Melissa O’Neil is a Canadian actress and singer who was born on July 12, 1988. O’Neil was the first Canadian woman to win Canadian Idol’s third season in 2005. She is best recognized for her appearances as Officer Lucy Chen on the ABC police procedural drama series The Rookie and as Two/Rebecca/Portia Lin on the Syfy science fiction series Dark Matter.
Melissa O’Neil early years
Canada’s Calgary, Alberta, is where O’Neil was born. Her father is Irish, while her mother is Hong Kong Chinese. Attending Terry Fox Junior High School was O’Neil.
[Reference needed] She participated in musical productions, played rugby, and was a member of the basketball team while she was a student at Lester B. Pearson High School in Calgary.
Melissa O’Neil Career in Canadian Idol
O’Neil tried out for the third season of Canadian Idol in the early months of 2005 while still in high school. She advanced to the top 100 round because the judges were thrilled by her vocal performance.
She once more charmed the judges on the first day when she a cappella sang Martina McBride’s “Concrete Angel,” but on the last day of the competition, she froze and forgot the lines. She made it to the top 32, though, because the judges were still so moved by her song.
O’Neil was given a spot in the top 10 after garnering the most votes in her semi-final group, this time with “Concrete Angel.”
O’Neil received excellent praise from the judges, however she experienced significant defeats in the Top 10 and Top 9 weeks of the finals when she was voted into the bottom three and bottom two, respectively. The judges were shocked by this and advised the audience to vote for contestants like Melissa, who had the strongest singing skills.
After giving consistently stellar performances from that point forward, O’Neil never again finished in the bottom three. Judge Zack Werner even said that she was “a threat to win the whole thing.”
After two more breathtaking performances on September 7, 2005, when O’Neil and Rex Goudie advanced to the competition’s final two, judge Werner reportedly predicted that the headlines in the morning papers would read “The King [Kalan Porter] is dead, long live the Queen.”
On September 14, 2005, at the grand finale results broadcast, O’Neil defeated Goudie to become the third Canadian Idol, the first female winner, and the youngest champion in the show’s history (at 17).
O’Neil got a call from Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin congratulating her on winning Canadian Idol right away. She subsequently entered into a recording contract with Sony BMG Canada, and on October 4, 2005, she released her debut single, “Alive,” which debuted at the top of the Canadian singles chart and kept that spot for four weeks. The CRIA later awarded the song a four-time platinum certification.
Melissa O’Neil’s self-titled first album was published on Sony on November 22, 2005, and it debuted at number 16 on the Canadian albums list. “Let It Go,” the second single from her album, was released in late 2005 and reached its highest point on the singles list at number seven.
O’Neil began her first solo tour in North Bay, Ontario, on February 7, 2006; it was called the Let It Go Tour after her second single. Rex Goudie, the runner-up on Canadian Idol, served as her opening act. “Speechless,” the third single from O’Neil’s album, reached number 31 on the charts, far lower than her first two singles but still commendable.
Her first hit, “Alive,” was covered by Becki Ryan in the film Flicka, and her debut album was given a gold certification by the CRIA in March 2006 for 50,000 units shipped. On September 16, 2006, O’Neil made a comeback on the Canadian Idol stage for the season’s grand finale. The certified-gold presentation disc of her debut record was a surprise for her at this location.
Together with Neverending White Lights, Tomi Swick, Patrick Watson, and Eva Avila (the latter of whom was her Canadian Idol replacement), O’Neil was nominated for a Juno Award in 2007 for New Artist of the Year; however, Swick won the prize. O’Neil started singing lead for the Toronto funk group God Made Me Funky in 2009.
After winning the third season of Canadian Idol, according to Glenn Sumi of NOW Toronto, “O’Neil issued a best-selling disc and then soon began doing musical theater, with roles in Dirty Dancing, High School Musical, and the acclaimed Stratford production of Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Melissa O’Neil career in acting
Since 2015, O’Neil has become a performer. She has appeared in repeat episodes of the 2015 Montreal-set CBC TV drama This Life, the Cole Hauser crime drama Rogue, and the Berlin-based musical drama online series Lost Generation. The narrative and music for the program, which was originally titled Pulse, were written by Duncan Sheik.
On the Syfy TV show space opera Dark Matter, O’Neil was cast in the lead role of Two / Rebecca / Portia Lin in December 2014. She performed in that position for the show’s three seasons, from 2015 to 2017.
O’Neil had a recurring role in the thriller Condor, a TV adaptation of Three Days of the Condor, and played the character of Suki in Rob Thomas’ procedural crime drama iZombie on The CW in 2018.
In the ABC television police drama series The Rookie, where she portrays a fellow rookie police officer alongside Nathan Fillion, O’Neil was cast in the role of Officer Lucy Chen in October 2018. Once Fillion’s love interest, O’Neil’s character has evolved into a larger ensemble part.
Melissa O’Neil Personal life
Her Chinese name, which means “ladylike,” was given to her by O’Neil’s maternal grandfather. O’Neil was reportedly able to speak Cantonese at the time she was competing on Canadian Idol, but not fluently.
Categories: Biography
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
