Phil Collins

Phil Collins (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, keyboardist, best known as a drummer and vocalist for English progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist. However, his professional career began as an actor, and he has had an ongoing working relationship with Hollywood, including a brief role as Inspector Good in the film Hook.

His professional training began at fourteen when he entered Barbara Speake Stage School. He began a career as a child actor and model, and won his first major role as the Artful Dodger in the London production of Oliver! He was an extra in The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night – one of hundreds of screaming teenagers during the TV concert sequence and seen fleetingly in a close-up. He performed in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as one of the children who storm the castle at the end of the movie but his appearance was edited out. He auditioned for the role of Romeo in the Franco Zeffirelli's film of Romeo and Juliet in 1968, and was among the finalists for the role of "I.Q." on the music-themed American children's television show The Bugaloos. His first lead role was in a children's film Calamity the Cow (1967).

In 1970 he won an audition to be permanent drummer for the then-progressive-rock band Genesis, also singing backup vocals and occasionally lead vocals. When Peter Gabriel left the band, after an exhaustive search for a new lead vocalist, Collins was given the job. Genesis' subsequent albums became increasingly commercially successful, and Collins began a solo career in parallel in 1981, until he left the band in 1996.

The majority of Collins's film work has been through music. Four of his seven American number one songs came from film soundtracks, and his work on Disney's Tarzan earned him an Oscar. Collins even sang German, Italian, Spanish and French versions of the Tarzan soundtrack for the respective film versions. Collins wrote and performed the title song to Against All Odds in 1984, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. He sang Stephen Bishop's composition "Separate Lives" for the film White Nights (1985) as a duet with Marilyn Martin.

Collins's first film role since becoming a musician came in 1988 with Buster. His rendition of "Groovy Kind of Love", originally a 1966 single by The Mindbenders, reached #1. The film also spawned the hit single "Two Hearts", which he wrote in collaboration with legendary Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier; the two artists would go on to win a Golden Globe for Best Original Song and receive an Oscar nomination in the same category, the second such honor for Collins. Movie critic Roger Ebert said the role of Buster was "played with surprising effectiveness" by Collins, although the film's soundtrack proved more successful than the movie did.

Following his Hook role, Collins starred in 1993's Frauds, which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. He had cameo appearance in the early AIDS docudrama And the Band Played On (1993). He supplied voices to two animated features: Balto (1995) and The Jungle Book 2 (2003). Collins performed the soundtrack to Disney's animated Tarzan (1999), winning an Academy Award for "You'll Be in My Heart". He and Tina Turner did the soundtrack to the animated feature film Brother Bear, and had some airplay with the song "Look Through My Eyes".