Hysterical fans fixate on Dublin singing star
Last Updated Jul 2009
COLM Wilkinson is in Ireland this month singing songs and telling stories about the shows he’s starred in, but there are a couple of tales he may consider unsuitable for his genteel concert audiences.
The Canada-based Dubliner says, unlike other well known artists, he doesn’t get many over-enthusiastic female fans. “I don’t get a lot of that. I’m not exactly Brad Pitt,” says 64-year old Colm. “But you do get hysterical people who fixate on you.
I’ve experienced people who’ve become fanatics. One woman used to follow me around all the time. She followed me from Canada into America and then to Ireland. She was crazy.
She wrote me letters every single day and she used to appear in crowds. She came up to me one night and said ‘Why didn’t you come to the hotel as we arranged?’
I said ‘I don’t even know you. I’m happily married with four kids. Just leave me alone, don’t bother me anymore!’ and I told Jack, my driver, ‘Let’s get out of here!’
I was afraid that, because I was rejecting her, she’d take out a knife or get a gun and shoot me. I was becoming paranoid about it. Eventually I had to get a restraining order.”
Wilkinson is currently in the middle of doing seven Irish concerts, which also includes highlights of his solo career. His concerts still sell out around the world and he can be seen acting in top TV series The Tudors.
But Colm has not sought a major role in a stage musical for many years and he thinks it unlikely he’ll take any more on in future.
“Unless it’s something I think I could do well at my age, and my family would be okay with it, I’m not going to take on anything that’s huge and taxing,” says Colm. “I’ve been there and done that. It’s time for the younger guys.
“I might do a short run as Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar in Ireland next year. But I want to pull back on work, start travelling and spending more time with Deirdre and my friends.” Deirdre is Colm’s wife of 39 years and mother of his four children. “My wife and family are a great support,” he says. “Deirdre travels with me nearly everywhere I go. She looks after me well and keeps me going. She’s fantastic — my backbone, my strength, the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The family moved to Toronto in 1989 when Colm began a four-and-a-half-year run in the title role of The Phantom Of The Opera there. Of the offspring, Judith is now a curator, Simon and Sarah are graphic designers and Aaron is a singer/songwriter.
But the Wilkinsons have kept their original house in Wicklow, which for the past two decades has been occupied by various relatives.
Colm is one of 10 siblings and describes their upbringing as “full of love and chaos — and music”.
“I was singing from a very young age, and I was in a choir at the Christian Brothers school,” he says. Colm went on the road with bands from the age of 14 and toured in the USA from 16.
At 28 he landed the part of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar in Dublin and London — his first experience working for the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice. “Andrew is quite an eccentric sort of an odd genius,” Colm says. “But I found in both of them a great wry humour.”
In 1985 Colm was offered the lead in The Phantom Of The Opera, but he turned that down in favour of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables and Michael Crawford played the Phantom.
He says: “Cameron Mackintosh was producing both shows and he said ‘You are in a very envious position with these two great roles. I know Andrew (Lloyd Webber) wants you to do Phantom but I need you to do Les Mis. If Les Mis doesn’t work you can do The Phantom.’ I never regretted it because Les Mis was wonderful for me.”
Indeed, as Valjean, Colm won most of the top theatrical awards in the West End (in 1985) and on Broadway (in 1987). Celebrities such as Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand, Tom Jones,William Hurt and even Princess Diana saw him in that show.
Colm missed out to Gerard Butler on the 2004 film version of The Phantom Of The Opera, and there’s still no sign of a Les Mis movie.
“There have been discussions about it, but I don’t know why it has never come to pass,” he says. “I think I’d probably be too old to do that part now.
Liam Neeson was Valjean in the non-musical Les Misérables of 1998, and when I met him in New York he gave me a big hug and said: ‘Every morning before I went onset I listened to you singing from the Les Mis album.’ That was very nice of him.”
Later this year Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom Of The Opera, will premiere. Isn’t Colm tempted to get involved? “I probably won’t be,” he says. “It’s a young guy’s business. Eight shows a week? Hmmm, no.
“I’ve been very fortunate. I was the first guy to sing the music from Evita, The Phantom Of The Opera, Les Misérables and Jekyll And Hyde. I’ve had a lot of firsts in my life. And I’ve met some great people including Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Liza Minnelli, Miles Davis, most of the Royal Family and three Presidents.”
As to why Colm carries on performing at an age when most men prefer to put their feet up, it appears there are countless motivations.
He says: “I met a guy recently who said that, when he was a drug addict, he just happened to hear me sing on television one night and loved my voice. He was so affected by what I did that he started listening to music and said it helped turn him round and he’s now been drug-free for years.
“That same night a girl came up to me and showed me a photo of a huge woman, and said ‘Do you remember her?’
She was that woman, and she’d since lost about 15 stone.
She said ‘I identified with The Phantom Of The Opera and used to hide away, but I met you after the show and you were so encouraging that I went on a diet, lost all this weight, and I’m now married.’”
“Those are wonderful stories,”Wilkinson adds, no doubt considering them very suitable indeed for his Irish concert audiences.
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