Strictly speaking, Mandy Moore ought to be featured in one of my "Beauty of Song" series focusing on beautiful women in music. But she's too enormously talented to be merely defined as a singer.
When the New Hampshire-born Ms. Moore first appeared as a fifteen-year-old pop singer at the close of the twentieth century, it was easy to dismiss her as yet another teen pop idol pushed by the suits who run show business to sell complacent entertainment to a generation of underthinking high school students. But Ms. Moore had one thing that distinguished her from most other teen-pop divas - she could actually sing.
Maybe that's why her 1999 debut album was called So Real.
After hit singles such as "Candy," I Wanna Be With You," and a cover of John Hiatt's "Have a Little Faith In Me" (can you imagine Britney Spears covering John Hiatt?), Ms. Moore became a movie star. While she'd had roles in movies like The Princess Diaries and the teen romance A Walk To Remember, she really showed her acting chops as Sally Kendoo in the hilarious 2006 black comedy American Dreamz, a satire of talent-contest TV shows. This led to other meaty roles such as Molly Wilder in the 2007 mother-daughter flick Because I Said So, opposite Diane Keaton (an earlier honoree on this blog).
Now she's scored big time in one of the biggest hits of her career - "This Is Us," a TV series following the lives of the Pearson family through the past and the present. Ms. Moore plays Rebecca, the family matriarch - she's the mother of three children, including an adopted black child, and she has aspirations of becoming . . . a singer. :-)
As of this writing, "This Is Us" is a huge success on NBC, and it's about to begin its second season. At a mere 33 years of age (again, as of this writing), Ms. Moore has assured herself a lasting place in American popular culture.
Mandy Moore was married to singer-songwriter Ryan Adams for seven years beginning in 2009.
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