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Natalie was born in a little coastal
town, Berkleyvale in the state of New South Wales in
Australia.
Natalie has Italian blood in her veins, her father
is from Italy, hence the name Imbruglia, her mother
however is from Australia. Natalie was the oldest
child in that family, she has three younger sisters.
Her family was a "non-showbis" family
apart from her father's singing in a band called
"The Birds And The Bees".
Everyone in the coastal town of Berkleyvale surfed,
and one summer Natalie and her friends wanted to be
on the same camp as the surfer-boys. They borrowed
wetsuits and joined the surfer's survival course,
but Natalie did not do very well.
As a little child, she wanted to be a hairdresser on
weekdays and a star during the weekends. She says
that at the age of two, she had already begun to
dance. When Natalie was thirteen, she began to sing
after having signed up for an "extra-curricular
performance school" on Queensland's Gold Coast.
Natalie had been asking her parents for years to
take singing lessons, but it was only after her
teachers almost ordered it that they signed her up.
After the course finished she moved back home to
Berkleyvale and when she was 15 she moved to Sydney
to attend an acting school. That, however, didn't
last long, only 6 months. "I Couldn't stand the
getting up early. I just wanted to audition
full-time. I was just sick of school and wanted to
be working. Always in a hurry." She says.
Natalie's first big breakthrough came when she was
16. She was "the Pineapple Princess" in a
Japanese chewing-gum advertisement, and dyed her
hair black to look more like a Hawaiian girl. She
recorded 3 more advertisements before trying out for
a two-week role i Neighbours. She got the role as
Beth, her character quickly became popular and it
ended up being two years in Neighbours instead of
two weeks. At the start, everything was wonderful,
work, money and fame. "When you are 17 and
someone offer you a part as that you jump at
it." But there is some kind of stigma about
being in a soap-opera which Natalie found hard to
handle, and the whole thing wasn't just fun and
games. "I didn't have any income for a long
time. My profile dropped off and my bank balance,
too, and that was the best thing that ever happened
to me. I was forced to struggle, which is a normal
healthy part of growing up. I hadn't gone through
that. I'd never had budget for anything. I probably
needed a good kick up the butt cos I was a bit ar
rogant. It was hard and humbling but I'm glad it
happened to me. "I knew this time I had to work
for success."
In 1994 she had had enough of life as a soap-star
and moved to London. Her reception in London was
warm, since Neighbours was more popular in England
than in Australia. In the beginning, Natalie was
invited to all the Gala-nights and parties, "
So i actually got treaded probably to well",
she says. But as time passed, her popularity
decreased, "but i think as time went on and i
guess my profile died down, and i stooped got
invaded to all this party's and i released these
people weren't necessarily all my friends. That's
when i relay felt lone in London and when i started
to write."
Natalie didn't know if she could write songs and was
afraid that everyone would laugh at her. She thought
it over and said to herself, "Forget about what
you've done and go back to basics. Ask yourself what
you want to be. I wanted to write songs." To
begin with she wrote the lyrics first and then added
the music, but she found this very difficult. These
days she writes the music first and let the word
come. "I've found a way of doing it in which
the music inspires the words". About this time
Natalie met Anne Barret in a bar. They quickly
became best friends and nowadays Anne is Natalie's
manager. They worked together on a demo in 6-8
mouths and got together 3 or 4 songs which they took
to the RCA and got a contract.
Then Natalie went to the USA and got to meet Mark
Goldenburg, whom she admired, through some friends
of hers'. In one week they wrote two songs
("Big Mistake" and "Pigeons And
Crumbs"). She also wrote songs with, among
others, Mark Plati ("Don't You Think?",
"Why" and "Impressed" ) and Matt
Bronleewee ("Smoke"). "Being such a
new artist, there was so much room for growth that
it seemed silly to stick with one person. I was
eager to experiment. I was very interested in what
they had to offer." She does not like albums
where all the songs sound the same, everyone she has
worked with have very different personalities, she
says. Natalie also says that she can't write happy
songs, but would like to be able to do so, and
admires those who can.
Her work with several different songwriters has
corrected her terrible taste in music, she says, and
claims that an examination of her collection would
be shocking, and that she once nearly panicked when
she was going to be interviewed at home and she
realised that the journalist was sure to make
unpleasant comments about the collection.
Natalie's first released single was
"Torn", the reason for it's being the
first was that it appealed to all different groups,
something that Natalie did not know if the other
could do. There has been a lot talk and writing
about who wrote it and who performed the song first.
Strange, since Natalie has never claimed that she
had recorded it first or that she wrote it. On the
cover it is clearly stated that it is written by
Phil Thornalley. "Torn" has earlier been
recorded by the Danish Lis S鰎ensen (please
excuse the spelling if incorrect) and the Norwegian
Trine Rein. Four different singles with Natalie
version of "Torn" have been released,
other songs on these singles are:
"Sometimes", "Contradictions",
"Diving In The Deep End" and
"Frightened Child".
After that the album "Left Of The Middle"
was released, which contains 12 songs, 10 of them
are written by Natalie.
During the end of 1997, Natalie worked with trying
to find a band for live concerts. The band became
organised around new year 97/98 and Natalie was on
tour from January and was in Sweden on her 23rd
birthday, the reason was a concert at the
"Studion" in Stockholm. Natalie likes
Sweden and find all the snow beautiful. In
February/March she continues to Asia on tour and in
March was she on a short visit to her homeland.
Natalie continued her tour in Japan and USA and
recorded the video "Wishing I Was There" i
New York.
Natalie's latest singles which have been released
are "Big Mistake", "Wishing I Was
There" and "Smoke".
Natalie is probably single for the moment, but who
knows? She prefers staying home, drinking black
coffee and writing letters to her friends than going
out. "I don't tend to get out much now".
Instead she enjoys the peace and quiet.
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