Steven Houghton
Encyclopedia
Steven Houghton is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and singer.

Early life and career

Born in Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

, South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...

, Houghton trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

. His first West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 production was Children of Eden
Children of Eden
Children of Eden is a two-act musical play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by John Caird. The musical is based on the Book of Genesis. Act I tells the story of Adam and Eve, Cain, and Abel, and Act II deals with Noah and the Flood...

. Additional London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 credits include Cats
Cats (musical)
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...

, Hot Mikado
Hot Mikado
Hot Mikado is a musical comedy, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, adapted by David H. Bell and Rob Bowman...

, Martin Guerre
Martin Guerre (musical)
Martin Guerre is a two-act musical with a book by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, lyrics by Alain Boublil and Stephen Clark, and music by Claude-Michel Schönberg....

, Blood Brothers and Spend Spend Spend
Spend Spend Spend
Spend Spend Spend is a musical with a book and lyrics by Steve Brown and Justin Greene and music by Brown.In 1961, Yorkshire housewife Viv Nicholson won £152,319 in the football pools. When a reporter asked her what she planned to do with her new fortune, she replied, "I'm going to spend, spend,...

, for which he was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award. He has toured the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 in Grease
Grease (musical)
Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,...

, Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...

, and Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...

.

Houghton's television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 credits include regular roles in London's Burning
London's Burning
London's Burning was a British television drama programme produced by London Weekend Television for the ITV network that focused on the lives of members of the London Fire Brigade, principally those of the Blue Watch at a fictional fire station called Blackwall.It was broadcast between 1986 and...

, BUGS
Bugs (TV series)
Bugs was a British television drama series which ran for four series from April 1995 to August 1999. The programme, a mixture of action/adventure and science-fiction, involved a team of specialist independent crime-fighting technology experts, who faced a variety of threats based around computers...

, Holby City
Holby City
Holby City, stylised as Holby Ci+y, is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One.The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999...

, and Bernard's Watch
Bernard's Watch
Bernard's Watch is a British television programme filmed and created by amateur director Eleanor Casson primarily at South Wilford CofE Primary School, Nottingham, about a young boy who can stop time with a magical pocket watch. Five original series aired from 14 November 1997 to mid-2001 which...

, a guest role in Doctors, and an appearance on French National Television singing the title role in The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)
The Phantom of the Opera is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux.The music was composed by Lloyd Webber, and most lyrics were written by Charles Hart, with additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Alan Jay Lerner was an early collaborator,...

.

Houghton spent time in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 playing several roles in a film workshop for new and established directors, including Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears
Stephen Arthur Frears is an English film director.-Early life:Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s...

 and Jude Kelly
Jude Kelly
Judith Pamela Kelly OBE is a theatre director and producer from Liverpool, England.Kelly founded Solent People's Theatre, a touring company in 1976, and was artistic director of the Battersea Arts Centre from 1980 to 1985. In 1986, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company...

.

In January 2011, it was revealed he would join the cast of Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...

as a love interest for Sally Webster
Sally Webster
Sally Webster is a fictional character in the UK television ITV soap opera, Coronation Street. Portrayed by actress Sally Dynevor, the character first appeared onscreen during the episode airing on 27 January 1986.-Casting:...

. His first appearance on screen was in February 2011 and his last on 4 November 2011.

Music career

In 1997, Houghton released his eponymous debut album for BMG/RCA
BMG
Bertelsmann Music Group, , was a division of Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Japan's Sony Corporation of America on October 1, 2008. It was established in 1987 to combine the music label activities of Bertelsmann...

, which sold 200,000 copies and earned him a gold disc
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...

. The first single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 from the album, a cover version
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...

 of the song "Wind Beneath My Wings
Wind Beneath My Wings
"Wind Beneath My Wings" is the title of a song written in 1982 by Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley. They recorded a demo of the song, which they gave to musician Bob Montgomery. Montgomery then recorded his own demo version of the song, changing it from the mid-tempo version he was given to a ballad...

", reached #3 on the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...

, while his rendition of Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie
Lionel Brockman Richie, Jr. , is an American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Since 1968, he has been a member of the musical group Commodores signed to Motown Records...

's 1982 song "Truly
Truly (song)
"Truly" is the title of the debut solo single by R&B singer-songwriter Lionel Richie in 1982 . Richie wrote the song and co-produced it with James Anthony Carmichael....

", reached #23 in 1998.

External links

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