Natalie Imbruglia - ‘I love the wisdom of being in my 50s’

0:00I would get asked often, do you think you got to this position because of the way that you look? I'm quite good at being the underdog. I find it much scarier to be at the top, waiting to fall off a pedestal. It's a real weird one for me, watching Neighbours. I don't know, I have such mixed feelings because I was so young. It doesn't matter who it is, never give your power over to another human being. Never think somebody knows you better than you know yourself. This episode of How to Fail is brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast where we look beneath the bonnet of success and we see the engine of failure and how it motivates us to do ever greater things.

0:46Before we get into this conversation, please do remember to subscribe, like and follow so that you never miss a single episode.

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1:18Sometimes life rigs things in our favor, like learning about your new favorite rom-com, Voicemails for Isabel. Only on Netflix, June 19th. All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the strawberry watermelon refresher and the mango pineapple refresher with popping boba to crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. Copyright 2026, The Coca-Cola Company. Sprite is a registered trademark of the Coca-Cola Company. In 1998, I took a photograph of Natalie Imbruglia to her hairdresser and told him I wanted to cut just like hers.

2:05It was perhaps a mark of her cultural impact that I know I was one of many thousands of young women doing exactly the same thing. A year previously, Imbruglia had released one of the seminal singles of the decade, Torn. It sold more than 4 million physical copies worldwide. In her homeland of Australia, it became the most played song on the radio, being played an average of 75 times a day over the two decades following its release. Imbrunia had started out as an actor, quitting school in a small New South Wales beach town at the age of 16 to pursue her dreams. She landed a part as builders labourer Beth Brennan in Neighbours in 1985 and stayed on the hugely popular soap for two years before moving to London.

2:51Here she signed her first record deal. Her debut album, Left of the Middle, went multi-platinum. Five further albums followed, but it wasn't always easy. In 2009, she took a six-year break from music to concentrate on acting, appearing on stage and in film, and also as a judge on the Australian X Factor. Since then, she has released further music, become a mother to a son, Max, and won The Masked Singer. Now she returns with her seventh studio album, Algorithm, which, Imbruglia says, was by far the most fun I've ever had making a record. And yet, she admits, it also happened to coincide with the most challenging time I've had with my mental health.

3:36This is the beauty of music and artistic expression. You can take something dark and turn it into light. Natalie Imbruglia, forever hair inspo Welcome to How to Fail Thank you so much for having me It's such a pleasure to have you and that quote about art enabling you to take something dark and alchemise it into something light is exactly what this podcast is about taking life's biggest challenges and trying to find the gold in them Can you tell us a little bit about recording this album and why it was important for you to exercise this? Well, starting this album coincided with me hitting perimenopause.

4:20I think that's really important to mention because I think for about 12 months I was saying, I don't feel like myself, I don't feel like myself. So a lot of the things and changes that were happening to me which affect your personality and how you are in the world, I was bringing into the writing room. So I turn up with, I work with male songwriters, coincidentally, mainly. And so I'd walk in there and start telling them what's been going on at work and what I've been struggling with. I find what's improved my songwriting is just sharing and being really open. So the first day of songwriting, we don't really write a song, we just talk.

5:00And in doing that, it allows the whole room to kind of share. And so a lot of the songs on this album, but with a sense of humor, are dealing with things that I was going through with my mental health related to neurodivergence, which I think shows up more at that stage of your life. So the seriousness of what I was dealing with went into the songs, but you would never know listening to the songs because they're really uplifting and really upbeat. and I think that's the beauty of it is that music can take quite serious things and still have them be uplifting but if you are in your bedroom alone and you really pay attention to what the person's singing about there's another layer to it and another layer to it but if you just want to have a dance you can do that too yeah I have to say it is a total bop the album thank you apart from anything else I want to come back to the album in a second but it's so interesting what you say there about neurodivergence and when it shows up.

6:01I had a very good friend be diagnosed with a neurodivergence in her menopausal years. And she said that she was told by the medical professional that very often with women, it shows up when you have a big hormonal shift. So when you're a teenager, when you're pregnant, or when you're going through menopause. Yes. I never knew that. Neither did I, until it happened to me. How did it happen for you? What started happening that made you think? Really bad anxiety, really short fuse with my temper. And before a show, I get really hypersensitive, like to the sound of like paper rustling or whatever.

