Lúcia Moniz

Ana Lúcia Moniz is a singer and actress born on November 9, 1976 in Lisbon, Portugal. Her father, Carlos Alberto Moniz, is a famous conductor. From 1990 to 1991, she studied at the Music Academy of Santa Cecilia. Afterwards, she spent a year at the Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota, United States of America, where she received the award for the best composer. Lúcia was unknown to the Portuguese public when in 1996 she entered RTP da Canção, the Portuguese national pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, and won it. Afterwards, she went on to achieve 6th place in the Eurovision Song Contest 1996 – the best position ever for her homeland. Despite this accomplishment her song, "O meu coração não tem cor" (My heart has no colour), remained relatively unknown in Portugal. After her participation in the contest, Lucia forged a career in theatre and soap operas, and became much more popular. She even co-hosted the RTP da Canção in 1998, and made a brief reappearance at the Eurovision Song Contest as Portugal's national spokeswoman during the voting. In 1999, Lúcia released her first album Magnólia, which included pop songs in both English and Portuguese. Three years later, she released "67" and a third album was published in 2005, called "Leva-me p'ra casa" (Take me home). Her break into the international scene occurred in 2003 when she played the role of Aurélia in the movie Love Actually, taking her place among a stellar cast that included Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, and Liam Neeson. Although essentially an English language film, the bulk of her own character's dialogue was in Portuguese. Eurovision Song Contest 1996 - Oslo Entry for Portugal Performer: Lúcia Moniz Song title: O Meu Coração Não Tem Cor Song writer(s): José Fanha Song composer(s): Pedro Osório Sang in Position: 4 Final Position: 6 Total Points: 92 For the 1996 contest, the European Broadcasting Union replaced the relegation system with an audio preselection. This new system was tried out in order to find a more acceptable method of whittling down the large number of potentially participating countries. Apart from the host country of Norway, all other potential participants - 29 countries in total - competed in this audio preselection, in which the national juries solely listened to audio tapes with the recordings of the 29 songs. 22 out of the 29 countries plus the host nation Norway were allowed access into the final on 18th May in Oslo. Germany, Israel, Denmark, Hungary, Russia, FYR Macedonia and Romania all failed to qualify. This type of pre-qualifier round was conceived by many broadcasters and the European audience as rather peculiar, because the pre-selection was not broadcast in any way and the full results of the voting were not made public either. With Germany not qualifying - the first time ever Germany couldn't participate - the organisers were also confronted with much less financial means than expected. However, the Norwegian broadcaster, NRK, tried to modernize the contest this year. For example, virtual reality was used to visualize the voting. In the introduction video postcards, every participant received the best wishes from a government representative. The contest was threatened by a conductor's strike after Norwegian TV-station NRK, wanting to save money, said it would cut out the orchestra conductor's appearance. Luckily, the dispute was settled amicably. The show was hosted by Norwegian popband A-HA front man Morten Harket and Norwegian journalist, Ingvild Bryn. They greeted each country in their national language. Ireland got its seventh victory with the song The Voice performed by Eimear Quinn. This was the fourth victory for Ireland in just five years. However, the winner was not the biggest commercial success in record sales this year. The United Kingdom's song Just A Little Bit by Australian Gina G, did not go down too well with more conservative juries, who felt her designer coin-clad dress and fast-paced performance was too racy for the Eurovision Song Contest. The song went on to be a big hit in the UK and in the USA, Gina G was nominated for a Grammy as Best Dance Act.