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Home , Lady Gaga

October 14, 2018

THE DAY MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER FEAR OF FLIRTING WHEN YOU’RE SINGLE AND OVER 50

LADY LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HER BEFORE

PALE BLUE – FASHION’S NEW FAVOURITE / ARE YOU A BIRTHDAY PHOBIC? KIDS IN THE KITCHEN / WENDY WHITELEY ON MEN / BEAUTY & MORE ady Gaga had no idea that try singing The Midnight Special, a her debut album, , and has insecurity about her looks, including her life was going to change traditional folk song most famously dominated the charts ever since with “It was suggested her big nose, came from her. “This on the night she performed performed by Creedence Clearwater hits including Just Dance, Poker Face, I get a nose job absolutely happened to me,” she says. La Vie en Rose at a 2016 Revival in 1969. , of Glory, Bad “It was suggested I get a nose job before fundraiser held in a friend’s “I quickly printed out the piano Romance and her 2014 album, before my first my first single came out, and I said no Hollywood home. She was sheet music and I was sight reading, so , with . single came out, because I love my Italian nose. also unaware that Bradley I was very nervous,” she recounts. “But Like other one-name wonders – “I didn’t always,” she adds, “but I Cooper was there, until the following I knew the song a little bit and started think , and Beyoncé – and I said no learnt to love who I was and I worked Lday when her agent called with the to play. And as soon as he started to the six-time Grammy winner, who hard to maintain my authenticity. If because I love news that the writer, actor and sing I just stopped playing and said, also won a Golden Globe in 2016 for someone wanted me to look like a director of A Star Is Born wanted ‘Oh my gosh, Bradley, you have an her TV role in my Italian nose.” sexpot, I wanted to look the opposite, to meet her and talk about casting incredible voice!’ and an Oscar nomination the same so I was always trying to challenge the her in the film. “Then we started singing and year for best original song (Till It norms about women in .” “So Bradley came to my home in immediately we started harmonising Happens to You), has a larger than life starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric While she seems more at home in Malibu and I opened the door and and laughing and looking at each , whether you’ve heard her sing March, came out in 1937. It was Toronto wearing heavy make-up, over- I swear the second I saw him, we other. And in that moment, I think or not. Her success at reinventing followed by Judy Garland and James the-top outfits and coiffed peroxide- just had an instant connection,” we both really knew that it was herself, often in provocative ways (yes, Mason in 1954 and blonde hair, the petite star admits her Gaga recalls with a smile. “Before something we could do together.” meat dress, I’m talking about you!) and Kris Kristofferson in 1976. character inspired her to take a chance I knew it, I was heating up leftover After weeks of negotiations – not almost eclipses her talent. Gaga has spoken before about her and aim for less, not more. pasta for him. We really hit it off.” unlike what I’d imagine it takes to get Not surprisingly, the soft-spoken love for Garland and she also reveres “This role and transformation asked Cooper remembers being blown into a room with a world leader – I’m artist sitting across from me in a pink Streisand, whom she met three years me to call upon things that happened away by her performance that night finally sitting across a table from one-shoulder Jonathan Simkhai dress ago at a dinner party arranged by much earlier in my life when I felt (one she repeats as her introductory Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is still something of an enigma. She Ryan Murphy, Gaga’s friend and very self-conscious and didn’t feel song in the film) and he was excited aka Lady Gaga. (“You can call me can break your heart recounting the a director of American Horror Story. beautiful,” she says of dying her hair that he might have found his muse. Stefani, Gaga or Lady Gaga – my adolescent trauma of being thrown “Barbra actually came to set and brown and wearing no make-up for “I asked if I could go meet her, and family call me all of into a rubbish bin by bullies but then gave a beautiful speech and passed the the duration of the shoot. “Staying in because I didn’t even know what them,” she responds when I ask what intuitively steer clear of discussing her torch to me, which was a phenomenal that vulnerable state for so long was she really looked like,” he bluntly