NEED TO KNOW
- Tia Carrere was discovered at a grocery store when she was 17 by the parents of a producer, who was making a movie in Hawaii
- The Lilo & Stitch actress says the couple came up to her and said, “You’re gorgeous, darling, you should be in our son’s movie!”
- Carrere says it changed her life, since she always thought she’d be a singer, and the Grammy winner continues to sing and perform with partner Daniel Ko
Lilo & Stitch star Tia Carrere always hoped she’d have a career in the arts, but she thought she’d be a singer, not an actress.
“From my first singing lesson at 11, I played everywhere,” she tells PEOPLE of her love of singing. “Every talent contest at Kahala Mall shopping center, at the Ala Moana shopping center, at my high school, the all-boys high school. I sang everywhere.”
Bet her career took an unexpected turn at 17 when she was at a grocery store with friends in Waikiki.
“I was at the Waikiki Food Pantry, which sold ‘white people food,’ and these were really fancy people, the parents of a producer were there,” she recalls. “They came up to me and said, ‘Darling, you’re gorgeous! You should be the female lead in our son’s movie!’ ”
Carrere adds of the chance encounter, “I’d started modeling like, I don’t know, 15 or 16. And I was coming from a job so I had full makeup and a lei of flowers on my head. I was wearing bikini and a T-shirt, so it’s not like I walked in there in curlers and pajamas. I was done up! I looked like this Polynesian goddess!”
She told the producers she’d never done any acting before but that she was a singer so she wasn’t shy. She decided to give it a shot.
“I went in and I read for the casting director, and she was the casting director who had cast Karate Kid, so it was all on the up and up. I read for it and got it. Which is good because I didn’t have the money to go to college and my grades were not good enough to get a scholarship.”
She says the gig changed the trajectory of her life. “It changed my life. It was called Aloha Summer, and honestly it’s gotten more press from me talking about it than anything else.”
Carrere went on to shoot films like Wayne’s World and True Lies, among other hits in the ’90s.
Now she’s starring in the live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch, which tells a story of the bond formed between a lonely human girl named Lilo and a dog-like alien named Stitch.
In the animated films, Carrere voiced Nani, Lilo’s older sister, who was trying to protect her from social services, but in this film, she plays Mrs. Kekoa.
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“Now I am social services,” she says. “But it’s all good.” She says she loves the themes of feminism that permeate the beloved movie. “This one’s for the girls,” she says.
As for her singing career, she says she’s still recording and touring with her longtime partner Daniel Ko.
“It’s funny, I always thought that the height of my career was going to be singing in a hotel bar in Hawaii,” she says. “Which I may still do, when I go back there to retire. But I’ll own the bar this time!”
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