Samantha Newark (born 27 June 1967) is an English-born American musician and actress. She is best known for her voice-over work as the speaking voice of Jem and Jerrica in the animated cartoon series Jem. Her work on "Jem" produced a serious cult following that persists to this day. In 2015, Newark appeared in the live-action feature film adaptation on Jem and the Holograms directed by Jon M. Chu.
Contents
Early years
Newark was born in Wimbledon, London. Although she was born in England, her family then moved to Rhodesia and later to the United States. She attended several different schools and began her music career in Africa after seeing Lena Zavaroni perform.
Acting career
Newark is best known for her voice-over work on the animated 1980s cartoon series Jem as the speaking voice of Jerrica/Jem. "Jem" remains her most well known role and Newark receives invitations to meet the Jem fans at pop culture conventions all over the world. Newark made a cameo appearance in the Jem and the Holograms live action film adaptation.
Newark was nominated for a Young Artist Award twice for "Exceptional Young Actress in Animation, Series, Specials, or Film Features" and "Best Animated Series". Other voice-over credits include guest-starring on Transformers: Animated as "Ariel" and "Elise Presser", and voicing a young Peter Pan's mother in the Steven Spielberg feature film Hook. She also played the role of Debbie in the 1987 thriller film Summer Camp Nightmare. In 2012 she was invited to contribute two characters to the Festival favorite animated short Pound Dogs, created by Mike Salva. This project won the MTV "Voice and Vision Animation Award" for writing and animation and garnered two development deals with MTV.
Newark also works in video games, providing voices for games including Twisted Metal: Black and Britney's Dance Beat, where she played the roles of the Choreographer and the Asian dancer.
Music career
Newark began her professional music career at the age of seven. Signed to Nitty Gritty Records, she recorded her first record while living in Africa, then toured to support her single "Jimmy Jimbo" produced by Allan Goldswain and Mike Adams. At age 10, she immigrated to America and signed with International Creative Management, where she served as the opening act for Eddie Rabbitt, Pat Boone, Debby Boone and Mac Davis at the State Fair. She was cast in the title role in the United States Navy band production of the musical Annie in Washington D.C., and eventually moved with her family to Burbank, California where she played Rosie in a production of Sweet Charity and Dorothy in a Los Angeles production of The Wizard of Oz. She was a frequent performer of The L.A. Kids cabaret and performed often with the Ray Anthony orchestra at the famous Shrine Auditorium and on many telethons. She also was a featured guest vocalist at age 14 with the 65 piece Los Angeles Pops orchestra. She won the Los Angeles vocal competition at the age of 17 and then through the late 1990s started to write and record her own original music with many different incarnations of original bands.
Newark recorded the song "In Your Eyes" for the 1986 anime film Project A-ko and worked with Richie Zito and Joey Carbone and was hired to sing multiple songs on the soundtrack for the movie Crazy Six starring Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds, Mario Van Peebles.
She was one of 20 finalists from 10,000 submissions for the Lilith Fair talent contest sponsored by Star 98.7 radio and Universal contests in 1999. Newark was also one of 15 budding songwriters accepted into the Lester Sill Ascap songwriting workshop where she met writer, producer, and long time collaborator composer Mike Reagan She and Reagan worked together through the late 1990s writing original music, performing live, and contributing vocals for various PlayStation games. She provided vocal accompaniment for the movie soundtrack Some Girl starring Juliette Lewis and the movie Material Girls.
While living in Los Angeles she worked as a session singer for writer, producer Michele Vice Maslin. She has worked in the EDM world co-writing a song called "Deeper" for the German group Fragma. The version with her vocals was remixed by EDM producer Nick Terranova. In late 2006, she auditioned for Julian Coryell to be a backup singer for Leonard Cohen. The project was set to do a world tour and after two months of rehearsals the tour was cancelled and put on hold for two years where it started up again with a new MD and new team.
