She’s better known as the wife of Russell Crowe, but Danielle Spencer is a creative talent in her own right. She talks to Bryce Corbett about her music, family life and her struggle in the spotlight.
Danielle Spencer has been let in on a big secret. It’s the best known but least talked about aspect of motherhood: identity interruptus. You can read a hundred parenting books, talk to a thousand mums and still come away none the wiser to the fact that, for a woman, having children means losing track of yourself, confusing for a time a large part of who you are and why you exist.
Sure, plenty of mothers will tell you the whole child-rearing caper is hard work and most will feel compelled to couch it with the qualifier that “it’s all worth it in the end”, but how many of them will admit how their sense of self is rocked? That, in the maelstrom of first-time parenthood, it’s all too easy for a mum’s sense of identity to slip away?
“I found the whole wedding followed by the baby, all in quick succession, and the accompanying attention kind of disconcerting,” she says. “I just didn’t want any attention on me. I wanted to hide away and be a mother for a couple of years. It was overwhelming. I wanted to just fly well and truly under the radar for a while. When Charlie was first born, we had a couple of security issues and I was more or less hotel-bound in Toronto. There was a price on getting a photo of Charlie, which made it very intimidating to even go out for a walk.
“Each time I ventured out, we’d be attacked by a swarm of photographers, which, as a new mother, made my hackles rise and just made life completely claustrophobic. I didn’t like that phase of our lives at all – I couldn’t get out and be normal. And I like to be out and be normal. I like to sit in a cafe and observe people. I don’t want to be observed.”
The downside of the Faustian pact the Crowes have entered into with fame – namely the constant attention, the media prying and the stalking by paparazzi – weighs heavily upon both Danielle and Russell. And while it might be okay if the picture presented to the world was even occasionally representative, Danielle can’t help but feel that, in the process of being reduced to bite-sized, easily digestible media chunks, both she and her hubby are wrongly typecast. “I’m one of those people who walks up the red carpet looking a little bit stiff,” she says. “I’ve got that half-smile on because I can’t do the Julia Roberts dazzling smile. I mean, I can smile, but not for 45 minutes straight.
“So I’m probably perceived as being a lot more serious than I really am.” And what about Russell? “I think he’s reduced in the media to being a caricature of himself. He’s just this angry man,” Danielle says.
“He’s quite a volatile person, sure, but he also has a very warm and soft and funny side to him, too. He’s multi-faceted, as most people are, but the media doesn’t allow for shades of grey.”
Not, at the end of the day, that media or public perception matters all that much to either of them. Their primary focus is their two boys and ensuring that, in the midst of what is a most atypical childhood environment, they remain as grounded as possible.
Read more of this story in the November issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: What do you think of Danielle Spencer’s new video clip (directed by hubby Russell)? Watch it at the top of the page.
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