she’d prefer.) We’re in a glass-walled boyfriend of one year, Hollywood agent experience,” she reveals. “We showed difficult but also liberating.” acknowledges. “I remember she came conference room at a local Masonic Christian Carino, realising that not her some of the film that day, too, and In December, Gaga will be back in down the stairs and looked like Lady Temple – no significance, it turns out, everything is for public consumption. she was so kind and wonderful.” diva mode as she begins a Gaga but I’d never got to see her eyes except as an available space to do The only time I hear her laugh is Born in , Stefani residency with a show aptly titled Lady and when we sat down, her eyes were publicity before the film’s Toronto when Cooper playfully pushes up Germanotta was a prodigy who Gaga Enigma. She signed a $US100 so beautiful I knew it had to be her.” Film Festival premiere. against the glass wall separating them mastered the piano at the age of million contract to perform 74 shows Gaga says the wasn’t quite Like Cooper, I wasn’t sure who I’d and she sticks her tongue out at him. four, wrote her first ballad at 13 and over two years and promises to deliver. so simple. Within five minutes of be meeting either. Lady Gaga burst on Gaga says she relied on Cooper to was performing on stage by the time “I’ve worked for 10 years now in this sitting down, Cooper suggested they to the music scene 10 years ago with help her pull off her first leading role in she was 14. After school, she waited business and I am excited to reinvent a major feature film but he also relied tables by day and performed in dive what it means to be in Las Vegas at on her to turn him into a convincing bars at night. She smiles as she recalls this age,” she teases. “I also want to Jenny Cooney Carrillo meets Lady Gaga on rock star. At this point, she leans her early career, including the New give something back to fans.” across the table with an outstretched York burlesque show Lady Gaga and Her devotion to her fans is the eve of her first movie role in the musical hand and asks me to shake it. the Starlight Revue, with performer legendary – Gaga has always “This handshake was the most Lady Starlight. proclaimed herself to be Mother drama A Star Is Born and finds the soft- crucial thing for us,” she explains as “We wore matching bikinis and Monster to her Little Monsters – and she re-enacts her solemn contract with we did this song and dance for the she offers support for spoken artist to be something of an enigma. Cooper. “We shook hands and Bradley 30 people who fitted inside the bar,” young people through her Born This said, ‘I, Bradley, believe and accept she says. “But about 15 minutes in, Way foundation, promoting love, you, Stefani, as an actress.’ And then I looked up and saw that there were acceptance and self-expression. When I said, ‘I, Stefani, believe and accept around 100 people on the street taking asked what she wishes she could have you, Bradley, as a musician.’ I think pictures. I’ll never forget that feeling, told her younger self when she was that exchange was what really held the knowing our voices were being heard.” thrown into that trash can, she pauses. collaboration so strongly together.” In this latest retelling of A Star Is “What I would say to the little me Cooper and Gaga have clear Born, Ally has given up on her dream – or to all the kids who felt that way – on-screen chemistry, not just as of being a full-time . Instead, is this: ‘Hold on to one spark of light characters who fall in love but also as she waitresses and performs once in your heart, hold on to it for dear musical artists (they co-wrote some of a week at a club run by friends. life and just watch it grow.’ It’s like the songs and performed them at When famous musician Jackson a garden. Maybe there is only one arenas and festivals). And Gaga Maine (Cooper) happens to see one of rose, but if you focus on that one convinced Cooper to film all the those performances, the pair strike up rose, eventually it will bloom into and performances live. “I dislike it when a connection that changes their lives. a field of flowers.” Lady Gaga star in the I’m watching a movie and you can tell Gaga says she gave Cooper plenty of In her case, it seems the flowers fourth remake of they’re lip-syncing,” she says. material based on her own experiences have taken over the garden. • Hollywood classic It’s no surprise the role of Ally spoke in the music industry to put in his SHINING A Star Is Born. Lindbergh Peter by Photography to Gaga. The first version of the film, script and nods when asked if Ally’s A Star Is Born is in cinemas on Thursday. STAR sl • 9