Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
West End and Broadway actress best known for starring in musicals like Miss Saigon and Cats, with a defining role as Roxy in Chicago.
On the island
Eight records
Over the RainbowFavourite
I've never heard a version since that has touched me like this one. Also, it has great meaning for me because every Christmas we used to watch The Wizard of Oz and this song really for me as a child meant an awful lot. It's a song of great hope that there is something better over the rainbow.
And this, for me, says it all, and it's just frightening to me that ... more people don't don't understand what their behaviour and what their their words do to a child.
Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel
There's this saying that people come into your life for a ... Reason, a Season, or a Life Time. And um this is about my sister Noel who recently died.
I think the Lord's Prayer is absolutely beautiful, you know, as much as I wouldn't call myself a religious person. I absolutely believe in God.
I feel that there have been times in my life when I have been carried.
I met him doing Peggy Sue Got Married and he blew me away. He has a voice that, you know, I don't know how he does it. It's from God, it really is.
And that was played with the Henschel at your sister Noel's Memorial.
And I think this actually kind of comes full circle with Eva Castidi, my first one over the rainbow, because it's about that better place. I'm getting to a place in my life where this is becoming a better place.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:05Why did you need a sense of hope [as a child]?
[It] was a difficult childhood from the point of view that my parents had a very, very volatile relationship. And so we we saw an awful lot of arguing and ... that was hard as a child to to to watch that.
Presenter asks
5:20I wonder why you've spoken about [the sexual abuse] publicly.
I've always felt that especially now we live in this celebrity culture where everyone is looking at all these celebrities and saying, you know, oh, they've got it all. And w what we're not realizing is that everybody has their stuff. Everybody goes through the roller coaster that is called life. And ... I felt very strongly I want to break this myth. That you know, you get fame, you get fortune, you get to do an amazing job, that everything is fixed because it isn't fixed.
Presenter asks
7:01How long was it before you were able to tell anyone [about the abuse]?
I was about thirty. Yeah, and I um ... I was in so much pain that I finally went and got some help. And uh and of course it all came tumbling out.
The keepsakes
The book
Oscar Wilde
It's actually a children's book, but I can't read it to my children actually without getting a lump in my throat. But I find it beautiful.
The luxury
Presenter asks
23:23Did you ever think at one point you might become part of [the Royal Family]?
No. I think I had hopes uh that we could walk on in our relationship. But, um, really and truthfully, I think I was very aware. that I couldn't I wouldn't be able to do what I do for a living if I'd have stayed with him.
Presenter asks
26:32What happened when you went to Broadway [personally]?
I was I really hit the wall. That was when um ... I had to deal with the sexual abuse. I had to deal with what it had done to me because I was. Very, very unhappy. I kind of fell apart.
“I've always thought of my life as a little bit like being on an express train that I couldn't get off of. It was going so fast that I couldn't see the scenery either. But I had an unbelievable drive since being a child, and when I found dancing it was like somebody had turned the light on in my life, and so I couldn't get enough of it.”
“The sexual abuse ... changed me instantly. At four and a half years old when it began, it changed me instantly. And I can't explain a lot of things about me and my life. without taking that into consideration because ... It instantly made me feel ... Alone? It instantly made me feel bad. It instantly made me feel that obviously there wasn't a God.”
“I'm fed up with secrets and I'm fed up with how we are ashamed of certain things. You know m my sister committed suicide. It's something that nobody talks about in this country. But it but it so closely uh follows the fact that she was depressed and depression ... Is rife, but she couldn't reach out for help.”