Another “new” old interview dated 30 December 2007. It’s quite similar to the one of Weekend but worth reading anyway.

Scans are here.

NOT SO DESPERATE, NOW
Like the man-eater she plays in Desperate Housewives, actress Nicollette Sheridan is a force to be reckoned with. But, unlike Edie, she only has eyes for one man.
By Chrissy Iley

By the end of my meeting with Nicollette Sheridan we are swapping numbers for holistic vets, recipes for a cold cure and tips for emotional survival. She has been soft, empathic, nurturing. Not at all what I had expected. As Edie on Desperate Housewives she’s the bad girl, the manipulative, insatiable one, clad in tops revealing lots of cleavage, and shorts or skirts showing lots of leg. Whenever I’ve seen pictures of her, it’s usually been at awards ceremonies where she shimmers with hard-edged glamour.

Even her fianc?, singer Michael Bolton, implies that she is fierce, a force to be reckoned with and “absolutely fearless”. When I interviewed him a year ago, he told me that she loved to ski the black diamond run and that she liked nothing better than swimming with sharks, literally. When I mention this, Nicollette laughs softly. “That’s true. I have been scuba diving all over the world. When you snorkel you’re shark bait, but when you dive you’re one of them. It’s incredible. You feel like a fish. I feel absolutely safe and comfortable under the water.”

Today she’s wearing sweat pants and a white hoodie, hair scraped back in a pony tail. Her dog, golden retriever Oliver, is nuzzling her constantly, reminding her it’s soon time for a walk in the Hollywood Hills. She loves all animals and has a natural bond with them, is hyperintuitive.

She has been most famous for playing the uberbitches. She was Paige in Knots Landing until the series finished in 1993, and her career made a dramatic resurgence when she was cast in Desperate Housewives. She has always een impeccably glamorous – but insists she grew up a tomboy. “I spent my childhood climbing trees and playing with my cousins – all boys. One cousin built a tree house which was boys only, but that wasn’t about to stop me. He caught me and pushed me out and I landed like a cat.”

She was born in Worthing, West Sussex. Then the family moved to London. Her mother Sally Adams, an actress, relocated to Los Angeles to be with Kojack actor Telly Savalas when Nicollette was nine. They slipt up about five years later and that’s when Nicollette moved back to England to attend Millfield school in Somerset, only returning to LA to start her acting career.

Every Sunday morning as a little girl she would go horse riding in London’s Hyde Park, and would come home and listen to records. “‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ was my favourite song – I used to play it over and over, so that I could imagine something out there other than my life in old London.”

What was out there for Nicollette was a tortuous path, certainly not ready-made success. Her story is of physical uprooting and emotional dislocation. When she came back to study at Millfield she didn’t fit it. She was used to being on top of the class and was thrown into a whole new culture with a whole new syllabus. She had no best friend, no group of girls she fitted into, and at 15 girls need a gang. She was a straight-A student who became demoralised because she was different.

“Ultimately that’s why I didn’t finish my A-levels. I couldn’t stand it. That kind of thing makes you stronger, more determined.” I wonder if she sees her career in terms of before Desperate Housewives and after, struggling and superstar. “I live day to day. My life has been an amazing experience. It’s taken surprising paths. And right now it’s pretty incredible. I love my character. She has history and what’s been nice in the recent series is that we delve into her past and she’s softened. It’s always more fun to play the bad girls, but making them likeable and showing how their bad behaviour is triggered is what’s interesting.”

There’s no doubt that she understands emotional triggers, but in her real life she’s far from being the bad girl, is too much moral. We are always hearing rumours about how all the women on set are clawing at each other’s egos, fighting and grappling. “Pur-lease,” she says. “You wouldn’t be hearing all this sort of nonsense if it was a group of men. We all enjoy playing with each other as well as playing our roles. It’s a wonderful atmosphere on set. I love playing Edie. She is a force to be reckoned with.”

Interesting. Exactly what Michael Bolton says of her. “I was always a thoughtful, emotional little girl. I am the happiest now I’ve ever been in my life, feeling more grounded that I ever have. Michael is a wonderful human being. He has brought me a profound love and support. He is an amazing sounding board for me.”

Michael, 54, lives on the East Coast and Nicollette, 44, lives in LA. Does she see enough of him? “I always want to see more of him. I am going to join him in New York in a few days [Nicollette and I met in LA at the beginning of this month]. We’ll spend some time together over Christmas on an island, but I’m keeping the exact location secret.” They have been engaged for just over a year. Is there a plan for a wedding? “Definitely. Everybody asks that question, but we haven’t decided where and as soon as we make that decision it will happen very quickly.”

What’s fascinating about their relationship is how it mirrors the song they recorded together last year, “The Second Time Around”. Nicollette and Michael first dated in 1993 for around 18 months, just after she had split up from LA Law actor Harry Hamlin (a marriage that lasted only two years) and a couple of years after Michael’s 15-year marriage to fitness instructor Maureen McGuire had ended. Their affair then reignited in 2005 after she slipt from her fiancé, Swedish actor Niklas Soderblom.

What was it that didn’t work before that’s working now? “Hmmm,” she ponders attentively. “It’s not about what was working and what wasn’t. It’s about timing. We have always been an inspiration for one another and had this deep love, even when we were apart as friends. We had an ongoing Scrabble tournament by e-mail for close on two decades. I won the last five games in a row.”

