Free Souffriau

Free Souffriau launched her first solo album in 2009 as a Flemish actress and singer. Her reputation as a performer rests primarily on the starring part she played in Studio 100’s widely watched television series Mega Mindy. Born Fréderique Souffriau on February 8, 1980, in Ghent, Belgium, she entered the profession as a musical-theater actress during the closing years of the 1990s. Early in the following decade she established a sustained partnership with Studio 100 that yielded multiple television appearances and ultimately her signature role in Mega Mindy. The program’s popularity extended beyond the screen when it generated a full-length album on which Souffriau performed in character; that release, Mega Mindy (2007), climbed to the Top Five on both the Dutch and Flemish album charts and produced the Top Ten singles “Ik Ben Mega Mindy,” “Mega Mindy Tijd,” and “Toby Toby.” Two years afterward she issued her debut album under her own name, Zingt Ann Christy: Een Beetje Annders (2009), a Studio 100–issued tribute to the Belgian songwriting figure Ann Christy; the record reached number one in Flanders and featured the single “Dag Vreemde Man.” Still later that same year she resumed the Mega Mindy persona for the single “Tijd Voor Mega Mindy.”