Enjoying Life Is the Best Revenge
THE POP STAR OVERCAME A TOUGH CHILDHOOD AND A BATTLE WITH DEPRESSION TO FIGHT HER WAY TO THE TOP
It’s been 33 years since “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” made Cyndi Lauper a star, but she doesn’t look much different. At 63, the singer still favors wildly colored hair and exudes an effervescent spirit. As you age, “You have to stay connected to life and the things that excite you,” she tells Closer. “Life is for learning.”
Cyndi’s learned a lot over the years. From her infectiously fun 1980s radio hits to her Tony-winning Broadway comeback Kinky Boots, she’s maintained a positive, empowered outlook. It’s a remarkable feat, considering the scars she bears from a difficult childhood and her adult battles with depression and chronic illness. “There’s a lot of darkness [in life], but there’s also a lot of light,” she says. “I really try to bring a lot of light to myself.”
New York City–born Cyndi began writing songs at 12, in part to escape the tyranny of her stepfather, a man who abused her mother and threatened Cyndi and her older sister, Ellen. At 17, after discovering him spying on her in the bath, Cyndi fled home. She spent the next few years working odd jobs while trying to make it as a singer. “It was a blessing,” she insists of that difficult time. “I was a student of life — life was my guide.”
Her solo debut, She’s So Unusual, be- came a worldwide hit in 1983, but it didn’t solve all her troubles. In the late 1980s, Cyndi split with her longtime boyfriend and manager, David Wolff, and spiraled into a deep depression. “I was grieving. I thought the sadness would never go away,” says the performer, who admits she contemplated suicide, but entered therapy instead.
Cyndi’s life turned around on the set of 1991’s Off and Running, where she met actor David Thornton. “Two weeks after we’d gotten together, he was talking about marriage,” she recalls. They wed a few months later, and in 1997, Cyndi gave birth to their son, Declyn. “I’m a family person,” she says. “I love the heck out of them.”
She leaned on their love and support when chronic psoriasis threatened to derail her life. “I was covered,” she recalls of a devastating outbreak in 2015. “I had lost my voice, my strength. Yet I was still getting up and trying, while I was writing Kinky Boots,” she says. Today, she keeps her condition under control using a biologic medication. “The disease is very unique, so you have to find the healthiest path for you,” says Cyndi.
In addition to working on a followup to Kinky Boots, Cyndi released Detour, an album of country classics. “I don’t think I have ever achieved greatness despite everything I’ve done,” she says. “But it’s not so much greatness, it’s happiness you need to focus on. Enjoying life is the best revenge.” — Louise A. Barile,
with reporting by Ilyssa Panitz
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