Melissa Mars (born 3 September 1979) is a French singer and actress.

Biography

Born in Marseilles, France, Melissa Mars began acting at the age of thirteen, at the Chocolat theater. Two years later, she began taking singing lessons.

At age of sixteen, she moved to Paris, and earned a baccalauréat in sciences at the Louis-Le-Grand high school twelve months later. Despite this accomplishment, she ended her studies, but continued to study Spanish, English, piano, and harmonica. She wrote short scripts and read modern theatrical works (Anouilh, Obaldia, Sartre, Cocteau, Miller, and others).

In 1998, her agent arranged for her to dine with André Téchiné and François Bernheim. However, the dinner didn't work out as planned: According to Mars, "the meal progressed, but the interaction did not." François Bernheim asked to hear her sing. With her mother's help, she wrote her first song, "Papa m'aime pas." Five others followed. Having performed under the stage names Melissa Sefrani and Melissa Maylee, she ultimately adopted the last name Mars, a reference to the planet Mars and her penchant for dreams.

Mars was also cast in several film and television roles (Un aller simple and "Garonne," amongst others), and her first album, Et Alors!, released in March 2003, marked the real start of her career. Lacking widespread media distribution, the singles that followed were never released. The title song Et Alors! was made into a music video, filmed in Brussels, but this was not the case for the song Quelqu'un.

At the beginning of 2005, Mars released the album La Reine des abeilles, with its first track entitled "And … I Hate You." For this album, which had a folk-music style to it, she was accompanied by Franck Langolff. During the same period, she appeared on Lara Fabian's album 9 in the song "Les Homéricains." Not long after that, while her song "Dans Ma Bulle Antisismique" was being sent to the media promotionally, she replaced Carla Bruni in appearances with Louis Bertignac in scenes and live television on the show "Les Frôleuses."

In 2006, for her first round of concerts at the Théâtre des Déchargeurs, her album La Reine des abeilles was re-released, with a remix of "And … I Hate You," a previously unreleased duet entitled "Chaperon rouge," with Irmavep, and a new version of "Apocalips." Shortly thereafter, she appeared on Pascal Obispo's new album on two tracks, "La Machine" and "1980," released as a single in September 2006. Later she became the model for the new autumn-winter collection of Naf Naf clothing.

In May 2007, the single "Love Machine" was released on the Internet as a teaser for Mars' album À la recherche de l'amour perdu,
which followed in release four months later. Not long before this, an extended-play version of "Love Machine" was released, with four remixes and an English version. The concert tour that was to follow was canceled, apart from one concert on 10 December 2007 at La Cigale in Paris.

Mars joined the cast of the musical Mozart, l'opéra rock (produced by Dove Attia and Olivier Dahan) in September 2009. She appears in the role of Aloysia Weber, Mozart's first love and his greatest romantic disappointment. In 2014, Eurochannel aired a special program about her.