In her most revealing interview yet, Natalie Imbruglia talks to Neil McMahon about fame, depression and why she hates what she sees in the mirror.

Natalie Imbruglia is lying seductively on a sofa in a suite at Sydney’s Shangri-La Hotel wearing a Dolce & Gabbana corset, looking every inch the sex kitten and mesmerising everyone around her. At 35, she is still youthful, tiny and utterly beautiful, but there’s one thing missing. Gone is the wariness and reluctance to talk that has been commented on in so many interviews before, and there’s no hint of the diva behaviour that was reported as she began her The X Factor judging stint.

This Natalie is open, funny and all too happy to sit down and chat after a long shoot for Grazia. In fact, as a publicist gestures to a table in the middle of the suite for our interview, Natalie says, “Come on, let’s go do it in the bedroom, we’ll be more comfortable.” She laughs as I tell her this is an anecdote I’m going to regale all my mates with later on. So, ensconced in the bedroom, I ask her, what’s the secret to this new-found contentedness? She smiles: “I’m just happier. I’m in a really good place.”

But it’s been a hard-fought happiness. Almost 20 years after she joined the cast of Neighbours as a 16-year-old, and 13 years after her first single, Torn, turned her into the elfin poster child for 90s angst, she is finally at peace with herself. “As you get older, you figure stuff out and you get wise,” she says. “You don’t worry as much, you get comfortable in your own skin. I’m more confident, I’m happier, sexier. I was so intimidated by the whole success thing – I was too protective of myself, guarded, distrusting. Now I don’t care as much.”

She’s struggled with the fame that was suddenly thrust upon her. After the success of her first album Left Of The Middle and 2003 marriage to Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns, it all seemed to start going wrong. Her follow-up album didn’t do as well, she lived in her UK home while Daniel remained in Australia and in 2008 they announced their divorce.

Of that difficult time, she says: “I think it was like delayed shock at all that success – I didn’t have the tools to really know what to do. I was a rabbit in the headlights. I didn’t have that much confidence to start with.”

Source: Grazia