Whiting was born on 30 June 1950 in Wood Green moving with his two sisters to Holloway both are areas of North London, England, he is the only son of Peggy Joyce and Arthur Leonard Whiting. He has English, Irish and some Romani/Gypsy ancestry. Whiting's love of performing was encouraged at his local Church and Primary School, St Josephs RC Highgate where he and sister Linda acted in the School's Nativity plays. Leonard went on to attend St. Richard of Chichester School, Camden Town, leaving just a week or two before beginning work on Romeo and Juliet.
Career
Whiting had some success as a child singer, winning a Butlins Talent Contest hosted in the holiday camp's packed out Gaiety Theatre. Whiting was later spotted by a theatrical agent at the Connaught Rooms Holborn, where he was performing at a Jewish wedding at the age of 12. He only sang one song which he had rehearsed as a one-off song with the group Teal Lewis and the, who were the entertainment for the evening. This was set up by his father to get him noticed. After hearing him sing, the agent suggested he try out for Lionel Bart's Oliver! which constantly needed replacements for its child performers. Whiting played the Artful Dodger in the long-running London musical for 18 months, and for 13 months appeared at Laurence Olivier's National Theatre in the production of William Congreve's Love for Love opposite Olivier, which toured Moscow and Berlin. Director Franco Zeffirelli described his discovery, made from 300 youngsters who auditioned during more than three months: "He has a magnificent face, gentle melancholy, sweet, the kind of idealistic young man Romeo ought to be." He is also renowned for his on-stage part as the Artful Dodger in the original London cast of Oliver!, where he replaced Davy Jones when Jones and most of the London cast were transferred to New York City for the play's Broadway run. In the mid-1970s, his voice caught the attention of Abbey Road and The Dark Side of the Moon engineer Alan Parsons, who was in the process of recording what was to be the first album by the Alan Parsons Project, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Whiting performed lead vocals on the song "The Raven" and he also narrated the introduction of the five part musical rendition of The Fall of the House of Usher on the original 1976 album, which was then replaced by Orson Welles on the 1987 remixed version. Leonard was cast as the Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, in London's Westminster Theatre, This was the Ken Hill production with the Pharaoh played in the style of Elvis Presley, by Whiting between the 27 November 1978 until 17 January 1979, Paul Jones played Joseph 1978-80. In 1990, Whiting provided the voice of the Urpney scientist Urpgor in the children's animated television seriesThe Dreamstone. After voicing the character for three seasons, he was replaced by Colin Marsh for the fourth and final season. In 2014, he reunited with Olivia Hussey for the film Social Suicide, their first work together in the 46 years since Romeo and Juliet.
Personal life
In 1971, Whiting married model Cathee Dahmen, and in 1972 they had a daughter, Sarah Beth Whiting, who died in 2014. Her parents divorced in 1977. Following this, Whiting had a relationship with Valerie Tobin who gave birth to their daughter Charlotte who has said publicly that she did not meet her father until she was 12 years of age, by which time she had taken her step father's surname Westenra, whom her mother had married in 1982. Today, Charlotte Westenra is a successful Theatre Director. In 1995, Whiting married his assistant, Lynn Presser. Whiting ended his film career, for the most part, in the mid 1970s and subsequently placed his focus upon his theatrical career as an actor and writer. He and his wife live in Hampstead, London.
