When thinking of the most famous Broadway actors, the name Lea Michele often comes to mind, yet some people don’t realize that our school had much to do with her thriving success. From school halls to Hollywood lights, actress, singer, and songwriter Lea Michele went to no other than Tenafly High School during her teenage years. She describes enjoying performing in school plays and musicals, but her true passion in high school was the debate team, and she enjoyed spending her youth in our town.
“I loved growing up in Tenafly,” Michele said in an interview published on northjersey.com. “It was such an amazing community to grow up in, and I’m still very close with my girlfriends from growing up there.”
Born in 1986, in The Bronx, New York, Lea Sarfati (Michele is her stage name) landed her first role on Broadway in the play Les Misérables at eight years old. “In 2004, Michele played ‘Shprintze’ and ‘Chava’ in the Broadway revival of the musical Fiddler on the Roof. She has also appeared in The Diary of Anne Frank,” according to VOGUE. When she wasn’t performing live on the Broadway stage or working on a new film, “she actively pursued her love for singing by releasing her first album, Louder.” Later in her life, she pursued work on other films yet none were as successful as her memorable role as Rachel Berry in the television show Glee.
It’s moments like Michele’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon appearance in 2017 that seem surreal. Hollywood does a great job at making people forget that celebrities once experienced the same things we did as children, so to hear a celebrity talk about something you know better than the lines on your own hand is unreal. “It’s safe to say that I went to the Garden State Plaza every day after high school,” Michele said after Fallon asked her what it was like growing up in Tenafly. In addition to that, Michele has nothing but postive things to say about Tenafly, saying our school provided her with a great education and that everybody there was always very supportive.
Unfortunately, behind all the glitter and glamour of Hollywood lies a less-than-perfect human being. “Remember when you made my first television gig a living hell?!?! Cause I’ll never forget,” Samantha Ware, Michele’s former co-star, said. Furthermore, multiple Glee cast mates have said that she has acted meanly towards them, and at times, even expressed racism, according to the Daily Voice.
On the other hand, Michele has tried to improve her behavior by owning up to her mistakes and posting apologies on her social media accounts to all whom she might have hurt. Overall, Michele has had a very successful career, which started right here in Tenafly, New Jersey. Like any other human being, she has her fair share of mistakes, but being a new mom has made her take responsibility for her errors and further develop as a person and artist. Us Weekly reported that “Lea Michele welcomed her and Zandy Reich’s baby boy in August 2020.”
