Sarah Brightman MY AMAZING LIFE

As she returns to Australia to star in Sunset Boulevard, soprano superstar Sarah Brightman talks about being a child performer, marrying too young, training to go into space and finding love again..

- JULIET RIEDEN

Sarah Brightman is the world's best-selling soprano and it's no wonder. The singer's notable three-octave range dances, soars and lifts us onto a higher plane, whether she's singing opera or show tunes. Back in the 1990s she famously pioneered classical-crossover - a term she now loathes. It was a ground-breaking melding of musical genres which she says at the time was not a calculated thing at all, but "instinctive". It catapulted her to the top of the charts and changed the way we think about popular music.

Sarah has always been an innovator, learning from other cultures and finding a unique path away from the status quo. As she talks to me from her UK home, her passion and energy for, well, everything, is just as electric as ever. This is a woman who clearly loves her day job, constantly spinning in a creative bubble, and while she may have regrets - which we'll come to - she still gets a powerful kick out of seizing the day and challenging convention.

She started performing almost 60 years ago, a four-year-old tot dancing and singing her heart out, a gene inherited from her mother, Paula. But young Sarah took it to a whole new level.

"My mother had a ballet school for young children and just before I was born she got a job as a dancer in London. She did it for a time and when I came along, it became more of a part-time job and she and my father would take it in turns to look after me. She quickly realised that I was very talented musically. I could move beautifully. My mother said I sang at an early age, and I could play the piano; I just immediately knew what to do.

"She started putting me in for dancing and singing competitions from four years old. I won most of everything that I did, I was just one of those kids, and I would be up at half past four in the morning practising before school. Then when I came back, I would go to stage, tap, ballet and singing classes. My life was already all about the arts."