Imbruglia: Torn between rock 'n' role > 31.03.03

Natalie Imbruglia went from Neighbours to pop chick, but now she’s acting again, making her film debut in the Rowan Atkinson spy spoof Johnny English.

It was something about the sun that made the soap opera Neighbours an unlikely hit in the UK. Lest we forget, 10 years ago, before reinventing herself as a rock chick, Imbruglia served her apprenticeship in that great institution. Two years into playing cutie-pie Beth Brennan, however, she observed the show’s articles to the letter, quit at the top and followed the path worn by all from Kylie to Holly Valance, winging off to London to try and hack it as a singer.

Underdressed and over here. One global hit single (1997’s Torn) and two multimillion-selling albums of grunge-lite later, though, Imbruglia had completely eliminated association with the Ramsay Street years... until now. So why the return? “I always wanted to go back to acting,” she insists. “I wanted to focus on my music, and it’s still a priority. But I started reading scripts and thinking: ‘You know, maybe I feel ready to try and reintroduce acting — still do the music, but juggle both and see how it goes.’”

In Johnny English, Imbruglia stars opposite Rowan Atkinson: the film is a light-hearted Bond spoof based on the incompetent superspy essayed by Atkinson in those old Barclaycard commercials. As Special Agent Lorna Campbell, Imbruglia’s rock credentials remain intact. In today’s scene, she may have her glad rags on (black trouser suit and low-cut silk blouse), but she spends part of the flick in biker leathers, tooling around on a huge — if you will — chopper.

Natalie Jane Imbruglia grew up in Berkeley Vale, a small beach town north of Sydney, the second of four girls, her mother a schoolteacher, her horticulturalist father a first-generation immigrant from the Lipari Islands off Sicily. While her mates’ aspirations did not extend beyond becoming surf bunnies, Natalie was dancing at two, and, by six, moving on to a special academy. At 16, she slunk off to Sydney and signed up with an agent. Then, at 17, the big break: Neighbours. A two-week trial playing a diminutive sheila, squinting up at all manner of mullet-haired meat-heads, turned into a two-year gig. Whereas, onscreen, Beth Brennan suffered the humiliation of hubby-to-be Brad running off with her best mucker (or something), offscreen it was proving rather too much. Imbruglia resented the loss of privacy, the producers reluctantly agreed to write her out and Beth was exiled to Perth.

In real life, it was London she fled to, where, still only 19, she chopped off her hair, did the nightclub scene and hoped her pedigree would land her something more than Puss in Boots. But — slight problem — she failed to secure a work permit. “I kind of came here with stars in my eyes, hoping everything would just run my way, as it always had,” she says. But after a year, when she ran out of money, it seemed the naysayers might be right. She lived off baked beans and rice and “borrowed money off girlfriends — very hard for my pride”, and the chums she rented a room from indulged her while she whipped up a bunch of songs.

And finally, in 1996, with Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette all the rage, Imbruglia signed to RCA, marketed as one of the new breed of girl-powered singer/songwriters. What they got was Audrey Hepburn-does-The-Sundays. But why categorise? And if the ghost of Kylie still loomed (she was then in midcareer slump between poodle-permed popstrel and dancefloor vamp), Imbruglia out-Kylied Kylie straight off the bat. While her predecessor was launched warbling cheesy Europap, Imbruglia gained instant credibility, the guitar pop of Torn selling more than 1m copies in the UK. “Kylie was very supportive and told me to stick at it — and was just there for me, you know,” says Imbruglia. But at a single stroke, she had done something Kylie hadn’t: broken America.

“I don’t want people to think that just because I’m doing a film, and want to do others, I’m going to neglect my music career — my main step is my next album, nothing is going to get in the way of that,” she says. “I guess the way to say it is I’m passionate about both. I’m greedy. I want both, I don’t want to have to choose yet.” —Times online