Claire-Marie Hall
Claire-Marie Hall is a Welsh-Filipina actress known for her roles on the West End and Broadway. She is best known for her performance as "Jean Leslie & Others" in the Olivier award-winning musical Operation Mincemeat, where she originated the role in both the original West End production and the original Broadway production.
Early life
Hall was born and raised in Rogerstone near Newport, Wales, where she attended St Davids Catholic School. Her mother, Florinda, is Filipina. In 1997, aged 11, she won the Argus Junior Talent Contest with a song-and-dance performance of songs from The Little Mermaid. As a prize, she received a year's scholarship to the Stagecoach Drama School in Newport and a day in a recording studio. That same year, Hall was cast as Ngana in an 11-day production of South Pacific at the New Theatre in Cardiff. She was declared the 1997 Champion Child for Music, a national children's award for music.At age 14, Hall won a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London. She became the first student to be trained by Sylvia Young on a weekend-only basis, as she still attended Bassaleg Comprehensive School in Newport, Wales on weekdays.
At 15, she was cast in Aladdin at the Congress Theatre, and at 17, she played a lead role in Jack and the Beanstalk at Blackwood Miners Institute.
She was a 2003 top-four finalist in the BBC talent show Just Up Your Street, where she was the youngest contestant on the show. At the age of 18, she moved to London to attend the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.