When I met Michael he told me that Scrabble kept them together but that they could not keep in touch constantly because he “was conscious that it was such a powerful relationship it was always in danger of starting up again, and that was a scary possibility. It’s scarier than swimming with sharks if you’re not sure if you can really work out with someone. When the love is deep and the experience so big, you have to be respectful and mindful of it, but the connection never really goes away.”

“Yes, that’s why we remained friends until we jumped back in,” she says falteringly. Both of them have told me separately that it was a matter of working on themselves. Michael, for instance, defined himself through his music: “My livelihood took me from London to Australia and [Nicollette's] kept her in LA. I hate to blame career but music was my calling and I was focused on it.” Michael grew up believing in the machismo of the movies. “If the guy was the her, he showed up. I couldn’t be that hero.” So he walked away until he could be. He was also concentrating on his three daughters with Maureen McGuire: Taryn, now 28, Holly, 31, and Isa, 33.

How exactly did they get back together? “That’s an amazing story. The universe truly conspired,” she says enigmatically. Neither of them will explain more.

Her voice on “The Second Time Around” is incredibly sweet and warm. When I tell her that, she seems self-conscious, shocked, grateful. It turns out she had a mortal fear of singing. Why was she so frightened? “My mother has an extraordinary singing voice. When I was little I never thought I was quite up to it. I’d sing around the house and she’d ask me to be quiet. She said I couldn’t sing, so I chose to believe that,” she sayss solemny. “It was Michael who lured me our of my shell. He cured me. It was such a big achievement.”

It’s as if he put a piece of her heart that had been broken off back intact. Her fear about singing seems to symbolise her feelings of not being good enough growing up. Now that her voice is on a platinum-selling album, Bolton Swings Sinatra, you begin to sense how immensely healing the second time around with Michael is. Not that their relationship seems soppy. They ride, ski, are competitive with one another, and find that exhilarating. He probably has healed as much as her. He no longer feels he has to be a John Wayne-style hero, a wooden man who is afraid to fail. It’s clear that he is her hero.

She grew up not knowing her biological father. He left when she was a baby. Did this leave her constantly searching, feeling that something was missing? “No, I don’t think you miss what you don’t have. I had grandparents that I spent a lot of time with. My grandfather was a simple, loving man; my grandmother an angel. They were a safe place to go, with unconditional love and open arms. And I was close to Telly Savalas, I really liked him.” So after he left, did she miss him, did she suffer? Big sigh. “It’s always sad leaving people that you love, but you go on and you take with you the wisdom that they imparted.” But with that wisdom have come pain. “That’s true. That’s why it’s always important to work through things.”

A few years ago she met her biological father. Does she have an ongoing relationship with him? “I think of a father as someone who rears a child, as opposed to a man who sires one. We have a different relationship.” She does not even reveal his identity. One senses she tried very hard to make the best of things. She shrugs, “Trial and error is part of growing up.”

Was she looking for a father figure in her relationships with men? There seems to have been many that didn’t last. “Actually there haven’t been that many. There have been many stories that are far from the truth; acquaintances who have presented themselves to the media as something else and who have added elements that don’t exist. It hurts at times. I’m human, I bleed, but what can you do?”

Her very first relationship (when she was 16), with pop teen idol Leif Garrett, lasted from 1979 to 1985. Was it painful not to find the right person or was there part of her that wasn’t ready? “For me there’s only been one person and that’s Michael. For the rest, we’re all human and you want to believe that something is perhaps more than it really is.” I’ve read that she’s expecting a baby. “No, that’s not true. Do you think I look that fat? However, I would like a baby,” she says. So is she trying? “Now you are getting nosy,” she smiles. She’s just turned 44 but doesn’t look it. She has voluptuous lips and an ample cleavage. She’s tall, strong, striking.

Is it a constant pressure to work out, stay toned and lovely? She laughs. “I don’t do nearly as much as I should. I don’t let this bizarre Hollywood competitiveness get to me. I run with my dogs. Oliver can persuafe me to do anything he wants and he usually wants about four miles in the mountains. But that helps me feel good inside my body. My mother passed on good genes. She looks very young. Everyone thinks we’re sisters. I can’t give out how old she is, she wouldn’t be happy about that. She’s had no work done. That’s not something our family believes in.”

What about for her? “Not yet. I think it would be frightening it afterwards I looked worse. I see people who look like they are going 100 miles an hour. I don’t mind owning lines. I cherish them. I cherish life experience. The choices you make, how you are to other people, show on your face when you ger older. Changing the outside doesn’t fix the inside.”

It’s clear that all the work that Nicollette has had done has been on the inside. We talk some more about her animals. “Oliver is very intelligent. He speaks with his eyes and with his expressions.” Growing up she had a cat called Ragamuffin with whom she played hide and seek. For a long time she chose horses over boys. We talk about my own childhood and parents. She gives me advice about how to put up boundaries so you don’t get hurt. You know it comes from someone who has been, but how has survived.

Next up she’s writing a TV comedy series (although not necessarily for her to star in, because Desperate Housewives demands dedication). She’s just finished playing the voice of a prairie dog called Zenna in a movie called Noah’s Ark: The New Beginning. “She’s the heroine, the voice of reason. She is very similar to Oliver. They are both very wise, very loving and they know how to put their paws out.” The most surprising thing about Nicollette Sheridan is that she too knows how to put her arms out. She knows how to embrace.