Michael Ball Biography
Michael Ashley Ball OBE is an English singer, presenter, and actor best remembered for his performances in Les Misérables, Aspects of Love, and Coming Home To You. He made his West End debut in 1985 and reached number one on the UK Singles Chart with his cover of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in 2020.
Age
He is 61 years old as of 27 June 2023. He was born in 1962 in Bromsgrove, United Kingdom. His real name is Michael Ashley Ball.
Family – Education
Ball was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, to a Welsh mother and an English father. Tony, his father, intended to be an actor but eventually became the head of global sales for British Leyland. Ball’s maternal grandpa was a coal miner. He has a sister, Katherine, and a brother, Kevin. Ball and his parents relocated to Dartmoor when he was three years old, where he began to sing by singing along to music.
At 11, he joined Plymouth College but was concerned about the academic and sporting environment. He joined the Pathfinder bible group and went to Pathfinder camp. He went on to study acting at Guildford School of Acting, where he earned money by busking on Saturdays. He graduated in 1984. Following graduation, his singing career dwindled. His maternal grandmother, who had a musical ear, was proud of his early singing accomplishments, but she died unexpectedly of a heart attack before his debut in The Pirates of Penzance. Ball returned to the Guildford School of Acting in April 2022 to give a speech to the graduating postgraduates of that year. While he was there, Ball received an honorary doctorate from the University of Surrey.
Wife
Ball resides in Barnes, London, with his partner, Cathy McGowan, a former Ready Steady Go! presenter. They first met in 1989, when she was an entertainment reporter for a BBC London magazine show and interviewed him during rehearsals for Aspects of Love. They’ve lived together since 1992. On December 23, 2000, she saved his life by hauling him out of a home fire. McGowan was previously married to actor Hywel Bennett, and the couple had a daughter, Emma. Emma’s son has Ball as his godfather. Grace Crompton, Ball’s step granddaughter, plays rugby sevens for England and has been selected to compete in the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $15 million.
Christmas Balls
Ball had his own TV series, Michael Ball, in 1993 and 1994, a Christmas Special in 1995, and a three-part series, Ball in the Hall, in 1998, all filmed by BBC Cymru Wales.These three episodes were merged into a special, which aired on BBC One.Ball has presented the National Lottery Draws and Children in Need. He briefly appeared as a guest on This Morning.
Ball reteamed with Sweeney Todd co-star Imelda Staunton in Victoria Wood’s musical That Day We Sang, which premiered on December 26, 2014.Michael has been on three ITV shows alongside Alfie Boe.They aired in 2016, 2017, and 2019. 2016: Ball and Boe: One Night Only; 2017: Ball and Boe: Back Together 2019 – Ball and Boe’s A Very Merry Christmas.
Condition
Ball claims that panic attacks and nervousness during Les Misérables performances prevented him from speaking for nine months. Singer Michael Ball revealed that he didn’t talk to anyone for nine months after suffering from anxiety and panic attacks.
Soapstar Superstar – TV Career
On November 24, 2013, he appeared as a fictionalized version of himself on the British sitcom Toast of London.in December 29, 2013, Ball competed in a celebrity Christmas version of Catchphrase.
On January 3, 2014, BBC Four aired Diamonds are Forever: A memorial to Don Black, a special memorial show to the songwriter held in London’s Royal Festival Hall.Ball performed two songs on this show. The first was Born Free, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became a hit for British male vocalist Matt Monro in 1966.Black authored the lyrics for this song, which was performed by John Barry for the film Born Free.
The second song Ball sang during the show was Love Changes Everything, which Black co-wrote with lyricist Charles Hart for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Aspects of Love. Ball released this song as a single in 1989, and it remained on the British pop charts for fourteen weeks. The BBC Concert Orchestra provided orchestral accompaniment for Ball on both songs during this performance. Ball reteamed with Sweeney Todd co-star Imelda Staunton in Victoria Wood’s musical That Day We Sang, which premiered on December 26, 2014.
Career
In 1984, in the wake of leaving show school, Ball started his vocation in the theater business. He started with Godspell at Aberystwyth Expressions Center and labored for a couple of months in rep in Basingstoke. His most memorable significant break came when Cameron Mackintosh cast him as Marius in the first London cast of Les Misérables. Be that as it may, he got glandular fever and went home for the weeks debilitated to recuperate from the related tonsillitis and post-viral weakness. At the point when he got back to work, he was all the while experiencing weakness and started to get in front of an audience fits of anxiety.
