Press Releases

Jimmy Osmond's 'wow' factor

The Telegraph
January 23, 2009

Dominic Cavendish finds Jimmy Osmond excited to be
in the West End.

When I first caught sight of Jimmy Osmond at Northampton's Derngate theatre in December – gamely playing Buttons in Cinderella and clearly having a ball in his first panto – I did a double take. How could anyone have such a long career history and look so fresh-faced?

On paper, the fact that he entered showbiz at the age of three – as the cutest and most precocious of the Osmond clan – explains why he's still going strong decades after he became a household name. Yet, at 45, Osmond could easily pass for someone 10 years younger: there's the full head of hair, the lack of wrinkles, and that pearly-white smile. I'm not the only one to have noticed his remarkable resilience to the ravages of time.

''I hopped into a cab the other day,'' Osmond says. ''This guy said: 'Hey Jimmy – how old are you?' I said: 'I'm 45.' He said: 'No! You're a year older than me.' And this guy was an old goat! I thought: 'Wow! What happened?'" ''Wow'' is a favoured expression of ''Little Jimmy'', as he has always been known – as is ''cool". Both Grease, in which he makes his West End debut this month, and Chicago – which he will join on its UK tour in March – are ''cool''. Such all-American conversational tics help shave years off him, suggesting the breezy, blank-page outlook of a college freshman. For those of us who grew up watching him as a nine-year-old scamp belting out Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool – the 1972 Christmas No 1 that put him in the record books as the youngest chart-topper – it's almost a shock to find him still very much the eager young pup.

Why is he forsaking the comforts of home in Utah, where he lives with his wife and four kids, to tread the boards in Britain three times on the trot during the most miserable part of the year? It's not about the money. There has been plenty of that in the past half-century – not least thanks to the 100 million record sales he enjoyed with his siblings, with whom he regularly reunites to perform.

Although some of their fortune was embezzled, there's plenty in the bank. And it's not as if the theatrical exposure will give him added value in the fame stakes. ''The truth is,'' he says, flashing a grin that lights up the hotel suite around him, ''I always wanted to play the West End and to be in a proper musical like Chicago. But really I'm just finding my way. I never knew what I wanted to do when I grew up and I still haven't figured it out. It's about experiencing life as much as possible.''

Up to a point. To those who thought he and his wholesome family embodied everything that was cloying and saccharine about the Seventies, Osmond's new theatrical forays will look much of a piece with that well-behaved past. ''Teen-Angel'' in Grease is a drop-in part that involves singing one of the show's best-loved numbers, Beauty School Dropout, by way of guardian-angel advice to the Rydell High renegade ''Frenchy''. And those expecting to see a darker side to the star when he takes on the role of Billy Flynn, the cynical go-getting lawyer in Chicago, need to brace themselves.

Certain changes have been made to make the part appealing to Osmond – a devout Mormon who doesn't drink or smoke – the chief one being that he'll avoid swearing.

As the great musical of Fifties teenage rebellion, you could say Grease embodies all the carefree fun that Osmond and his showbiz siblings – Alan, Wayne, Merrill and Jay, plus Donny and Marie – were denied as they worked through their early youth. Yet though the others have grumbled, Osmond says he wouldn't have wanted his life any other way.

No regrets, he says. ''I feel blessed. People like to typecast us as this squeaky clean little family. The truth is we've dealt with every possible situation anyone has dealt with. And we've had times when we would meet people who didn't care who we were or what we'd done.

"I have a lot of buddies who were in showbiz and when they went into those valleys, they got into drugs and messed up their lives. They didn't have that self-esteem you have to have. So in some ways that pressure – and it was a lot of pressure – helped me get through so much. A diamond has to be crushed before it has any value,'' he twinkles.
He wants to buy a place in England. They loved him back in the day when he was besieged by screaming fans; and there's a long-lingering mutual affection. ''The British are a great people, very loyal, very caring,'' he says. You can dismiss that as so much canny self-promotion but the deeper you dig, the more you realise that, with Osmond, what you see on the surface is what you get: a diamond geezer.