Dame Elaine Paige: 'The pandemic awakened me to the idea that I was on a treadmill with my work'

Elaine Paige made her West End debut in 1968, as part of the ensemble cast of Hair. In 1978, she was cast in the star-making title role of Evita, which won the Society of West End Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Musical and the Variety Club Award for Showbusiness Personality of the Year. Paige went on to lead parts in musicals including Cats, Chess and Piaf. She made her Broadway debut in 1995, with Sunset Boulevard, for which she won the Variety Club Best Actress of the Year.

As well as her theatre career, her 1984 duet, I Know Him So Well, sung with Barbara Dickson, was No 1 in the British charts for four weeks, and remains the biggest selling record by a female duo in the Guinness Book of Records. Meanwhile, albums including Stages, Cinema and Love Hurts have sold millions. Since 2004 she has hosted her own show on BBC Radio 2, Elaine Paige on Sunday. In 1995, Paige was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to musical theatre. She was made a Dame in 2025.

In her Letter to My Younger Self, Paige looks back on the values instilled in her by her parents, the moment she realised her tennis dreams were over and the mixed blessings of lockdown life.

I was born and brought up in Barnet in Hertfordshire. For the first 10 years of my life, I lived in a maisonette above a rubber shop on Barnet High Street. The rubber shop was owned by a chap called Mr Coombs. He sold everything and anything made of rubber: Pac-a-Macs, umbrellas, balloons, beach balls. A chap called Fatty Smith, so-called because of his size, managed the shop and used to collect bets from people in the high street and would bring them back to Mr Coombs, who was running a bookmaker from the back of the shop. You didn’t have Ladbrokes at the time.

There were just the four of us. It was my sister, Marion, who is three years older than me, and my mum and dad. It was an idyllic childhood. My parents were the most genuine, kind-hearted, hard-working people you could possibly want to meet. They spoiled us with love.

There were rules in the house. They weren’t strict, but when I was a teenager, my father would say: “Whilst you live in my house, you live by my rules.” I wouldn’t say I was a wayward teenager. My parents taught us to respect our elders and have good manners. As a child, if you didn’t stick to the rules, then you’d be sent to bed with no tea. I didn’t question it. Even now, I hate it if I’m late. I think it’s disrespectful to others. They taught us all these marvellous values in our youth

My father had a flair for the theatrical. We used to go to holiday camps on the south coast and my dad got on the stage wearing khaki shorts to his knees. He had very thin legs, like bird’s legs. My mother never allowed him to wear shorts because his legs were so thin. But he used it to his comic ability. He sang a comedy song with a hat on funnily as if he was in an army. He was a musician. He played the drums and had his own band called The Arcadians. Every Friday and Saturday night he would be out gigging with his band, so we never saw him at the weekend.

Mozart was the first thing I sang publicly. It was an aria called Deh, vieni, non tardar. My parents watched the show and during the song, I gasped to make it a bit more dramatic. I heard the audience intake a breath. Afterwards, my mother and father said to me: “Oh darling, are you alright? Did you forget the words?” I was very indignant and said: “No, I was acting. Didn’t you know I was acting?” A few years after that, my father asked me if I would like to go to drama school, so it was his idea really.

I’m not particularly confident as a person. I was always rather shy. When I went to drama school, I found that jolly difficult because they were all rather precocious and certain of themselves. I wasn’t like that at all. It made me retreat into my shell even more. I couldn’t cope with it. But my father always offered up great advice. Gosh, I miss the pair of them terribly. He said: “Stick with it. You’ve only been there a term. You need time to settle in.” Of course, he was right. By the end of the second term, I’d made friends and felt more that I belonged.

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I was about 15 when I had my first professional job. It was like Mamma Mia for Mozart. It was Mozart’s hits of the day, a catalogue of wonderful music, and we had a marvellous time. A lot of people have a teacher in their life that steered them and thank heavens for my music teacher Ann Hill. She’s still alive and I’m still in touch with her, which has been wonderful.  

I was never academic at school. I wasn’t interested and found it difficult to concentrate. I was a daydreamer. I was always staring out the window making up ideas and playlets in my head. But I loved English, sports and music. I thought I wanted to be a professional tennis player. When I told my headmistress, she said: “But you can’t even see over the net!” It was a terrible shock. I’m laughing now but at the time I was horrified. This woman, in one sentence, ruined my dream.

Music was my next option. When I got Evita, I felt like I’d gone a full circle. It was unusual at the time to have a musical that was more operatic like that. I wasn’t quite 30 years old when I landed that fantastic role. Everybody wanted to play that role, including great stars of the day. I only discovered a few years ago that Mozart had lived with his father in a house on the piece of land where the Prince Edward Theatre stands. Cameron Mackintosh has a room dedicated to me at that theatre, because I played three consecutive musicals there: Evita, Anything Goes and Chess. That is why it feels like a complete circle to me. because Mozart is where I started and Evita is where my career started.

Younger me would never have ever dreamed of such a thing happening to me. I’m a suburban girl. Most people didn’t go to drama school. You worked in an office or became a hairdresser or a teacher or a lawyer. To be in the entertainment industry was the furthest thing from my thoughts until drama school. I’ve struggled all my life really with being centre stage. That’s ridiculous, but I hated having to get up and give a speech or recite a poem. We used to have to do exercises like speak for a minute. I always loathed that. I enjoyed the singing lessons, but it’s a miracle that any of this has happened to me. My younger self would never have believed it in a million years.

I hadn’t really sung anything since the pandemic. It was a terrible thing for an awful lot of people and caused a lot of sadness, but for me, it awakened me to the idea that I didn’t have to keep chasing my tail and feeling like I was on a treadmill with my work. It gave me a chance to take stock and think about life – listening to the birds at six o’clock in the morning with no traffic out there to drown out the sound.

It was a wonderful summer. I could sit on my terrace and look at my few pots of flowers that I like to plant every summer. It went on and on, and my shoulders came down. I didn’t leave the house at all for three months. I was so frightened. In those three months of living alone, I was able to do things I never normally have time to do. I read a lot of books. I was able to get my paints out and slosh some paints around. I rather enjoyed it. I thought to myself: ‘Do you know what? I am the age I am. If I do go back to work, it’s going to be at a slower pace.’ And that’s what I’ve done.  

Your voice is an instrument. If you don’t practice, you go off the boil. When it was suggested to me that I make a new album, I wasn’t sure. I decided to make a demo just to hear myself. The way you sound in your head is not the same as how everyone else hears you. I just wanted to check I was in good voice. I gave my producer Rupert Christie a project to mash up a Harry Nilsson song, Remember, which talks about looking back, and another beautiful song by Carole King and Gerry Goffin called Goin’ Back. The lyrics worked rather well, and when he came back with the with the mash-up, I was so taken by it. It was so unusual. You’d never know it was two songs. I was so pleased that I said: “Yes, let’s do this album.”  

I’ve been able to do what I’ve loved all my life. I’ve been part of this wonderful industry. I’ve worked in television and film and as an actor and singer. I’ve worked in concert halls all around the world. I’ve performed to kings and presidents. I’ve met so many different people from so many different walks of life. It’s been the most exciting, wonderful journey. I can’t quite believe the journey that I’ve had or the longevity of it. It’s been the most glorious ride.

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