Leslie Garcia Bowman is a young actor, dancer, and singer best known for his work with the smash hit show Thriller — Live and as part of the original West End cast of the multi-award-winning musical Hamilton. In 2019, he was a featured tap dancer in the Netflix film High Strung Free Dance. Before the pandemic forced theatres all over the world to temporarily bring the curtain down, he had been preparing to appear in a revival of West Side Story at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre.
Bowman trained at the Laine Theatre Arts dance school in Epsom, Surrey, whose notable alumni include Ruthie Henshall and Victoria Beckham. His regional theatre CV includes parts in West End Heroes, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. His break into the West End came when he joined the cast of Thriller — Live, a major revue celebrating the life and times of Michael Jackson that had been running at the Lyric Theatre since 2009. Bowman undertook numerous parts, playing in the Ensemble, playing the Voice in the Mirror, and acting as Assistant Dance Captain.
In 2017, he left the show to take on the role of Charles Lee in the original West End production of Hamilton. The audition process was so exacting that it lasted three months, and it’s a testament to Bowman’s talent that he won the part. He performed to the likes of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and was present at the Olivier Awards when Hamilton walked away with an incredible seven awards. In 2019, he returned to Thriller.