Natalie Imbruglia: she has already conquered the airwaves. Now she's going for the multiplexes with a film that's been spoofing all the way to the bank

Interview, August, 2003 by Graham Fuller

Natalie Imbruglia may have cost herself momentum by taking nearly four years to follow up her multiplatinum debut album, Left of the Middle, with the more thoughtful White Lilies island (both RCA), but it sure endowed the Australian-born, London-based pop gamine with an interestingly moody aura. Once a teen star in the Aussie soap Neighbours, the 28-year-old now turns up unexpectedly as the curt, ravishing sidekick of bungling Bond manque Rowan Atkinson in the British spy spoof Johnny English, which recently opened in the U.S. She has meanwhile written most of the songs for her third album, due out next year.

GRAHAM FULLER: Johnny English made agazillion pounds in Britain. Did you have a profit-sharing clause in your contract?

NATALIE IMBRUGLIA: No, I should have. [laughs] I wasn't thinking along those lines when I agreed to do it.

GF: You look incredibly hot in the film. Is that how your character starts out, or does she just get that way?

NI: [laughs] She's dressed for whatever is appropriate. If she's at a reception, she's glamorous. If she's on a motorbike, she wears jeans. That was good, because I'm not really into running around in a bikini.

GF: You wear leather, though.

NI: But the suit I wore is not thin leather, It was a big, bulky, padded outfit, not very girly.

GF: Rowan Atkinson--easy to work with?

NI: Well, I play straight against his comedy, so I didn't have to be funny. It was like the straighter I played it, the better for him.

GF: Do you want to do dramas now?

NI: I'm open to anything. I'd enjoy doing an action film based purely on how much fun it was to do fight scenes.

GF: What impelled you to act?

NI: I've always known my destiny was to be a performer. I started dancing when I was in nappies [diapers]. I've been on stage my whole life, in some capacity, and I was working on television at 16, doing Neighbours.

GF: You've got a bunch of sisters, right?

NI: Three.

GF: Did you become an actress because you had to compete for attention with them?

NI: Noooo. We were all dancing when we were young, though I'm the only one who wasn't doing it just for fun.

GF: When you moved to the U.K., why did you gravitate to music?

NI: I was broke. I couldn't get a permit to work as an actress because they didn't want people from Aussie soaps coming over and taking people's jobs. I didn't do anything for a year, just went out partying. I thought, If I get a record deal I can stay in the country.

GF: Why do you think your second record wasn't as popular as the first one?

NI: I wasn't paying any attention to what was being played on the radio. And I took too long to make it. Lots of reasons, really. But I think it was a more mature record.

GF: Do you resist commercial compromise?

NI: I try to make pop music I like. People will play this amazing song for me that they think will be a big hit, and I'll agree, but at the risk of pissing off the record company I'll say, "It's going to have to be someone else's hit because I think it's cheesy."

GF: What's driving your next record?

NI: I want it to be less introspective lyrically, but slightly edgy musically, so it's guided by that and the energy I want to have onstage.

GF: You've talked in the past about having periods of despondency--is that as much a source for writing good songs as writing them when you're happy.

NI: It's much easier to write them when you're sad. But you can end up isolated and depressed because you almost need to put yourself in that situation to have that angst to write from. I'm engaged to be married, so I'm on top of the world right now.

GF: Will that be reflected on the album?

NI: It's impossible to get away from the fact that a lot of the songs will have references to Daniel [Johns, Silverchair singer], because he's on my mind all the time.

GF: You're comparatively young to have found a life partner.

NI: I know. I would have been happy to have waited till I was in my mid- to late-thirties before I got married, but you don't choose when these things happen, and when they do, there's no doubt in your mind.

Graham Fuller is Interview's Film Writer at Large.