‘Sour bitch: Danielle Spencer on fame, Russell Crowe and health scare
The singer underwent emergency surgery after a potentially deadly discovery. Now she’s opening up about her brush with death.
A life-threatening health scare has not stopped Danielle Spencer’s return to centre stage after 15 years of putting her musical aspirations to the side to focus on co-parenting with ex-husband Russell Crowe.
Spencer, 56, recently underwent emergency surgery after being diagnosed with a splenic aneurysm - a bulge in the artery supplying blood to the spleen, often found incidentally but potentially life-threatening if it ruptures.
“It was discovered when I was actually having a scan for something else – so I am extremely lucky,” she said.
“If they rupture, it can be a very difficult thing to survive. And mine was large and likely to rupture, I was told.”
Spencer has since recovered well, crediting her vascular surgeon. “We don’t shine enough light on the extraordinary skill and dedication it takes to perform these procedures,” she said.
This brush with mortality undoubtedly adds weight to her album’s theme of Regenerate and her belief that life and creativity don’t diminish with age.
“For me, you get more interesting when you get older, the messages get more complicated, more interesting, deeper,” she said during an interview with Stellar magazine.
“You can reinvent yourself, you can also regenerate, you just have to find what it is that’s going to light that in you, and for me it’s writing songs.”
While it might sound ironic, considering she was married to one of the most famous actors of all time, Crowe, has two sons with him, and has a musician father who has toured with The Rolling Stones, Spencer is not one for the limelight.
“It makes me uncomfortable, it always has,” she reveals. “I get some flak for how I come across. If I am ever on a red carpet, I’m not smiling enough. The people who like to bitch about me … it’s always ‘she never smiles’.
“You try standing on a red carpet for 30 minutes and smile for the whole 30 minutes. I can’t do it, I just feel stupid. I can’t do the mega watt smile, and that irritates some people. They think ‘she’s such a sour bitch.’
“So those aspects of putting yourself out there I can find a bit tedious, and I’m not an attention seeker, and I’m not a public seeker by nature, but I do understand if you’re putting music out there that’s part of it.”
Spencer gets why people are fascinated with her relationship with Crowe, but a little bemused by the headlines that try to create “something out of nothing based on no substance”.
Recently, when news.com.au revealed she would be performing her new music at Crowe’s Indoor Garden Party gig at the Enmore Theatre in December, other media followed with stories based on pure speculation about her relationship with Crowe’s partner and back-up singer, Britney Theriot.
Spencer scoffed at reports that her working with Crowe had caused some unease for Theriot, as did Crowe himself.
“She’s very sweet,” Spencer said candidly, almost rolling her eyes at the suggestion that there was tension.
“I’ve met her, we have had dinner together, we have had family dinners together for the boys’ birthdays, she is lovely. We will greet each other with a kiss, it’s all fine. And I’m sure she doesn’t enjoy those sorts of stories, literally based on nothing.”
Spencer and Crowe have always worked hard to put their two sons first. She doesn’t pretend divorce and co-parenting are easy, but says ever since the couple parted ways, “it’s been first and foremost my intention to maintain respect for each other and that sense of family.”
“I think the intention has to be there because we do just respect each other, and we started as friends, and we were friends for a while before we got together. I think the basis was there, and I was determined because the kids were little, for it not to be ugly in any way,” she said.
“We are not perfect. That doesn’t mean there has never been a tense moment and I’m not going to pretend divorce is easy.
“Even if you’re trying to be friends and if there is love there and respect there it’s still hard. It’s a bit traumatic and difficult and there can be ups and downs but I hope we’ve done it in a way that has had the least impact on the boys.”
The boys, now 19 and 22, are supportive of their mum’s creative resurgence.
“I think most kids find it slightly strange watching dad or mum perform and they have got both. But they are supportive, both creative and funny, full of personality and gorgeous human beings so they get it.”
The main message of the 14-track album - all written by Spencer - is that life doesn’t end once your children become adults.
“It’s really easy to get to certain junctures in life where you almost feel like the good stuff is all behind you or you’re exhausted and can’t be bothered to push yourself out of your comfort zone,” she explains.
“I think I had spent a few years for various reasons kind of ignoring the musical pull. Writing wise I put it aside for a bit but then I thought ‘why?’ I thought ‘I should do another album. I actually have plenty to say right now. I should just do it before I am elderly, and that’s next year,” she joked.
Spencer’s album ‘Regenerate’ will be available in March next year.
Crowe described his ex-wife’s music as “really interesting”.
Crowe says Spencer’s new music is “really interesting”.
He once joked he “tricked” Spencer into performing with him on the 2011 album The Crow/Doyle Songbook Vol III.
“I knew Dani and I were heading for divorce,” he said.
“There are a number of songs on that album talking directly to Danielle, trying to head off what became inevitable.
“Imagine getting your spouse to sing these songs in that situation. I told her I would be recording with another female artist, that it was all set up, and she cracked the shits and asked why wouldn’t I do that with her, which is what I wanted in the first place,” he said.
“So there I had her, I loved singing with her. Our relationship starts with us singing together. She was 19, I was 25.”
Spencer will be performing at Crowe’s Indoor Garden Party at the Enmore Theatre on December 20.
Originally published as ‘Sour bitch: Danielle Spencer on fame, Russell Crowe and health scare
