Amanda Lear was probably the most famous male-to-female transsexual of the 1970's but is hardly known in the UK and USA - despite her close association with Britain. This seems to because she lived and worked in France during the most succesful parts of her career, and she has refused to publicly acknowledge that she is transgender. Her Biography
For many decades there was huge uncertainty as to where and when Amanda was born. Amanda seems to have had a lot of fun throwing confusing hints to the media about her childhood, for example, based on various statements she was born in Vietnam or France in 1939, but it might have been Hong Kong in 1941 or 1945 or even 1948. In 2010 she claimed during a TV interview that she was born on 18 November 1950 in Saigon. She's apparently of mixed parentage, at various times she's claimed to have British, French and Indonesian fathers, and English and Russo-Oriental mothers. Although usually identified as being 'French', she actually holds a British passport and uses a Scottish surname! Since the late 1980's the French press has generally accepted evidence that she was born a boy, Alain Maurice Tap, in Saigon on 18 June 1939. At the time Saigon was part of the French colony of Indochina.
After an education supposedly in Switzerland and England, by 1959 at latest Amanda had moved to France - still a tall, gangly and rather Asian looking boy. However plastic surgery on her nose and injections of oestrogen hormones dramatically changed her appearance. She first became publicly noticed in 1960 when she started working as an exotic showgirl and stripper known as Peki d'Oslo at the Le Carrousel revue in Paris.
Peki's exotic looks
quickly attracted the eye of
Salvador Dali
and she became his intimate companion (despite his marriage in 1934 to Gala) and muse
for many works.
She often appeared in public with Dali in the 1960's and early 1970's -
later capitalising on this with the book My Life with
Dali.
In 1963 Peki had a sex-change operation, carried out in Casablanca by Dr Bourou and possibly paid for by Salvador Dali. Soon after this she changed her first name from Peki to Amanda and moved to London, where she quickly became part of the trendy "Chelsea Girl" set. She worked at night as a hostess at Raymond's Revue Bar, but during the day studied at St Martin's College of Art where she started to meet musicians such as Marianne Faithfull and Keith Moon. She bleached her hair blond with great effect and in 1965 she was signed by a model agency. It wasn't long before she was cat walking for top designers and appearing on magazine covers, but her modelling career started to be hampered by rumours that she was a transsexual.
Amanda desperately needed official documents that said she was 'Female'. Whilst visiting a Notting Hill pub in London with her friend April Ashley she encountered a Scottish student, Morgan Paul Lear, who was willing to marry her for £50. The newly married Mrs Lear quickly obtained a British passport based upon her new marriage certificate, and then an equally rapid divorce. Oddly, she has ever since continued to use her ex-husbands surname and British passport.
Amanda became part of David Bowie's stage act, and he helped launch her solo music career. In 1977 she signed her own record contract and soon became a huge disco star on mainland Europe in her own right. Her first two Albums, the 1977 I Am A Photograph and the 1978 Sweet Revenge, and the singles released from them, sold in millions around the world. Reports that she was transsexual were rife and did nothing to harm her commercial success, but she vigorously denied this in a 1977 television interview.
In 1978 she sent
very revealing post cards to the members of her fan club, posed nude for
several men's magazines, including Playboy, and didn't seem concerned about paparazzi photographers
catching her unclothed and publishing the photos (e.g. below left) -
indeed seemed to posing for them.
During '80's and '90's Amanda continued to record and perform her music, although she was unable to repeat the success of her early disco albums. However, she successfully started two new careers - as a painter and as a TV host. Tragedy struck Amanda in December 2000 when her home in France burnt down, killing her husband and destroying many of her paintings, as well as several gifted to her by Dali. In February 2007 she refused to be on stage with, or even near, transsexuals at a major gay event in Milan, Italy. This caused a lot of bad feeling with the crowd and annoyed the organisers - who complained about the "ambiguity" in her stance. In 2022 the film Dalíland was released. This is based on the true story of Salvador Dalí and
his tempestuous relationship with his wife, Gala, and muses such as
Amanda. The 30-year-old transwoman Andreja Pejić appears as Amanda Lear. |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
(c) 2000 - 2024 Annie Richards
Please send any comments, feedback or additions to:
Last updated: 21 March, 2022