Kylie Queen of the World Page 19
He sold his story to the News Of The World, the first of Kylie’s boyfriends ever to do so, lashing out and flinging insults in a torrent of fury and upset. ‘The Kylie the British public knows is the cheeky, chirpy Aussie, loaded with talent and buckets of sex appeal,’ he began. ‘And that’s the Kylie I fell in love with. Who wouldn’t? But she turned into a self-obsessed, virtually friendless control freak, desperate to pursue her own ambitions as far as she could take them. None of the public saw that side of her and even I was stunned by the full force of her selfishness.’
James went on to claim he and Kylie had slept together shortly before the night of the Brits and as if that were not enough, he bitterly predicted that Kylie would end up as a lonely old spinster, with only a cat by her side. He was also keen to put his side of the story about that night at the Brits. ‘That night was the final straw in our relationship,’ said James. ‘After their performance Kylie was sitting opposite Justin when I went up and said, ‘Hi.’ She was very standoffish. I asked her, ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ She rudely snapped, ‘No.’ It was clear she felt being seen with a big American pop star like Justin was far more important than our friendship.’
News of his own infidelities with, amongst others, Sophie Dahl and Martine McCutcheon followed, as James revealed that the problems had begun in 2001. Kylie was about to go off on a three month tour and James asked if it was ok to date other women: Kylie was ‘not thrilled,’ he went on, but said she’d understand. There followed a series of splits, culminating in the Brit Awards, which had upset James so much, he said, that he’d taken an overdose. He had gone to a friend’s house and taken champagne and cocaine, before going home. When he woke up, he revealed, he took an overdose of Temazepam tranquillisers and downed half a bottle of Jack Daniels. And, he claimed that it was all Kylie’s fault. ‘I’d let her get inside my head and she’d rejected me,’ said James said in the News of the World. ‘I felt on the verge of a breakdown.’
Nothing like this had ever happened to Kylie before. She was devastated by the betrayal and if James had thought this was a way of pushing her back into his life, he was wrong. ‘This is the end for James,’ said a friend of Kylie’s. ‘Kylie will cut him out of her life for good. He will be airbrushed from her history. As far as she is concerned, that’s it. Kylie hoped they would be able to stay friends when their relationship finished but James has made sure it will never happen.’ And indeed, that was the absolute end of anything between the two.
James, meanwhile, was widely condemned for his actions, not least by his own father. ‘He has been playing the field and has had armfuls of girls, all high profile types,’ snapped David Gooding, an erstwhile advertising executive who now ran a pub in Scotland. ‘He even told Kylie about his affair with Sophie Dahl, so what did he expect? James is not a drinker, and as far as I know doesn’t do drugs. He is quoted as saying he was making a cry for help. Naturally you feel sorry for anyone who does this. But James is 27 and is a man of the world and I am sure he will be all right. And he is bound to have received a tidy sum for the story.’ But there was already something else in Kylie’s life to soften the blow. His name was Olivier Martinez.
Kylie and Olivier had first met shortly before-hand in the lobby of a Los Angeles hotel in March 2003. There has been speculation that all is not well within that romance either, but at the time Olivier was clearly the man to deal with the hurt James had caused. Asked some time later if James’s revelations had made it hard for her to have faith in a new partner, Kylie replied, ‘It wasn’t really difficult to trust a man again, but I can only think about Olivier in answer to that. It was easy to trust him.’
Olivier Martinez, sometimes known as the ‘French Brad Pitt,’ is a major star in his own right. Originally from a working class background, he was brought up in one of the less well off areas of Paris, initially following his boxer father into the ring. He left school young, with no qualifications, and drifted from one job to the next until he entered acting school aged 23. Success came almost immediately as he started to appear on French television, before moving into film and starring in, amidst much else, Unfaithful, with Richard Gere. Unlike James Gooding, he was becoming as well known as Kylie herself – and unlike James Gooding, he was not prone to moodiness. The world was instantly agog. Could this, finally, be ‘The One’?