Ball’s uneasiness issue drove him to leave Les Misérables. He was welcome to sing during the Miss Britain challenge, and he sang alright notwithstanding experiencing tension. At the point when he saw a recording later, he understood that nobody would have seen how apprehensive he was, and he turned out to be less stressed over his tension issue.
In 1998, Ball performed at three major shows: The 50th Birthday celebration Show of Andrew Lloyd Webber at the Imperial Albert Lobby, Sondheim This evening at the Barbican Community, and Hello, Mr. Maker: The Melodic Universe of Cameron Mackintosh. In 2002, he assumed the job of Caractacus Potts in the Sherman Siblings melodic Chitty Bang, which was viewed as his rebound job.
In 2004, he co-featured with Petula Clark in a development of Lloyd Webber’s Nightfall Lane at the Plug Drama House, later transmission by the BBC. Later that very year, he was a visitor star at Clark’s Show, likewise broadcast by the BBC. Different exhibitions incorporate singing at the BBC’s St David’s Day show, in the job of Marius at the Les Misérables: The Fantasy Cast in Show, the 10th commemoration show of Les Misérables in 1995, and as a verse baritone, Ball likewise sang the job of Valjean at a unique show execution of Les Misérables for the Sovereign and her visitors at Windsor Palace in 2004.
In 2005, Ball supplanted Michael Crawford as Include Fosco in The Lady dressed in White after chronic frailty constrained Crawford to surrender the job. In November 2005, Ball got back to Broadway as Include Fosco in The Lady dressed in White, which moved from London’s West End. He had to leave the show due to a viral disease evidently brought about by the fat suit expected for the job.
In September 2005, Ball made his New York City Drama debut as Reginald Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Understanding. He spent the main quarter of 2006 on complete vocal rest following the disease that made him leave The Lady dressed in White on Broadway. From October 2007 – July 2009, Ball made his West End return featuring as Edna Turnblad in the hit melodic Hairspray at the Shaftesbury Theater in London. In Walk 2008, he was granted the Laurence Olivier Grant for Best Entertainer in a Melodic for his depiction of Edna Turnblad.
In 2018, Ball featured as Anatoly Sergievsky in the West End restoration of Sir Tim Rice’s Chess at the London Arena. It was declared in February 2019 that Ball will star as Examiner Javert inverse Alfie Boe (Jean Valjean) in an organized show creation of Les Misérables. The creation will open on 10 August 2019, at the Gielgud Theater, filling in as a placeholder while the first West End creation of Les Mis at the Sovereign’s Venue is supplanted with Cameron Mackintosh’s new organizing of the show at the renamed Sondheim theater. Ball, a prestigious English vocalist and lyricist, has been a productive entertainer in the UK and universally. His vocation started with his job as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray in 2021, trailed by George Dillingham in Parts of Affection in 2023 and Javert in Les Misérables: The Field Dynamite World Visit in 2024. Ball has likewise made progress in the diagrams with his collections, all of which accomplished gold status in no time.
In 1992, Ball addressed the UK in the Eurovision Melody Challenge, singing the tune “One Get Out of luck” which completed second. This undeniable the start of a run of top 20 collections delivered throughout the following twenty years. In 2006, Ball was a visitor craftsman on Julian Lloyd Webber’s collection Surprising Melodies and delivered a DVD containing the very best tunes from his Live in Show DVDs.
In 2007, Ball delivered his fifteenth independent collection, Back to Bacharach, highlighting melodies composed by Burt Bacharach. This collection, alongside a presentation DVD of his 2007 visit, One Voice Live, was delivered in October 2007. Special exercises for these deliveries remembered appearances for Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and Floozies.
In 2013, Ball delivered his collection “The two Sides Currently,” highlighting the tune “Battle the Battle” from Tim Rice’s new melodic From Here to Endlessness. In 2014, Ball delivered his new collection, Assuming Everybody Was Tuning in, and in 2019, he delivered the collection Returning home To You, which arrived at number one in the UK Collections Outline.
Ball has likewise recorded three collections with Alfie Boe, two of which arrived at number 1 and their third collection, Ball and Boe: Back Together, arriving at number 2 in the UK Collections Outline. In April 2020, Ball recorded a two part harmony with 99-year-old The Second Great War veteran Chief Tom Moore, who covered “You Won’t ever Walk Alone” in help of the NHS during the Coronavirus pandemic.