Lea Michele Sarfati was born on August 29, 1986, in The Bronx, New York City.She is the only child of Edith T Sarfati (born October 19, 1960), a retired nurse, and Mark D Sarfati (born September 1, 1958), a real estate agent and former delicatessen owner. Her parents met on the playground when her mother was 13 years old.Her mother is Italian American and Roman Catholic, while her father is a Sephardic Jew (his family emigrated from Spain and Turkey).Michele was raised Catholic, and has stated that her father "gladly" attends church with her and her mother. Michele spent the first four years of her life living in The Bronx, until her parents decided to move to the more suburban area of Tenafly in the state of New Jersey.Her parents also had a rented apartment in Manhattan, where they would live when Michele was performing on Broadway.
She was educated at Rockland Country Day School for elementary school in Congers, New York. Michele adopted her stage name at an early age; when she went on her first audition, for Les Misérables, she gave her name as Lea Michele, and has used it ever since. She has stated that she changed it because she was teased about the pronunciation of her last name.[19] On her first musical theatre audition, she sang the song "Angel of Music" from The Phantom of the Opera, the only musical she knew at the time. Michele had gone to the audition to support a friend, but ended up landing the part herself. Michele was homeschooled for one year (1997) while she lived and worked in Toronto, Ontario, performing in the Canadian production of Ragtime.
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