Certainly, once outed as a couple, the pair were more than happy to be seen together everywhere. This was not, after all, Kylie’s first relationship with a Frenchman and she was pleased to spend time in Paris, the city she had got to know through her previous romance. Olivier’s influence became clear in other ways, as well. Kylie’s look began to change; the miniskirts began to disappear, while a Bardo-esque series of pictures made an appearance in one photoshoot.
Kylie began covering up, she was even pictured wearing Chanel – albeit slightly skimpy Chanel – while at the same time cutting back on work commitments and even, for the first time in a long time, sitting down to a regular daily breakfast. ‘It’s chocolate croissants nearly every morning, and feeling happy and taking time,’ said a bemused sounding Kylie. ‘Having managed to actually live some life and it works. The world doesn’t cave in. It’s amazing.’ There was early - yet inaccurate - speculation that she was pregnant. It seemed that nothing could go wrong.
But, as so often in Kylie’s love life, strains began to show almost immediately. Kylie, as ever, had no intention of putting her career on the backburner to pursue a relationship, while Olivier is a working actor with his own life to build. And so, after an all too brief honeymoon period, rumours surfaced that all was not well. In Canada at a baseball game, Olivier was pictured holding hands with his co-star Angelina Jolie in the film Taking Lives. Kylie actually flew out to Canada to see him once the Jolie pictures appeared, both insisted afterwards that the visit had been long planned and that nothing was wrong. Indeed, she was irritable about it. ‘It was very annoying,’ Kylie said afterwards. ‘When I arrived in Montreal, he was actually at the baseball game. So the whole story about, “She’s seen the picture of him so she’s flown over,” I mean, even if it had happened – how the hell do they know what two people said when they were alone in a trailer?’
But whether or not there had been problems, Olivier’s influence continued to be felt. Throughout 2003 Kylie was working on a new album, Body Language, and for perhaps the first time in her entire career did not go on tour to support it when it was released at the end of the year. Clearly his advice to let up on the workload a little had been heeded, to say nothing of the fact that Kylie did not want to start suffering from nervous exhaustion again. And the change of image continued. Kylie-watchers observed that her look was becoming more languorous while at the same time, to the chagrin of her male admirers, she continued to cover up. Talking about what to wear to promote the new album, Kylie said firmly that, ‘I’m not going to be in a bathing suit. We’ve tried to move away from flesh. We realised that the flesh thing is everywhere now, everywhere. And I think it’s important to differentiate.’ And was she keen to keep some flesh covered just for herself? ‘Yes,’ said Kylie firmly. ‘And for my boyfriend.’
She was even tiring of the continuing fascination in the world’s most famous bottom. ‘I’m partly flattered by it but over a certain point … The Bottom,’ she said. ‘Well, that did spiral somewhat out of control. But in the end, it’s a laugh, and I’d be feeling a lot worse if it was like, errgh, look at that!’
Will Baker, Kylie’s stylist and the most important person when it comes to her image, agreed. ‘What an impact those hot pants made,’ he said. ‘But I want to take her away from the sex symbol thing now. She loves French sophistication and I think it’s perfect for her – especially as she’s with Olivier, a French movie star. We spent three days shopping in Paris recently. We didn’t even go out in the evenings as we were so busy having appointments all day. Shopping has become increasingly difficult for Kylie – it’s not unlike a military operation.’
Kylie was at the e
nd of some teasing about all of this, given the amount of flesh she’d revealed in the past, but she and Will were aware of the fact that she was approaching her late 30s, and simply had to change her look. But while Kylie might have been getting tired of The Bottom, the public clearly wasn’t. In June 2003 the Brighton-based artist Simon Etheridge put an almost lifesize picture of Kylie in her gold hot pants in the window of his Art Asylum gallery. This immediately caused traffic hold-ups as motorists slowed down to have a proper look.
‘People have been a bit frustrated because as they drive past, they see it and slow down,’ he revealed. ‘It’s a narrow street and one-way so people are hitting their horns. It’s caused some amusement for us in the gallery but not for the motorists.’ The painting itself eventually sold for £895.
