ARTIST

Natalie Imbruglia

Many movie and TV stars have tried to make the transition to acting, more often than not with laughable, even horrific results. (Remember Don Johnson's rock 'n' roll attempt? Or even worse, Philip Michael Thomas's?) So the odds were stacked against her when Natalie Imbruglia, the former star of the wildly popular Australian soap opera Neighbours, decided to give music a try. But with the help of 10 or so of the music industry's top songwriters and producers and the rare luxury of a year in the studio, Imbruglia has crafted a polished pop record that so far has yielded one of the biggest singles of 1998, and shows no sign of slowing down as of this writing.

Natalie Imbruglia practically grew up on the stage; from a very early age, she knew she wanted to be a performer and demonstrated an unusually fierce ambition, which obviously helped her get so far by the tender age of 23. Imbruglia started dancing practically before she could walk, began acting in commercials in her preteens, and after wisely turning down a dubious teeny-bop recording deal at age 14, landed the role of Beth, the trampy tomboy teen on Neighbours. The part was only supposed to last for two weeks, but the Beth character was so popular with viewers, Imbruglia became a regular cast member.

After two years on Neighbours, Imbruglia felt creatively stifled, so she quit the show at age 19 and moved to London, where she floundered in unemployment for two years - not only because she has difficulty obtaining U.K. work permits, but because the soap opera stigma kept her from being taken seriously. With no direction for the first time in her young life, Imbruglia squandered time partying wildly in the London club scene, and seemed doomed to be yet another fallen child star.

However, Imbruglia finally got her act together and began writing songs, though she was at first afraid to let anyone know, lest they make fun of her or compare her to another former Neighbours castmate-turned-pop singer, Kylie Minogue. After meeting her future manager, Anne Barrett, however, things began to fall into place. Barrett hooked Imbruglia up with top-notch producers like Phil Thornalley (a former member of the Cure), Nigel Godrich (Radiohead's OK Computer), and Mark Goldenberg (who wrote the Eels' hit "Novocaine For The Soul"). With such seasoned professionals backing her up, not to mention her ready-for-prime-time-MTV good looks (all delicate Audrey Hepburn bone structure, enormous kewpie-doll eyes and perfectly pouty lips), it's no surprise Imbruglia quickly landed a record deal with RCA.

Even if those considerable assets hadn't been enough, Imbruglia also had the undeniably radio-ready pop ballad "Torn," which Thornalley had written with the L.A. band Ednaswap. Surprisingly, Ednaswap's 1995 version failed to make a dent in the charts, but "Torn" had been a hit in Norway and Japan for Norwegian singer Trine Rein, and in Denmark by a Danish singer named Lis Sorenson. The most successful rendition by far, however, was Imbruglia's, which became the most-played radio song in the U.K. (even knocking Elton John's "Candle In The Wind 1997" out of the top spot) and was a hit in practically every other country on the planet. It all happened very quickly, and by the time her debut album, Left Of The Middle, finally hit record store shelves, Imbruglia was an MTV superstar and Spin magazine covergirl.

Though her success seems to have come easily and swiftly, Imbruglia's rise hasn't been without its difficulties. Before her album was even completed, she was under the scrutiny of the tabloid press, due to her short-lived relationship with Friends star David Schwimmer. She came under further scrutiny--this time mainly by the sensationalistic U.K. music press--when it was "discovered" that she had not written "Torn" (though she never claimed she had) and that other versions of the song existed. And some critics have accused Imbruglia of being just a pretty record company puppet who has been carefully groomed for stardom, citing the unusually large number of producers, engineers, and composers who worked on Left Of The Middle and the fact that Imbruglia played on Saturday Night Live before she even had a record out in the U.S. (an SNL first). Only time will tell if Imbruglia will establish herself as a lasting, credible artist or just go on in the music history books as yet another '90s one-hit-wonder, but none of the above has hampered her success so far.

Written by Lyndsey Parker