6:44So that became almost like a superpower in a way, because it's good to point out that all of the things that are really bad before the show is actually what makes me an incredible performer. And I do actually see them as a benefit. But before the show, whilst it's happening, I think it's not so much what's happening because you become hypersensitive to questions, any kind of processing becomes harder. And then your reactions can be misunderstood. And the worst part about it is not actually my behavior it's how I speak to myself and how I treat myself about it there's a lot of shame around it and I kept trying to fix it with willpower I was like I can't be like this I need to you know I want to be like Bono before a show and just be relaxed and have everyone around and it's just not me it's just not how I it's not my preparation process and obviously that got a lot a lot I don't want to say worse but just more intense it kind of turned up um at that stage of my life so I'm going to do that thing that is probably quite annoying when interviewers do but I'd love to quote some of your lyrics okay so there's that track who dimmed the lights which I think that's about perimenopause okay I'm so related as a perimenopause a woman who dimmed the lights who stole the sound who changed the key you kidnapped me I'm way off track there's nothing here can't find my way back and then later love is who we are lately it's been hard to remember i'm crawling in the dark maybe i'll be crawling forever i'm unraveling oh it's making me emotional i'm not surprised yeah i mean so deep those lyrics but when you listen to the song it's so light yeah right isn't that the beautiful thing of of um of music and how because we don't want to bring people down and i think for a long time i'd write songs that were quite melancholic And I think it's so nice to figure out a way of getting important messages across, but also have the music be uplifting.

8:49But yeah, that song was, I mean, the guys I've been working with, can you imagine perimenopausal woman turning up every day to work and just pouring out everything that I was going through? I'm a very open person and part of how I process things is to share at a dinner party, any inappropriate situation, I'll just start talking about it. I don't want there to be any shame around it and there shouldn't be. And knowledge is power and also just being brave because it's not our fault that these changes are happening and it happens to every single woman. Well, I think you were probably doing a public service going to speak to all of those men every single day about what it's actually like.

9:30So thank you very much. How are you now? Have you got the help that you need so that you no longer feel that you're crawling through the dark? Well, I'm on HRT. Me too. That's a massive help. But I don't think it's a straight line. And I'm still in it. I would say I'm still in it mentally with the struggles that I have. But, yeah, I'm a work in progress. But I definitely feel I don't feel in the dark anymore about it. Great. Yeah. It's called Algorithm, the album. How aware are you of the change in music and the demand for music to be algorithmically sort of shaped? I have no idea. You have no idea.

10:16Why did you call it Algorithm? Because that song is about my addiction to scrolling on my phone. Right. Death scrolling, I like to call it. And you'll be looking for the bad stuff? I'm not looking for it but that's what the algorithm does it puts it in front of you I'm the person who opens the trap door that you shouldn't open and go oh how weird is that yes I'm just going to follow that and see where that leads other people change their settings and say I don't want to be shown that no I don't know how to work it haven't bothered to figure it out and just let the phone and the algorithm take me to very dark places I can't even say out loud what's on my discovery page.

10:58But I think it's an interesting topic, isn't it? It is. It's fascinating. And what's on my Instagram for you page at the moment, you're going to laugh, is the Bixie haircut because it's basically the Natalie Imbruglia haircut from 1997 and it's back again. It is, isn't it? It is. And baggy trousers. Yes, I've worn these in tribute to you today. I'm wearing them on stage again and shorts and the tomboy look. How do you feel about the 90s being back? I love it. Yeah, so do I. It's probably allowed me another 10 years of my career. So I'm very excited. It's working for me personally. But I think it was a great, fun, positive time and a lot of great things were going on with Britpop and music.

11:42And so, yes, it's a really, it's happy memories for me, the 90s. Okay, let's get on to your failures. There's a lot here and I mean that with love. every single failure you've given me it's sort of three in one so your first failure is being dropped by your label and then following that rejection as an actress yeah tell us when you were dropped by your label I can't quote the years because I have no idea of time and I can't remember but it was when the record industry was changing and streaming was starting and my record label was merging but um they ended up only releasing it in Australia and New Zealand and and they just dropped me after five years of working on it and uh yeah it was really a shock because I'd had a lot of success already and yeah what do you do in a situation like that I believed that the universe was telling me I should I'm not supposed to be singing I feel like I was working harder and trying harder than the first album which did so well and I was like this is how I'm the universe is telling me something you know forget your ego and pay attention and I really really believe that I think I had a bit of a nervous breakdown I went to Australia and I still stand by the decision sometimes to walk away from something I think it's a courageous thing to do if you're if you've lost the passion for it, if it's a crisis like that, I think it's a very healthy thing to do.

