Stephanie Lawrence (16 December 1949 – 4 November 2000) was a British musical theatre actress. Background Stephanie Lawrence was born in 1949 in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England. She was the daughter of a Welsh singer, to whom she credited her voice, and a classically trained dancer. She moved to Hayling Island at the age of four. From an early age she was close friends with another famous Islander, Peter Chilvers, who, in 1958, invented the windsurfer. Career Theatre Having trained at the Arts Educational School, Tring, Hertfordshire (now Tring Park School for the Performing Arts), she made her debut in The Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1962. She became a member of the corps de ballet at the Royal Festival Ballet at the age of 12 with the intention of becoming a ballerina, however, her plans were disrupted when she was forced to miss a year after contracting pneumonia aged 15. Her West End debut came in April 1971, playing the part of a rollerskating tap dancer in Forget-Me-Not Lane. Her first musical appearance in the West End was in Bubbling Brown Sugar. Evita In 1980, Lawrence was cast as the alternate to Marti Webb as Eva Peron in the musical Evita, written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Webb had previously played the role while Elaine Paige was on holiday and was persuaded by director Hal Prince to remain with the production to perform twice weekly, in anticipation of succeeding from Paige at the end of her contract. This established a precedent which would continue for the remainder of the show's London run. Lawrence subsequently graduated from alternate to main performer in 1981. Musical theatre in the 1980s During the 1980s, Lawrence carved out a career as one of the leading female musical theatre performers in London. She left Evita to create the title role of Marilyn Monroe in Marilyn! the Musical, which won her outstanding reviews and the Best Actress of the Year Award from the Variety Club of Great Britain as well as a nomination from the Society of West End Theatre Awards (now the Laurence Olivier Awards). She was then cast as Pearl, the principal female role, in the original London production of Starlight Express, in which she performed on roller-skates. Lawrence appeared in a musical version of The Blue Angel at the Bristol Old Vic, in which