16
Tragedy and Triumph
Kylie remained popular in all quarters. In June 2003, Kylie was the surprise star guest at Boy George’s birthday party in Ronnie Scott’s, turning up to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in a turquoise mini-dress. The Boy proclaimed himself ‘star struck’. There was a small blip when two of her films, Streetfighter and Bio-Dome both featured in a poll of the 100 worst films of all time, but given that Kylie herself had declared they had been a mistake, none of her entourage were unduly alarmed.
And her new covering up strategy was paying off. James Gooding once remarked that when she was a grandmother she would still be wearing hot pants, but Kylie herself clearly realised that as she got older, like Madonna, she was going to have to cultivate an image based not solely on appearance. A joke ‘Ban the Bum’ campaign was launched: Kylie on the whole went along with it, and although a series of revealing pictures was released towards the end of the year to publicise Love Kylie’s swimwear range, on the whole she kept more on than she had done in the past.
But the remarks, the need for a new image, and Olivier’s quiet behind-the-scenes influence continued to hit home. As autumn advanced and Kylie began to get ready to publicise her new album Body Language and the single from it, ‘Slow’, she publicly announced that from now on she was staying covered up. ‘I’m a 35-year old woman,’ she said. ‘I kept everything covered in my video. It’s quite tame compared to music TV nowadays.’ And would she object if younger rivals took up the baton and stepped out of their clothes? ‘There’s always competition and it doesn’t worry me,’ said Kylie. ‘They are free to strip down if they like.’ In response to this, the Sun newspaper launched a petition begging Kylie to reconsider.
The fans minded not one jot. A buzz was beginning to grow around the new album, especially with the news that Ms Dynamite had penned one of the songs, ‘Secret (Take You Home)’. It was to be Kylie’s third album for Parlophone, following the extraordinary success of Light Years in 2000 and Fever the following year, and was thought to be more than the equal of both, combining her talent for pop melody with up-to-the-minute production techniques. In the event, the reviews were extremely positive: ‘While Kylie the phenomenon may be increasingly perturbed by the nation’s obsession both with her arse and her love life, Kylie the pop princess proves herself here to be entirely at her ease,’ said Q Magazine.
In November 2003, the single ‘Slow’ was released, which went straight in at No 1, her seventh chart topper to date. It also finally pushed her ahead of Madonna as the UK’s most successful female act of all time: Kylie now had the longest span of number-one singles of any woman, starting with ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ some 15 years and seven months earlier. Madonna was in second place, with a span of 15 years and one month. Kylie had done it: she was more successful than the Queen of Pop herself, the very woman who had once worn Kylie’s name on the most widely viewed billboard in the world.
And her personal life was on form, too. On Christmas Eve, Kylie and Olivier jetted into Melbourne to spend Christmas with her parents, Dannii and Brendan. For the moment, at least, the relationship appeared to be on track. ‘When I met Olivier, suddenly, my life took a wonderful new turn,’ Kylie said. ‘Olivier makes me content. I know there is an unstoppable interest in my affairs of the heart, but all people need to know is I am very happy.’
She was presenting a more settled appearance than she had done before. Utterly workaholic until she met Olivier, the change in her attitude to her career was still very apparent. ‘I usually love work,’ she said, ‘but I feel different about it now and, yes, that has a lot to do with Olivier. Meeting someone I really want to spend time with and make sacrifices for has made me change. Now, if I had to give up everything tomorrow and go to live in Paris with Olivier, it wouldn’t be too terrible. Not too terrible! He is very lovely. He is worldly and wise and there is much to admire about him. He fascinates me in lots of ways. He is dependable – and yet he surprises me often, too.’
Kylie was clearly not planning on hanging up her dancing shoes just yet, but speculation really was beginning to mount as to just how she saw her future. In May 2004, Kylie celebrated her 36th birthday, a time when women take stock of whether they really want to have children. And Kylie, for all the talk of cutting her punishing work schedule, showed little sign of wanting to settle down: rather, with another single, ‘Chocolate’, following hard on the heels of the last, she seemed to be working as hard as ever.
