Harry Connick Jr’s blue eyes sparkle as he begins to talk about the four most important women in his life: his wife, former Victoria’s Secret model Jill Goodacre, and their three daughters.
Visiting our shores on a whirlwind promotional tour for his new album, Your Songs, the velvet-voiced singer and actor may be a long way from the family home in Connecticut, but it’s clear his girls are never far from his mind.
“I just love them,” he enthuses. “We have a great relationship and are very, very communicative. I’m just lucky, man. I have a great wife and I’ve been really blessed to have three healthy kids. I give them as much love as I have.”
In fact, laughs the 42-year-old multiple Grammy Award-winning performer, he “wouldn’t have it any other way” than being surrounded by females.
Happily married to Jill for 15 years, Harry is well aware they’re a rarity in the showbiz world. So what’s their secret?
“For me, I love her and she loves me,” he says simply. “We deeply care for one another, as friends and as husband and wife.”
Do the couple plan on extending their family any further? “No, I think we’re done,” he replies. “My dad was my age, just about, when he had me. He’s 83 now and sometimes I wish he had me younger, so I could have had more time with him.”
Harry admits that spending weeks on the road away from those closest to him isn’t easy. “But I have three kids in school — you can’t just yank them out,” he says. “It would be too disruptive.”
Indeed, Harry and Jill have done all they can to ensure their girls, now aged 13, 12 and seven, have as normal an upbringing as possible. “They’re like all their friends. They go to school, they play sports, they have sleepovers,” he says.
Harry’s latest recording effort, Your Songs, features the performer singing some of his favourite tunes with a full jazz big band and string orchestra.
“It’s a collection of songs that I think most people know,” he says. “Even though I spent a lot of time on the arrangements and orchestrations, I just wanted to provide a platform in which I could sing these great songs.”
And while Harry is yet to decide what he’ll take home to his wife from his latest Aussie jaunt, he’ll no doubt find the perfect gift. For, as this star of stage and film confesses, he’s long been a hopeless romantic.
“I love all that stuff,” he says as he grins. “I love surprises and spontaneity. I just like the idea of somebody saying ‘I love you’, without you saying, ‘I love you, too’. For them to initiate that, that’s the best feeling in the world.
“Some people may not need that, but I think I do. I just count my blessings.” Your Songs is out now through Sony Music Entertainment Australia.
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