Natalie

Full Name: Natalie Jane Appleton
Date Of Birth: 14th May 1973 (27)
Weight: 112 lbs
Height: 5"5’
Eyes: Green
Hair: Blonde
Distinguishing Marks: Red Canadian Maple Leaf tattoo in a private place. "It's lower than mine, okay," Nic says about her sister’s tattoo.
Most Used Phrase: None I have found that are printable!
Nickname: Nona, Naaatalie, Fat Cat (cos she was a chubby baby)
I'm the..."big sister... of the group. I boss everyone around . . . I do like to have my own way. That’s the Taurus in me. I’m always right and I’ll argue to death."
Saint or Sinner? "Sinner, definitely. I'm a heart-breaker. I get bored of boys really quickly and dump them."
Essential accessory: Game gear
Best thing about being in All Saints: Meeting people
Worst thing about being in All Saints: Flying

NAT TRIVIA

- She gets annoyed in clothes shops when someone in front of her is trying to pay for something really cheap like a pair of tights with a credit card. "If I’m in a queue and the person in front of me takes out a credit card just to pay for a pair of socks, it’ll be like World War III is about to start."
- Nat appeared in the TV series Grange Hill in 1986 (watch for reruns).
- Her hair got so dry once from all the styling, she had to slap grease all over it and hide it under a baseball cap for a week.
- She says the best thing that ever happened to her was meeting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Disneyworld.

"I was born in Canada in Mississagua, 14 May 1973. As a kid I was the boss. I bossed Nicky around. I used to make her do everything for me. If I was on the toilet and I needed toilet roll I would make her get it. If we had Neopolitan ice-cream I'd have the chocolate and the strawberry and make her have only the vanilla. Still, Nicky was my best friend."

"I’m a very much protective big sister," Nat smiles. "In recent years I’ve become a lot better. As soon as Nic was dating a boy I didn’t like, I was on her back like a rash. Now I let her do her own thing and make her own mistakes. I believe the best way to learn is through your mistakes and experiences. Just always be yourself."

Not only is Natalie Jane Appleton the older sister of Nic, she's the older sister of the whole band. As she is two years their senior, she tends to fuss and look after the others and often comes across as the leader or spokesperson. She has bought a cool, calm presence to the group, which blends well with Mel and Nic's wild antics and Shaznay's shyness.

But the others sometimes accuse her of being really bossy. Nat says she only interferes because she cares. "I'm very emotional. I do all the suffering for everybody. I don't sleep at night worrying," she says in her funny half-English half-North American accent. When she was younger she was always having rows with Nic because she didn't approve of her boyfriends, but it was only because she couldn't stand to see her little sister get hurt. These days, Nat still takes it out on Nic if she gets annoyed with the band. "I'm used to getting my own way," she admits. "But I can't boss Nic around as much any more. In the band, we respect each other's opinions." If they do fight, they always make up quickly and five minutes later they'll have forgotten about it.

Nat's down-to-earth, friendly and outgoing and, even though she's older, can act up as much as the others - as she has done all her life. "I used to be more outrageous but I can’t do the things I used to," she explains. "I used to be outrageous and outgoing, but when I get home I just want to be normal and do normal things again. I get to see friends so rarely because if I get two days off a month it’s for my child and my boyfriend."

When she was a kid, Nat cut off almost all of Nic's lovely long hair while their parents were out. "My first memory of Nic was cutting all her hair off when I was four. We were playing ‘Star Wars’ and I wanted her to be Luke Skywalker, so she had to have short hair! I used the garden shears and got into big trouble!" Not surprisingly, her parents went ballistic and Nic had to wear hats for months afterwards.

These days, Nat knows that Nic's old enough to get her back so she plays pranks on other people instead. Once, in America she pretended to be Madonna and dressed like the Material Girl and fooled everybody. Now of course, she doesn't need to pretend to be a superstar - she is one!

Nat always knew that she wanted to be a singer. When she was a kid, she'd put talcum powder on her face, play air guitar and pretend she was in the heavy metal band Kiss. When she's got time, she plans to learn the guitar for real. She was also the first All Saints to start singing professionally.

With the help of her mum, she managed to land a job singing in a New York bar at age fifteen. "They really had no idea how old I was," Nat laughs. "But I was safe. My mum used to dress me up to help me look older and then I’d sing – in respectable hotels in the Catskills, where Danny Kaye started out! I’d sing ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon’, ‘I Just Called To Say I Loved You’ – puppy stuff. But I loved it. My friends from school would sometimes sneak in to watch me. It was a great time in my life."

"At school I was a maths whizz. My books would be sent to the principal to sign them and to show parents. I wanted to be a doctor or a dentist because I was fascinated with teeth. I used to get my mum’s encyclopedias and take them out and look at all the teeth and draw them, at seven years old. Actually I was a very logical kid. I used to figure out my mum’s problems by moving her furniture around" Eh?

Nat was a fast runner and really good at hockey during school - although she jokes that her secret was to smash the other girls' ankles. Maybe out of fear for her own shapely legs, she gave up to do ballet. She took dance exams, then went on to become an aerobics teacher. No wonder she looks so good on stage now!

But all that sport and exercise didn't come easy. She broke her ankle when she was ten and then her nose three years later, for which she had to undergo surgery to make sure it healed properly. The doctor must have been top drawer because there's no way you can tell now.

"We moved to London in 1983 when we went to Sylvia Young Theatre School," she recalls. "I went for all the wrong reasons. Nicky was there before me, and she came home one day and said, 'These girls are really picking on me,' so I said, 'Let's get them!' So I started at the school, just to get them. I ended up staying.

