Tuesday 1 September 2009

Mariah Carey: My diva and tantrum years are behind me

The diva years are over for Mariah Carey. These days she insists on only two things - not being perfect, and under no circumstances being 40. In actual fact, she hit the big 4-0 four months ago, but don't go congratulating her on reaching the milestone unless you want to see the old Mariah bubbling to the surface.

She joked: "Read my bio again. Don't say the F-word around me. We can't allow these lies to spread." In truth, it seems the more mature Mariah has mellowed to a certain extent. Just over a year ago she married 28-year-old actor-producer Nick Cannon, and the pint-sized songstress has been walking tall ever since.

Her reputation as the biggest-selling female recording artist of all time is secure, so Mariah is using her positive outlook on new projects. Her latest album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, draws on her colourful and dramatic past while reflecting on her current happiness and married life. And her performance in new movie Precious will help dull memories of the mauling she received after her last big-screen outing.

But does that mean we've seen the last of the petulant diva, infamous for extravagant demands? She laughed: "There was the odd exhaustion moment which clearly now is a must in everybody's life - you can't be a celebrity these days and not go through that. I went through a period of time when I was working my butt off, and that will get to you. Now I know how to say no to things. I didn't know that before. Being in the limelight is not easy and being around a lot of people all the time is also difficult. People who do what I do will know what I mean. When you're in front of the camera, people are going to make their own opinions up about you and can say what they want to say about you. All I want to do is make music, make movies, live my life and enjoy things."

She was most recently seen at the Michael Jackson memorial service, only to hit the headlines when she took to Twitter to offer an apology for a wobbly performance. "I regret sending that message but I was very emotional and I wasn't happy with my performance," she said. "But we all did our best to give Michael the send off he deserves. I just forgot the world could read that. I thought I was just talking to my friends. I shouldn't have done that because that was really only meant for Michael. That was about him. It was difficult just to get through the song because I feel as if I have been listening to Michael Jackson's music my whole life. When I was a little kid I used to sing all his songs. The whole world suffered a huge loss. The whole world is going to feel this forever. I consider myself blessed to have known him, to have performed with him several times and to have sung at his memorial."

Now she's back with her 12th studio album, which will hit the shelves in four weeks' time. "Each song is a story," she explained. "It may have come from my own personal experience. It could have come from a friend of mine who has told me a story or something way back in the past. So it is an album that tells a story. People can listen to it and pick out certain songs that mean something to them - women especially. It's about women's empowerment and overcoming certain things. It's fun too though. It's got a little bit of something for everybody."

The video for current single Obsessed certainly looked like fun. It saw Mariah taking to the streets of New York wearing a hooded top and sporting a goatee beard rather than her usual high heels and barely-there outfits. She said: "I worked with Brett Ratner, who is a jokester, a comedian and a director of comedies. We talked a bit about different comedians playing the part of the stalker but at the end of the day we decided I would do it. It was so bizarre but a lot of fun."

Indeed, Mariah seems to be spending more and more time in front of the camera rather than in front of the microphone. She'll next be seen in Precious, a film telling the story of a teenage mum given the chance to enrol in an alternative school in an effort to turn her life around. Cast as a social worker, Mariah's latest screen appearance is sure to raise a few eyebrows.

She said: "I was a huge fan of Push, the novel the movie is based on. A friend of mine passed me this book and said, 'You have to read this.' There is an intensity in this book that just leaves you stunned. It changed my life when I read it. Then, years later I became friends with Lee Daniels and when I found out that he was doing the project I was so excited. Then it came together and he asked me to be a part of it. He was like: 'Let's just create this Mrs Weiss character and make her into someone that we can all identify with.' She is a social worker and the complete opposite of me."

And Mariah admits that made playing the character a challenge. She said: "It was like stripping away layers of myself as a celebrity, artist - or whatever you want to call it - and just becoming this person who has to actually reveal to the audience what's going on. She is the audience in a way. In that end scene where Mary tells her that Precious had been abused when she was three years old, she was shocked as the audience. So I had to take that all in and it was a big responsibility."

But Mariah did have her own experiences to draw on - her Venezuelan father walked out on the family when she was just three and it was music that rescued her from what could have been a difficult life. She said: "I remember starting out and being at a record company at 19 and having someone tell me, 'This is your good side and this is your bad side. Don't ever let anyone take any pictures of you from that side. You look terrible from that side,' and so on. I created this whole complex, like I didn't already have enough of a complex. I felt very different as a bi-racial person. Growing up where I was, being half-black and half-white, was a weird and difficult thing because I didn't quite fit in either place and I moved around a lot. "So when I went from that to this world it was like, 'Let's create an inferiority complex before we make this person go on TV and try to have confidence.' So it was all about building self-confidence. That's what I love about this story. I think it's going to help a lot of people."

(Daily Record)



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