By BART MILLS
Special to The News
Thursday,
December 23, 1999
Charlotte Church, the little girl from Wales with the big voice
from heaven, wants some crispy chicken bits. The
13-year-old prodigy has worked from dawn to past her
bedtime today, singing for her supper in TV appearances in New
York and Los Angeles -- this month, she made the rounds of
nearly every late-night or syndicated talk show -- and now she
wants her crispy chicken bits.
It doesn't matter that she has sung for the Pope, Queen Elizabeth
and the Clintons. It doesn't matter that millions of music lovers all
over the world are snapping up her two albums, "Charlotte
Church" and "Voice of an Angel" -- which will also be heard on
PBS during the holidays, including Christmas morning on
WNET/Ch. 13. It doesn't matter that she's a role model or that
maintaining her miraculous voice requires a healthy diet -- she
wants her crispy chicken bits.
"Honestly, I do have a completely normal life at home," she says in
her limo. "I go to school with my friends, I go shopping with my
mum, we eat dinner at my (grandmother's) house.
"Lots of times, I take a friend along when I have to travel for
work. I have two best friends, Kim and Jo, and they take turns
coming with me. Like next week, I'll take one of them to a film
premiere in London that I've been invited to."
It's a fairy-tale life for a youngster who became an overnight star
just over a year ago. Her incredibly mature voice, heard during a
brief British TV appearance, earned her a contract with Sony.
Now her record sales have passed 2 million and her earnings
reportedly have topped $15 million. But all that is in trust until
she's 21. In the meantime, she scrapes by on a $20-a-week
allowance.
Her father, a burglar-alarm installer, and her mother, Marie, a
municipal housing officer, quit their jobs to handle the career of
their only child. Marie is accompanying Charlotte on her U.S. trip
while James stays home supervising a kitchen remodeling.
Marie Church says, "She's still very much a child and wants to
remain a child. She easily adapts to the two lives she's leading. She
takes it better than I do, honestly. That's easy, because she's very
academic. We block out periods when nothing interrupts her
schooling and her home life.
"She still gets told off when she needs it. She has friends over for
sleepovers, and if it's late and they're still up, I scream at them to
get to sleep, like with any group of girls."
The two have an easy back-and-forth relationship, like the
conversation they had when Charlotte was 8: "I want to be a
singer," the girl said. "Right, you and millions of others," answered
her sensible mother.
The Churches gave Charlotte every chance to realize her ambition,
entering her in competitions and engineering her life-changing TV
appearance at age 11.
"When I started, people took me for a religious singer because my
first CD had a lot of sacred music," Charlotte says. "I recorded
those songs ["Pie Jesu," "Ave Maria"] because I really liked them
and I'd known them the longest."
Her second CD is more decidedly secular, particularly "Just Say
Hello." She sang it in a two-minute TV ad for Ford that was the
first "global roadblock" spot. It aired at 9 p.m. on Nov. 1
everywhere in the world.
"One day, I'd like to sing opera and pop and also be an actress,"
she says. "I'd like to be an all-around artist. I'd like to play dopey,
gullible characters like Lisa Kudrow." She has already guested on
a British TV drama called "Heartbeat" and on an episode of
"Touched by an Angel."
As she grows up, she says, she wants to be "like Drew
Barrymore, but without the drugs and alcohol, or Jodie Foster.
Sometimes I want to be independent, sometimes I want help and
advice. My parents ask me weekly if I'm still happy doing this.
They say, 'Tell us if it gets be too much.'"
