue was in Portuguese.
