Samantha Mumba

Samantha Tamania Anne Cecilia Mumba-Porter (born January 18 1983) is an Irish singer, actress and model. Her first album was released in 2000 to international success. Although her follow up album was cancelled, she will soon release her third studio album. She is also known as an actress, with her most notable role being the 2002 film, The Time Machine, and for modeling for Dunnes Stores lingerie line Per Amore.

Biography

Early life

Mumba was born in Drumcondra, Dublin, Ireland to Peter Mumba, a Zambian aircraft engineer and Barbara, an airhostess with Aer Lingus, who is Irish; she has a brother, Omero Mumba, who is an actor. Between the ages of 3 and 15, she was a student at Dublin's renowned Billie Barry Stage School. In 1998, she was cast as the lead in The Hot Mikado, a jazzy production based on Gilbert and Sullivan's opera.

Music career

===Gotta Tell You===
At the age of 15, Mumba was discovered in a night club by Irish svengali Louis Walsh (manager of Boyzone and Westlife). Walsh was impressed by her talent and she was signed to Polydor Records, subsequently spending several months moving between Denmark, Sweden, England and Ireland, where she co-wrote and recorded her debut album, Gotta Tell You. She eventually dropped out of school to focus on her music career, citing that it was becoming a difficult task for her to stay in school and work on her music.
Mumba's first hit, Gotta Tell You, was released in 2000 and shot to the #1 spot on three Irish charts, later reaching #2 on the United Kingdom charts. She also scored American success with her debut single, peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album stayed on the charts for a staggering 6 months and eventually certified Platinum for shipments of 1 million copies. Five more Top 10 hits followed in the UK and another top 50 hit in the US, leading some to call her the "black Britney Spears" of pop music, although she has rejected this title. To date, her album has sold over 4 million copies world-wide. Mumba was nominated for a 2002 Grammy award for her song Baby, Come Over (This is our night) in the 'best remixed recording, non-classical' category, but did not win.
===Woman===
In 2002, Mumba prepared to release her follow-up album, entitled Woman, but with the poor sales of the lead single, "I'm Right Here," in the US and a short lived time on the chart in the UK, she was dropped from her label and the album was cancelled.

===The Collection===
A collection, appropriately titled The Collection,was released on October 23 to many online retailers.It peaked at 17,901 on Amazon.co.uk in sales in music.

New Album

Samantha has stated in many Irish newspapers and magazines that she is working on her third studio album and hopes to have it finished by Christmas. She says the first single will be released in February, 2007 followed by the album in March. She is recording most of the album in Los Angeles, California, United States.

Acting And Television

===The Time Machine===
After the cancelation of Woman, Samantha's second studio album, Mumba's music career was put on hold and she bagan auditioning for films. In 2002 Steven Spielberg picked her to play Mara in the oscar nominated The Time Machine. Mara is a girl who is part of a human civilization who have degraded to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in 701 AD.In the movie she co-stars with Guy Pearce.The movie earned $56,684,819 in the US Box Office.
In 2003 she appeared in the Irish film Spin The Bottle.
===Boy Eats Girl===
In 2005 she returned to acting in the Irish horror/comedy Boy Eats Girl.In the movie she plays Jessica,the lead female character.The movie did so well it was released worldwide but to little sucess anywhere but the UK and Ireland .
===Nailed===
Nailed is a supernatural thriller about two thiefs who break into a house to rob it but instead find a man in bandages lying in a bed. Things then take a turn for the worse when the supernatural element is introduced. Samantha plays Sapphire. The movie was originally a low budget Irish film but it caught the attention of an American producer who turned it into a big budget British movie.
===Johnny Was===
Johnny Was is a British Gangster movie. In the movie Samantha co-stared beside Vinnie Jones and Eriq La Salle. In the film Mumba played Rita, the girlfriend of the drug dealer, Julius. She is a central character because the all the fighting between Julius and Johnny is caued by Johnny's attraction to Rita.

Mumba has just finished filming a part in the movie 3 Crosses.