13:21I always had in the back of my mind that because of what happened with music, I didn't get to pursue a film career, which is what I came to England to do in the first place. So I went to America after the nervous breakdown and a lot of swimming in the Australian ocean. I went to LA and studied with Ivana Chubbuck and wanted to take on acting quite seriously. And she's a famed acting teacher. She's fantastic. And I really loved studying with her. I really loved class. But being an out-of-work actor in Hollywood at that age, I was like, I don't have 10 years in me to do this, to not get a job. But what it did do and the positive out of it was I started to remember the gift of the tone of my voice.

14:12I started to think about not ending up on an editing room floor that with what I do, I can, you know, I'm the director of my own story and nobody else can tell that my story the way that I can. So I came back to it with such, um, a sense of myself. and I thought if I'm singing to two people in a pub, it's what I was born to do. This is my gift. And so I think that's the lesson in it, is that if I hadn't left, I might still be trying to please people, still be doing it the wrong way. So sometimes the universe is working for you. It just doesn't feel that way at the time. And I think this was your fourth album.

15:02So I think it's around 2009 that we're talking about. I'm going to trust you. and Wikipedia because I have no idea. I'm very struck there by the conflict between your artistry and the industry in which you found yourself. It feels to me, having done the research for this interview, that you were really badly treated and very underestimated a lot of the time. Is that fair to say? I would say that's fair. I would get asked often do you think you got to this position because of the way that you look and I wasn't allowed to be angry so I had to kind of outsmart the system and go okay how do I with sweet smile get around these this questioning and and I was actually married to an Australian musician who was very successful and often we'd be going through questions of interviews and say oh you should say that and I'm like I can't you can say that but I'm a woman I can't be ironic or funny in print, it'll just get twisted around.

16:05So I had that a lot, but I'm not really bitter about that. I think that I'm just grateful that those things have changed. I think the industry has changed a lot. We've still got a long way to go. But yeah, I was subjected to a lot. It's also a symptom of success. I think you have to acknowledge that Torn was so successful overnight. And I was a soap star. So a lot of people were like, oh, yeah, come on, show us what you're made of. So I could also process and understand what was driving some of that. And I turned that into ambition. I'm quite good at being the underdog. I kind of I like that fire in your belly.

16:50I find it much scarier to be at the top waiting to fall off a pedestal. Yes, it can be powerful sometimes being an underdog because you can turn that underestimation into motivation let me show you yes yeah now can we chat about neighbors a little bit because of course i was one of the generation about anything you want oh thank you you're my favorite guest i was on the generation that rushed home from school to see neighbors 5 35 p.m every day loved it so much and i was reminded all over again by how important it was to me because i've just watched the Kylie documentary on Netflix. And what a stable for talent that was.

17:34What was the experience like for you of being Beth? Well, I loved it. I mean, I, like everyone else in my homeland, was obsessed with Kylie and Jason and sat in my living room and was just like, I want to be on that show. That's what I want to do. So to get offered a guest role and then immediately after that get offered... a contract to be a character on the show I was like that's it I mean I've made it and I moved interstate I think I was 16 and a half I moved out of the family home to Melbourne and it was just the most incredible opportunity uh because I'm from a very small town about three hours north of Sydney so to break away from the suburbs and be doing what I love I actually made a list.

18:27I made a list and it said, I'm going to be on E Street, Neighbours are Home and Away, the three soap operas that were on. Then I'm going to be a pop star and a movie star. Tick, tick, tick. I wrote that list. Well, I mean. Johnny English, sorry. I was going to say, check out the bad accents on that one. You were great on it. I don't know if I'm the best actress, but you could say that box was ticked. I mean, it was great, but I was also a child. Yeah. And I didn't think I was. So I was moved into an apartment and I remember a runner came to get me to go shopping for groceries. And I was fronting, but I didn't know how to shop.

19:13So we're walking through the aisles with this trolley and I'm going, oh, I'll have that, I'll have that. And I was like, I don't know. It took a lot of years for me to realize how out of my depth I was. because I didn't really want to believe that I wanted to be a grown-up. I was always pushing the boundary. What age do you think you were when you had those realizations? When I saw my niece at 17 and saw myself in her and thought about the situations I was put in and put myself in. And that made me like, wow, you know, I'm glad that I survived and that I'm okay. That's a lot for a 16-and-a-half-year-old.

