A willowy, striking blue-eyed blonde, Lori Singer originally intended to pursue a career as a cellist. She began studying music at age five and by her teens was enrolled at NYC's prestigious Juilliard School of Music. While still a student, Singer played cello with such world-renowned ensembles as the Caracas Symphony and the Oregon Symphony and won the Bergen Philharmonic Competition in 1980. Segueing to acting, she landed a role that combined both of her interests, Midwesterner Julie Miller, a promising cellist who faced the difficulties of life at a New York high school for performing artists in the TV series version of "Fame" (NBC, 1982-83). In her first TV-movie, "Born Beautiful" (NBC, 1982), Singer was a teenaged fashion model befriended by a veteran (Erin Gray). In 1984, she graduated to the big screen as the rebellious daughter of a minister in "Footloose" (1984). Singer followed with girlfriend roles in two well-made features, John Schlesinger's "The Falcon and the Snowman" and Alan Rudolph's "Trouble in Mind" (both 1985). Attempting a change of pace, she won praise as a disaffected wife who embarks on an affair in "Summer Heat" (1987), a film that plays as a riff on the superior "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Robert Altman provided her with another meaty role, as an emotionally-disturbed cellist, in "Short Cuts" (1993). Singer returned to the series grind for the short-lived sci-fi fantasy "VR.5" (Fox, 1995), as a young woman who enters a surrealistic virtual reality world.