Life Give It All You've Got!

She’s our ‘Queen of Pop’ who arrived in Australia aged 16 and pregnant and never left. As Marcia Hines prepares for Saturday Night Fever, the mischievous star talks to Juliet Rieden about love, family and why her mother will always be with her.

- Juliet Rieden

When Marcia Hines first arrived in Australia in 1970, she was literally living the dream. She was on her own but wasn’t even remotely afraid. “What’s a 16-year old got the right to be scared of?” she says laughing.

No, this ambitious American import with dazzling looks and music in her soul, was pumped; dizzy with the wonder of possibility. And as we sit down together some 50 years later, I can sense that sharp-edged joie de vivre still coursing through her veins. Marcia is limbering up to jump on stage once more in a high-energy production of Saturday Night Fever.

“The greatest thing about this Saturday Night Fever is they’ve written me into it,” she beams. The role, which will see Marcia singing two of her own dance hits from back in the day – Your Love Still Brings Me to My Knees and You – is suitably called “Disco Diva”. I can almost feel her hips swinging already.

Marcia is fun and sassy, but she’s also fuelled by an extreme level of hard graft that has kept her on top form when many might be thinking of retiring. Singing is her passion and doing what she loves has been a powerful tonic that has sustained her through the toughest times.

Back then, the teenager from Boston had watched Donna (“who later turned into Donna Summer”), the elder sister of her best friend, leave their home town to join the cast of Hair in Germany, and it planted a seed. The hippy rock musical “was the toast of the world” she explains, and even though Marcia could have auditioned for the Boston rendition, she had bigger plans.