19:52I don't think, I do think some people are born able to deal with those situations better. And I was definitely one of those. I wouldn't say I'm completely a victim of that. I had a lot of drive and a lot of confidence and could put myself in situations that maybe other people at that age wouldn't be able to handle. And I also had tough parents. They weren't showbiz parents. So they were supportive. but my mum was like well you know we have other children still living at home we're not going to come we're not going to come down be able to come down and visit you very often I think they came twice the whole time I was there I was like that's fine because I was ready to not have to have the restrictions of parents at home I was the rebel it was a good time it was a happy time as a teenager we're so often experimenting with different identities and finding out who we really are what's that like when you have the experience of seeing yourself on screen it's a real weird one for me watching Neighbours I don't know I have such mixed feelings because I was so young so there's grown up Nat that just wants to give little Nat a hug but also just remembering the buzz of what it felt like to have an opportunity like that I mean, I was, my opportunities were very limited.

21:18Berkeley Vale is a very small town. Sydney's two hours away. It's very parochial. So you're either a surfer chick or a goth. There wasn't a lot of options. And so figuring out how to become a star, which is what I wanted to do, and get out was like a really big deal. So there was a lot of joy. so fast forward to these years in LA when you described yourself self-deprecatingly as an out of work actor what was that rejection like oh my goodness terrible because I'd had this career and I had accolades and I'd be halfway to a scene in an audition and they would say okay thank you it's like I'm not finished yet and I've spent two weeks prepping you know soul destroying credit to all actors and actresses for you know what they are able to do I think it's extraordinary I don't think people really understand the depths of the rejection you have to go through to be an actor it's quite brutal and there's the physical you know how you look and what size you are and all of those things that factor into it but just having to learn scripts I I I'm I've got ADHD and probably undiagnosed dyslexia so trying to learn the lines for auditions I mean you they want you to be doing five in a day it would take me two weeks to prep for one because also I'm a perfectionist so I'd have to kind of get one scene perfect it was too much for me but those years as you said taught you about the value of communication and how adept you are at it so do you feel that you're at the stage now where it doesn't matter how big your audience is it matters that you have that one-on-one meaning for someone who listens to your music I think for a long time I was trying to be the best songwriter because then I would gain some kind of respect.

23:26And the gift was, oh, when I realized I'm giving my power over as well, like every writing session, I'd be like, oh, that's a great idea. And in my head, I'm thinking I would never say that. It doesn't matter who it is. Never give your power over to another human being. Never think somebody knows you better than you know yourself. And understanding that and taking my power back when I went back to it and recognizing that my gift is as a communicator. So when you're not motivated to then be the best songwriter, just be the best you, best version of you and fully embrace that, that's really empowering and not needing to arrive somewhere, not trying to get to the top of the charts, being content with singing to a small audience because maybe I changed one life.

24:16You know, that is very empowering. And that came directly from walking away and having a nervous breakdown and feeling like a failure. So great to hear. And it's everything that I believe. So thank you for sharing that. Thank you for doing this podcast. I think it's extraordinary. I really do. Thank you. That means a lot to me, truly. It's really important. Do you think you're a reformed people pleaser? No, I'm still doing. Are you still doing? Me too. I like to think I'm reformed, but actually it's just old habits die hard. I often find myself late at night scrolling after a long day when I suddenly spot something I need.

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26:22this summer serve up the cookout classics craft mayo and dressing toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty italian serve smooth with craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. Your second failure, it's something else that we have in common. We both got divorced in our 30s. And I'm so glad you're going to talk about it because it is such a difficult time to be single if you are a cis straight woman and you want to have children, which both you and I did. Tell me about this time and why you've chosen it as a failure that you want to talk about?

27:04Well, I mean, I just didn't think it was going to be an issue once I had healed the wounds and been single for a period of time after my divorce, which is important. When I was ready to, I just assumed that would be very straightforward. I guess in my 20s there were a lot of offers and I couldn't get arrested. In the 30s. I mean, I just could not. No, I could not. Had a lot of dates, had a lot of fun, but to try and find a partner to settle down with? Impossible. You don't have to go into details, but why did you get divorced? I think we were quite young, both in the industry and there was just a lot of challenges that we didn't see coming.

