Julie Covington (born 11 September 1946) is an English singer and actress, best known for recording the original version of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina", which she sang on the 1976 concept album Evita. Early life Julie Covington was born in London. Her parents were Ernest Gladden and Elsie Gladden (née Moody). Her parents divorced and her mother married Leslie Covington in 1957. She attended the girls' grammar school Brondesbury and Kilburn High School in Kilburn, northwest London. She started acting at school, and performed both acting and singing at two Edinburgh festivals. She won the first Edinburgh Festival Fringe Best Actress Award. Career Covington started singing songs written by Pete Atkin and Clive James after joining the Footlights while still at teachers' training college in Cambridge. She toured North America with the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company. Covington's break came in 1967 when, as a student at Homerton College, Cambridge, she was invited to sing on David Frost's television show. After the show, she secured a recording contract with Columbia. In 1971, she was cast in the original London production of Godspell at The Roundhouse, alongside David Essex, Jeremy Irons and Marti Webb. A recording of the production, featuring Covington's lead vocal on the track "Day by Day", was released in 1972. This was followed by a role in the hit Australian comedy film, "The Adventures of Barry McKenzie". She was then cast as Janet Weiss in the original production of The Rocky Horror Show in 1973. Between 1974 and 1984 Covington appeared regularly in the companies of the National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre, creating such roles as Alice in Plenty, Vivienne Eliot in Tom & Viv (for which she received an Olivier Award nomination) and Edward in the original production of Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine. During the early 1970s, she appeared and sang on the children's television programme Play Away. She starred in the BBC's 1975 Christmas production Great Big Groovy Horse, a rock opera based on the story of the Trojan Horse shown on BBC2. It was later repeated on BBC1 in 1977 1976 and 1977 saw her appearing in both series of the primetime British television programme, Rock Follies. In 1976, the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber saw her perform in cabaret, and recognising her from Rock Follies, suggested to lyricist Tim Rice that she might be the actress to play the title role in