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Lulu

LuluAKA Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie

Born: 3-Nov-1948
Birthplace: Glasgow, Scotland

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Singer, Actor

Nationality: Scotland
Executive summary: British singer of the 1960s and 70s

At age three, little Marie Lawrie won a talent show, belting out "Lavender Blue, Dilly Dilly", and by her early teens she was Lulu, fronting her own band, Lulu and the Luvvers. At 16, she had her first major hit with a cover of "Shout". Lulu was one of the most successful singers of the 1960s, with hits including "Leave A Little Love", "The Boat That I Row", "Oh Me Oh My (I'm a Fool for You Baby)", and "Boom Bang-A-Bang". In 1969, she married BeeGee Maurice Gibb at St. James Church in Buckinghamshire. The same year, in a more lasting piece of pop history, she was a guest on the very first episode of Hee Haw, the long-running American kitsch cornfest.

She was a regular on the mid-60s British sketch comedy show Three of A Kind, but her first serious work as an actress came in the 1967 film To Sir, with Love, where she played one of Sidney Poitier's troubled students at an urban high school in London. The song "To Sir, with Love" was a huge hit in America, sitting atop the U.S. charts for five weeks and selling 4,000,000 copies worldwide. Lulu later had further pop hits with a duet with David Bowie, "The Man Who Sold The World", and the theme from the Bond thriller The Man with the Golden Gun, with Roger Moore.

She also performed music and comedy on a Canadian variety show with Ray Stevens, and starred in her own It's Lulu on the BBC. In the 1980s, she hosted Let's Rock, then replaced Julie Walters in the British sitcom The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. In 1992, she scored her last hit single with "Relight My Fire". She reprised her role from To Sir With Love in its 1996 sequel, To Sir With Love II. She currently hosts an oldies show on British radio.

Husband: Maurice Gibb (musician, The Bee Gees, m. 18-Feb-1969, div. 1973)
Husband: John Frieda (hairdresser, m. 1975, div. 1995, one son)
Son: Jordan Frieda (actor, b. 17-Jun-1977)

    Officer of the British Empire 2000

    TELEVISION
    Just the Two of Us Judge (2006)
    The Ray Stevens Show (1970)

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (1-Jul-2016)
    Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (31-Oct-2006) · Herself
    Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (13-Nov-1999)
    To Sir, with Love II (7-Apr-1996)
    To Sir, With Love (14-Jun-1967) · Barbara Pegg
    Gonks Go Beat (1965) · Herself

Official Website:
http://www.lulu.co.uk/

Author of books:
Don't Wanna Fight No More (2003, memoir)


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