27:55And grew in different directions, you could say. I got divorced when I was 35. So I was in my late 30s when I started dating for the first time. And that was like the era of apps. I was a bit younger than that. Okay. And there weren't apps, I'm guessing, at this time. Oh, they were just coming in. Yeah. And I remember feeling that because I was in the public eye, I was left out of the social experiment. So I was like, I'm going to go on one of these apps. I want to go on one of these apps. So I did. What happened? Well, people thought I was catfishing them. So that didn't work out either. if there's anyone going through being single in their 30s right now yeah and they're having a similar experience where as you say you can't get arrested what advice would you give them now from this perspective i think it's to do with the biological clock and it being impossible for a woman to hide, to hide that she, she wants that now.

28:53I want to be a mother. Why should she? But at the same time for a man who wants to provide, they're instantly confronted on the first date with stepping up. So I think recognizing that it's not your fault, it's nothing that you doing wrong and recognizing that it's very confronting for a man um in this situation to kind of oh I've now got to step up and provide and they're not necessarily going to feel ready to do that very few men are going to be like straight in you know I think it's more comfortable to think you know we'll just see what happens and there's more time but for a woman of a certain age it's like well I don't have time and so I I don't know what advice I could give I guess just know that it's not it's not about you there's nothing wrong with you because I really it was bad for my confidence yeah I think it was really bad for my confidence I hear you and that's that your experience great advice it was my experience it taught me a lot a bit like you were saying about the rejections you experienced as an actor actually the rejection I experienced when I was dating was a good long term for making me understand what I wanted right okay it was kind of helpful data acquisition not that not that not that and I went through this period I really wanted to have children and it didn't work out for me but at this point in my late 30s I realized that for me personally, it was more important to have a relationship.

30:36I wanted to have children within a loving relationship, but the relationship came first. And I had lots of amazing friends who would say, why don't you just go it alone and go the sperm donor route? But I'd had fertility issues, so it wasn't as straightforward. And that was really clarifying. And I do think that there's always a nugget of key information. That's the wisdom in it. Yes. Yes. The things that go wrong actually really help you identify how to get closer to the thing that will work for you. 100%. So you didn't have the voice. See, I prayed to God that the yearning to be a mother would be taken away.

31:11You didn't have it. So you got clarity that that's not the most important thing. But I still had the yearning, but it wasn't as extreme as I know it is for so many women and perhaps for you as well and I and I did find a lovely man who I'm now married to and he's got three kids so I'm a some I kind of I get to show up as a mother in different ways but you're right that it wasn't I just had to be really honest myself it wasn't as important to me even though it was really really important that's clarity that's clarity yes and I do think once again the universe is working for you not against you yes whilst you're going through a period of time and it's public knowledge that, you know, the route that I took with IVF and that I'm a single parent.

32:00But for me, I just was like, I can't believe this is happening to me and how long it's going on for. And this is unnatural. Like there were things about it that I was really struggling with. But when you meet your child, that's like the the divine timing for it to be that child and the rings of fire that I had to jump through I would do a thousand times over but you don't know and it's a retrospective thing yeah so what I've learned in life anytime I'm going through any kind of a struggle is to think about all the times in my life previous that I've been struggling and the nugget of gold that came because of that.

32:45I don't know about you, but the periods of my life where I really struggled, I remember I have visceral memories of everything about that time. It's like everything comes into clarity. All the accolades and incredible things that have happened to me, it's foggy. But those periods of time where you're struggling, it's a turning point. It's like the beginning of that's the seed of what's to come and so I look back most fondly on those periods of my life and I think that's good for people especially people who are younger to know and to hold on to that sitting here now they're beautiful memories such great wisdom there Natalie thank you for anyone who doesn't know your story I'd love to talk to you about the process of IVF and what got you to the stage of deciding that you wanted to do that, what the process itself was like for you, because I've done IVF myself.

33:45It's pretty challenging. It's pretty brutal. And after saying, ask me anything, I don't go... Sorry. There's one thing I don't go too far into just because of my son. Of course. Because I feel like he's not old enough to make that decision for himself. But what I will say is that it's really important to educate yourself and to ask a lot of questions and for women to share because there's a lot that I didn't know or understand about that process and there's a lot of trauma involved along the process of learning things that someone could have told me. In fact, I remember when I found out I was pregnant, the one thing in my mind was every woman on the planet who was still waiting.