Jason Orange

Jason Thomas Orange (born 10 July 1970) is an English former singer, songwriter, dancer, musician and actor. He was a member of Take That during their original run in the early 1990s and again following their reunion in 2005. He left the group in 2014.

Life and career
Orange was born in Crumpsall in Manchester. He attended South Trafford College for two years beginning in 2001 and studied A-level English, and an access course including psychology, biology and history though he did not progress onto higher education.[1]

He was part of the Manchester-based breakdance crew Street Machine [2] in the mid 1980s. They won the Manchester round of the UK Breakdancing Championship in 1985.[3] He also appeared in the show The Hit Man and Her as one of the featured dancers on the show (and in a duo called Look Twice) [4] in the late 1980s.

Orange joined the boy band Take That in November 1990 and stayed with the band until their split in February 1996. He then pursued a career in acting and appeared in the television thriller Killer Net in 1998, and the London stage production of Gob in 1999.[5] He was the lead actor together with Tom Hayes in the play, which was written by Jim Kenworth, and directed by James Martin Charlton.

In 2005, Take That reformed as a four-piece band and released a new greatest hits album, followed in 2006 by their first studio album since 1995, Beautiful World. Orange contributed both songwriting and lead vocals on the album. In 2008, they released another studio album, The Circus.[6] In 2010, the album Progress was released by the band as a five-piece. On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Orange had left the band stating that he did not wish to continue writing and making music.[7]

Orange appeared in a cameo role in the Channel 4 comedy Shameless, which aired in April 2013.[8]

In 2011 Orange dated comedian and actress Catherine Tate. The two met when Tate portrayed Orange in a parody music video for Comic Relief.