Natalie Imbruglia has been discussing the highs and lows of her life and career, which has seen her appear on stage, as well as TV shows with Davina McCall
Natalie performing on stage in 2024(Image: PA)
Natalie Imbruglia has revealed how, at the peak of her Neighbours fame, she ran out of money – and was forced to lie low, living in a London basement.
The 51-year-old actor and singer has spoken candidly about fame, failure, motherhood, ADHD and the perimenopause in a new interview with Davina McCall. Perhaps the most surprising admission was her problems after she left Neighbours, where she played Beth Brennan from 1992 to 1994.
Shortly after leaving Ramsay Street, she fell on tough times. Natalie explained: “So I then went to England and that’s when I couldn’t get a visa to work as an actress, and they were really cracking down on the Neighbours stars taking English actors’ roles, and that was a hard time because I ran out of money.
“So I was, for a few years, very famous from Neighbours and was doing appearances and going appearing in clubs and signing autographs and just getting wads of cash in envelopes and living like that. And that was the first time in my life where everything didn’t fall in my lap. So I just partied because I didn’t know what to do.”
She added: “The money ran out. And it was my dad once [who] rang and said, ‘Can I just ask, when are you going to get a job?’ And I was so proud. And I screamed at him and kicked off, but I was so embarrassed that he said that to me that I changed things then.
“I was living in a basement at someone’s house in Chelsea, which was weird because I had no money and I’m in Chelsea, in this big mansion, but I’m just in the basement. And, a lot of conversations with God about if I ever get lucky again.”
Thankfully for Natalie, her luck did change in the form of a music career. A couple of years on from her low point she had signed a record deal with RCA and 1997 saw the release of her debut album Left Of The Middle.
The LP included the single Torn, which was released in October the month before the LP dropped and made Natalie and even bigger star, including in the US.
It topped the US Billboard Radio Songs Chart for eleven weeks in 1998, and was listed on the 50 Best Songs of the 1990s by Rolling Stone. She also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the song. Looking back though, Natalie said behind the scenes she was struggling to cope and secret battled agoraphobia.
She told the Begin Again podcast(PLS REF): “I don’t know if I was having a, like, mental breakdown. It could have been all the partying and then just kind of all the friends disappearing and I don’t know, I made deals with God. I was like, if you, if this happens, I promise. I think I wrote letters to my cousins and all kinds of stuff, but it’s cathartic. It was like… I’ve got a roof over my head. I remember thinking, some people don’t. You know, when it’s just reassessing and when you’ve been spoiled and you’ve had it very easy and then it’s all taken away, things get stripped back and it’s such a blessing.
“That was the birth of the album that changed my life. So, you know, the visceral memories, if you think about what’s happened to you in your life, I’m not thinking about the awards and all of that. I’m thinking about when it was like this is life or death or like, I’ve got to get this together. That’s where the nuggets of wisdom come and you make choices and pacts with yourself or with your higher power, whatever you want to call it, of, you know, what you’re going to do now, what you need to do.”
She added: “The fact that I was even having the, thinking, ‘What am I going to do with this?’… knowing that I had a choice to enjoy it, like, that’s the gift the meditation practice gives you. It was like, ‘You’ve got a choice here. You can be a victim of this, or you can just decide to make it fun and have the best year of winning awards of your life.'”
The other problem Natalie struggled with at this time was the pressure of the follow up second album. Her first one had sold over a million copies in the UK and over two million in America. But she was spending more and more time at home and couldn’t cope with the pressure.
“It was a lot of pressure. So then it was agoraphobia. I was terrified to go out. Because people would say, ‘How’s the album coming along?’,” she explained.
“The biggest achievement was completing that second album.” White Lilies Island the second LP would not be released until November 2001, by which time some of the buzz around Natalie’s career had died down. The album wasn’t a complete flop but only charted within top five in Australia, top twenty in the United Kingdom, and top forty in the United States.
By this time she was dating Australian musician Daniel Johns and they would go on to marry in 2003 before divorcing in 2008. Natalie has aways wanted to be a mum and says once single again in her Thirties after marriage she was “trying to be normal” and get into a relationship but in reality was feeling very broody.
She added she was “just desperate and I really wanted a child, so I must have just been, it must have been really frightening for men. But I did try for 10 years.”
In October 2019, she announced on Instagram that she had given birth to a baby boy. The child was conceived using IVF and sperm from an unnamed donor. She explained: “I think it was at least a 5-year journey, many, many attempts.
“I just made the decision to put a statement out. And I remember being terrified, because I’m very private. And so, having to put this statement out to protect myself and the baby, to just get it out the way. And I just remember crying all the way to Oxfordshire, bawling my eyes out. And you know what, I just got inundated with the most beautiful DMs from all these women just saying, ‘Thank you so much. I need to talk to you. I really want to do that.’ It hadn’t occurred to me how many people I could help.”
On motherhood, she added: “It’s just the best thing ever… Everything else has more joy, there’s way more stress, all you do is schedule, your life’s just scheduling, but it’s so much joy. The joy far outweighs the extra stress.”
Natalie is now back on the music scene and is bringing out a new album called “Algorithm,” with the song itself being about her ongoing battle with doomscrolling.
She said: “That specific song is about my addiction to doomscrolling on my phone, late at night. Which I’m still doing. So, the song didn’t fix me, but I wanted to open the conversation about mental health.
“It sounds like it’s about a sexy guy, and it’s my phone, and it’s how it seduces you in. I think it says ‘beast of my dreams turning me on’, and it’s the phone.”
* The full interview with Natalie is on the latest podcast episode of Begin Again with Davina McCall.
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