Fame

As the bold singer Coco Hernandez who leads the classic “Fame” number and the movie’s other hit, “Out Here on My Own,” Cara may be the film’s most memorable face. But she really hit her musical high in 1983, when she penned “Flashdance…What a Feeling” for the movie of the same name (admit it, you still love that song). These days, Cara is still writing music and splitting her time between her many houses—when The Daily Beast caught up with her in Santa Fe, she said, “I got into real estate before the mortgage madness happened.” Cara put together an eight-woman girl band in 2002 called Hot Caramel, which she says is “radically different from the T&A and shallowism of modern pop music. My girls are about serious music.” She just produced Hot Caramel’s first double CD, and often appears on reality shows to sing “What a Feeling” one more time. When asked about the new version of Fame, Cara was reserved: “I know nothing about it, and I don’t want to discuss it. I barely keep in touch with former cast mates. But it was a very important film in terms of getting young people interested in the performing arts, or at least it was 30 years ago.”