Michael Ball & Alfie Boe

A regular face on British stage and television, performer Michael Ball was born in 1962 in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, U.K. Moving to South West England when he was three years old, Ball grew up learning to sing along to records by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and after an unhappy stint at boarding school in his teens -- and discovering a love of Shakespeare during school holidays -- Ball went on to study at the Guilford School of Acting. Graduating in 1984, his first role was in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre's production of Godspell, but his major break came a year later ...