New Idea

Marcia Hines reveals: ‘I’m still looking for The One’

Marcia Hines reveals

- By Paul Ewart

Chart and stage success, fame as a favourite judge on hit TV show Australian Idol and an induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame – for close to 50 years, Marcia Hines has enjoyed a showbiz career that many other performers can only dream of.

But there’s one thing that continues to elude the singing sensation: love.

In a fun, laughter-filled interview with New Idea, the vivacious star makes it very clear that while she’s single right now, a relationsh­ip is high on her wishlist.

‘It’s a priority – I’m a human being!’ says the 63-year-old.

‘And most human beings want to find someone they can hang out with and when you do find that someone, food tastes better, music sounds better... everything looks better and you feel better. It makes things nicer than they were.’

Previous relationsh­ips have tested Marcia, with high-profile marriages to drummer Mark Kennedy, French entreprene­ur Andre Decarpentr­y and businessma­n Ghassan Bayni all ending in divorce.

Her most recent split was from fourth husband Dr Christophe­r Morrissey in 2014, following a decade-long relationsh­ip. But despite her rocky road, the self-proclaimed ‘hope junkie’ is optimistic.

‘Nothing’s impossible,’ she says. ‘I always try to find the best side of things – I get lemons, I make lemonade. And I do believe that there’s someone out there for everyone.

‘You have to stay open and you have to believe in love – you have to believe that there’s someone who will love you enough to compromise.’

It’s this ability to compromise that rates highly on Marcia’s checklist when looking for a potential partner.

‘Compromise – especially with the job that I do – is important,’ she explains. ‘Whoever that person is, if and when I hook up, they have to understand this is what I do for a living. It’s like, I’ve got to go, I pack a couple of bags and then “See ya!”.

‘But this is what I do and I can’t apologise for it. It’s my passion and it’s what I’ll do as much as I possibly can. It’s best that I’m busy, because if I’m not busy I get very, very bored!’

This compromise will come in handy with Marcia’s current project, internatio­nal stage show Velvet. Set during the heady days of disco and Studio 54, the show has enjoyed sell-out venues over the past two years, and is now set for an extensive national run Down Under.

‘It’s just fun! And there aren’t that many things in the world right now that are,’ Marcia says of the musical, and referencin­g the newly elected president of her home country, Donald Trump.

‘I’m just looking at it thinking: “What is going on?” And I’m sure most of America is the same. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in my life.’

Of course, revisiting the ’70s on stage hasn’t been much of a stretch for the singer – ‘I lived it!’ she says.

From 1976, Marcia was named Queen of Pop for three consecutiv­e years, and until the ’80s she reigned as Australia’s all-time biggest-selling locally recorded female artist.

Her disco credential­s extend to friends and family too. A second cousin to Grace Jones – ‘She’s a sensation... a trailblaze­r!’

– Marcia also grew up in the same area of Boston as singer Donna Summer, even becoming best friends with the charttoppe­r’s younger sister.

‘Donna was older and so much cooler than us,’ she recalls. ‘Whenever she left the house we’d go into her room and check it out. We just wanted to see what a cool older girl got up to – we were 12 or 13 and she was 17.

‘Later on, Donna did say how proud she was of me. She stayed in touch until she passed away and I’m still very much in touch with her sister,’ she adds.

The parallels between the two disco sensations are uncanny. Like Donna, Marcia also got her big break in the controvers­ial musical Hair before her chart success.

Arriving in Australia at the tender age of 16 to star in the show, she discovered she was pregnant with daughter Deni during its run.

But while the show celebrated the liberation and drug-taking of the Age of Aquarius, in real life Marcia didn’t indulge in the excesses of the hippy heyday. ‘No, I was a good girl,’ she says. ‘I became a mother very early, so when you’re a mum you can’t be a kid anymore. Plus, I had great people around who were protective of me.’

While she hardly seems to have aged a day since her teenage years, Marcia has no desire to recapture her youth.

‘I don’t want to be 21, I don’t want to be 31, I don’t want to be 41 or 51,’ she says. ‘I’m moving into the latter years of my life and I don’t mind it at all. I’ve had a pretty cool life.’

AUSTRALIA’S ORIGINAL POP QUEEN IS STILL SEARCHING FOR THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE

‘I always try to find the best side of things... I do believe that there’s someone out there for everyone’

 ??  ?? Australia has always loved Marcia (far left, with Daryl Somers in 1986, and left, in 1977) – and her new show (right) takes fans back to her disco roots.
Australia has always loved Marcia (far left, with Daryl Somers in 1986, and left, in 1977) – and her new show (right) takes fans back to her disco roots.
 ??  ?? is touring nationally, including Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Wollongong, Canberra, Newcastle, Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin and Paramatta. For more informatio­n, visit velvetthes­how.com.
is touring nationally, including Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Wollongong, Canberra, Newcastle, Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin and Paramatta. For more informatio­n, visit velvetthes­how.com.

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