Indeed, the video for ‘Chocolate’ saw her adopting yet another guise: that of ballet dancer. That new Gallic chic style was more in evidence than ever: this time round we saw Kylie being coached by the choreographer Michael Rooney, working for four days until she got her steps absolutely right for a 40-second ballet routine. ‘I nearly killed myself in rehearsals,’ she said. ‘But the outcome is classy, I hope. It’s a lot different from any other videos I’ve done before. I really wanted to do some ballet in my next video and luckily I’ve been able to. I normally have three or four hours to practise the choreography for my clips, but this time I had four days to get it right.’ She absolutely looked the part, suggesting that Olivier had been having more influence on her than any of her partners since Michael Hutchence.
Even so, rumours of problems in the relationship with Olivier would not go away. Although the two were spotted on holiday together on the luxury schooner LeLantina, off the coast of Corsica, they still spent long periods apart as Olivier pursued his own film career. Nor was that all. In the summer of 2004, when Kylie went to Australia to launch her latest lingerie range, Olivier was pictured at a party held by P Diddy in St Tropez, getting distinctly personal with the actress Michelle Rodriguez, with whom he’d starred in S.W.A.T. That was not the only time they were seen together: the two were confronted by photographers as they drove through the French seaside resort, and were spotted together giggling in the street.
But then, as so often had happened with James Gooding, there was a reconciliation. Olivier finally followed Kylie back to London, where they were pictured together smiling and looking happy. Some observers believed that Kylie had promised to cut back on work commitments to keep her boyfriend happy, but this was not borne out by Kylie’s comments at the time. There had been some completely erroneous speculation earlier in the year that she was pregnant: now Kylie seemed to be implying that that would never happen. ‘I know it is a biological matter,’ she said. ‘When I was younger I didn’t know anything about my life, except I thought I’d have kids. Now I’m a bit older, I realise I might not, for one reason or another.’
That reason continued to be her career, which, incidentally, she gave no signs of putting on hold, no matter what Olivier may or may not have said. Amid rumours that she had been spotted talking to Hollywood moguls in Los Angeles and had auditioned for a part in the film Nanny And The Professor, Kylie launched details of her next tour, the greatest hits Kylie – Showgirl tour, to kick off in spring 2005. If any further proof of her continuing popularity was needed, this was it: tickets for the UK leg of the tour sold out within a couple of hours. A London telephone exchange even crashed, such was the demand for tickets.
And so the pattern that seems to have grown in Kylie’s
life continued. Her career could not have been more successful, but it took practically no time for rumours to surface of further problems with Olivier. After that short sojourn with Kylie in London to patch things up, he jetted off to Los Angeles himself, where he was to stay for the next two months, leaving speculation to grow ever more frenzied about the true state of affairs within the relationship. Finally, matters got so bad that Kylie herself announced on Australian radio that nothing was wrong. ‘We are happy and we are together,’ she said. ‘I’ve never really talked about him or about us and I think that has been helpful. There has been endless speculation, stories and rumours, ever since we started seeing each other. It is true that Olivier has been working away in LA and I miss him so much. There isn’t any pretending – we have been apart a lot lately.’
To support that, there was also rather a charming story about Olivier then doing the rounds. It was said that while he was lunching at Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, a girl came over and dangled her room keys in front of him. ‘You are beautiful,’ said the suave Olivier, ‘but I have my woman.’
Australia was honouring its famous daughter, too. The Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne announced plans to hold an exhibition of over 300 of Kylie’s most famous costumes from January 2005, with plans to tour the exhibition both throughout Australia and internationally. ‘There’s everything from Charlene’s overalls from Neighbours to the gold hotpants from the “Spinning Around” video and the white dress from the “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” video,’ said Kylie. ‘I’m so happy that my costumes have found a home here in Melbourne, my home town.’