Hazel O'Connor

Hazel O'Connor (born 16 May 1955,) is a British singer-songwriter and actress. She became famous in the early 1980s with hit singles "Eighth Day", "D-Days" and "Will You", as well as starring in the film Breaking Glass.

Career

O'Connor was born in Coventry, England. She is the daughter of a soldier from Galway who settled in England after the Second World War to work in a car plant.

Her film debut was in Girls Come First in 1975. She became prominent as an actress five years later in 1980 when playing the role of Kate in the critically acclaimed film Breaking Glass, and its accompanying soundtrack.

Her performance as Kate won her the Variety Club of Great Britain Award for 'Best Film Actor' and BAFTA nominations for 'Best Newcomer' and 'Best Film Score.' The album of the same name went double platinum, reaching number 5 in the UK Albums Chart with a 28-week stay and produced several hit singles, the most successful being the haunting "Will You", and "Eighth Day". When O'Connor toured the UK in support of Breaking Glass the album, she selected as her opening act a then-unknown group called Duran Duran; it was the band's first opportunity to play to large audiences throughout the UK and gave them the exposure they needed to secure a recording contract.

Will You

Will You may refer to:

The Eighth Day

The eighth day may refer to:

As a proper name, The Eighth Day may refer to:

See also

Breaking Glass

Breaking Glass is a 1980 British film starring Hazel O'Connor, Phil Daniels and Jonathan Pryce and co-produced by Dodi Fayed and written and directed by Brian Gibson.

The film was screened out of competition at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

The album of the soundtrack went Platinum and reached no. 5 in the UK album charts.

Plot

The film depicts the rise and fall of Kate (Hazel O'Connor), an angry but creative young singer and songwriter. At the beginning of the film, she is discovered by Danny (Phil Daniels), a young man who desperately wants to become a promoter of music bands but is stuck working for another agent (who forces him to buy hundreds of copies of the singles of one of his artists, Suzie Sapphire, to fix the music charts). Danny takes an active part in controlling Kate's career, impressed with her talent if not her band, whom he promptly fires. He arranges auditions and reaches out to former friends, and in doing so Kate's new band, Breaking Glass is formed. Breaking Glass consists of Kate on vocals and keyboard, best friends Tony (Mark Wingett) and Dave (Gary Tibbs) on lead and bass guitar respectively, the drug-addicted and partially deaf Ken (Jonathan Pryce) on saxophone and the 'mental' Mick (Peter-Hugo Daly) on drums.

Hazel

The hazel (Corylus) is a genus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae, though some botanists split the hazels (with the hornbeams and allied genera) into a separate family Corylaceae. The fruit of the hazel is the hazelnut.

Hazels have simple, rounded leaves with double-serrate margins. The flowers are produced very early in spring before the leaves, and are monoecious, with single-sex catkins, the male catkins are pale yellow and 5–12 cm long, and the female ones are very small and largely concealed in the buds, with only the bright-red, 1-to-3 mm-long styles visible. The fruits are nuts 1–2.5 cm long and 1–2 cm diameter, surrounded by an involucre (husk) which partly to fully encloses the nut.

The shape and structure of the involucre, and also the growth habit (whether a tree or a suckering shrub), are important in the identification of the different species of hazel.

The pollen of hazel species, which are often the cause for allergies in late winter or early spring, can be identified under magnification (600X) by their characteristic granular exines bearing three conspicuous pores.