"It wasn't important to be brainy at the school, it was to be the best dancer or greatest actress. Academic studies was all I'd ever known, so my grades dropped and my brain cells died. I dealt with it but it took away my confidence. I felt that competition at a young age is scarring for children. I went out of my way to be noticed and I was shunned. I'd exercise at home and we'd have school shows, but unless you were in the top dance classes you couldn't be in the best numbers. I went to a part-time school to get through my exams.

"I think I was still shunned because I wasn't pretty enough. I left when I was fifteen with a couple of tap medals and that was it."

So the Canadian sisters moved to New York, where they spent their teen years.

"I’d been going to Ellensville High School until I started singing with the band, and then I quit. I think I thought ‘Why should I graduate when this is what I want to do?’ which I now regret because I would have liked to have had a diploma. I never thought there would be a financial future in singing though, really."

"I think I was lost everyday for the first month," she grins. "The girls didn't want to know me - but the boys wanted to talk to me becasue I had an English accent. A couple of months down the line I made friends though. I was a cheerleader too."

When Natalie wasn't making money singing, or hanging out with her new friends, Nat was having great success in a field she'd never really dabbed before: BOYS! In England she "couldn't get arrested" when it came to men - her love life had been totally non- existent - but then she parked-up in the US and – wey hey! - it was party time!

"I had the choice, sweetie," she laughs. "I went from being an ugly duck in England, when I was desperate to have anyone, to being able to have anyone in New York. I dyed my hair red, turned into Tiffany [an 80s pop star] and, er, that was that."

After living in Florida for a short time, Nat moved back to England to live in Camden, where she met a stripper, Carl Robinson. Nat picks up the story . . .

"I was seventeen and he was a stripper, five years older than me. I met him at a show - I was only young for godsakes! At seventeen all that matters is looks. Anyway, I got pregnant and had a daughter, Rachel, in 1991, when I was eighteen.

"When she was three months old we thought we'd go live in America. We had a daughter to I was determined to make it work for her sake. Me - fool, alian citizen who's Canadian - thought if we got married he could work there. She we did and I went to immigration in New York City and they said, 'Sorry, he's not acceptable,' so I became a wifey for nothing!"

But the marriage soon broke down and Carl moved to England, and Nat followed four months later to have the marriage annulled. In other words, contrary to reports in tabloid newspapers, Nat is not married.

"Rachel was the only thing holding us together," she states. "I didn't make sure Carl would make payments. I just trusted he would, so I didn't get it in writing. He never gave anything, never phoned. It freaks me out."

"My daughter, Rachel, loves the band, and in one way she thinks it's great because she's very popular but in one way that's upsets me because I don't want her getting special treatment because of that. Sometimes we'll put a video on and she won't want to watch it and then I know there's something seriously up. I worry about her a lot. I love her so much and obviously I want her to be happy and I want her to be her own person."

Natalie then moved back to New York again, and had "one of the best summers of my life" before returning to England in 1996.

"My parents looked after Rachel for a while so I could get my life together. I moved in with Nicky in Camden and got my life back on track. I felt like I’d missed out on so much, that I was getting back the years I missed. That’s when the band happened. By Christmas we’d got the deal and my parents moved over with Rachel the following year."

Natalie had always wanted to be a dentist, but she started singing instead. Her 6-year-old daughter, Rachel, wants to be one. "Because my mummy did too, when she was a little girl," she says.

Nat found herself in hospital again when she had to have her wisdom teeth removed. For most people this would be a nightmare, but Nat loved it. "I used to look forward to going to a dental check-up because I'd hope he was going to give me a filling. I have loads of them now," says Nat, insisting that if she wasn't making a mint from singing, she'd have been asking people to open their mouths. "I know it sounds odd but I've always wanted to be a dentist."

Brave Nat doesn't get scared easily and loves reading horror stories by writers such as Stephen King. "I have to have my horror," she grins. "I'll come home at one in the morning and I've still got to read for half an hour before I go to sleep," Is she sick?

She laughs. "Perhaps I am. I don’t know why I love it, I just do. I watched horror films from the age seven. And I guess I like it because it’s completely not normal. It takes me away from life completely. The vomiting, the heads spinning. I like that stuff. It’s not real, is it?"

She won't even frightened when she once thought saw a ghost on Nic's bed. But there are two things that send shivers down her spine - spiders and flying. And unfortunately for Nat, since All Saints have become mega she's had to get on a jumbo more and more often.

The only thing that cheers her up on a long plane journey is the in-flight film - Nat loves movies, especially weepy, romantic ones like Dirty Dancing (Nic reckons that her older sister always cries at E.T.). If she had a choice though, Nat would watch films at home - she doesn't even like the cinema. "You can't stop the film if you want to go to the toilet," moans Nat. "And if you cry you look really stupid."

About the only chance Nat gets to wind down is at home with her parents in Camden. She'll have a long hot bath, before settling down in front of the telly. She got a bit of a shock recently though, when she saw herself in a repeat of Grange Hill. She had a small speaking part in several episodes twelve years ago as one of school bully, Imelda Davis' gang. She dyed her hair for the role but it went wrong and ended up going grey. "It looked horrible," says Nat.

She loves Italian and Chinese food - but potential boyfriends beware, she won't eat anything unless you've washed your hands first. Oh, and she might belch afterwards - it's one of her bad habits, like not tidying her room and biting her nails. "They're disgusting. Split, chipped, dry, and flaky - horrendous," she shudders.

It's hard to believe now, but Nat has a fair few disasters with boys too. Once she tried to look cool as she walked past a boy she fancied, but her laces got caught. "I went flying down the street like Superman. I wanted to ground to swallow me up." Another time she fell down the stairs while she was trying to impress a bot. And one guy she went out with ended up having a fight on the street because someone said something rude about her. "My date ended up in hospital. It wasn't very romantic," she remembers.

"I wasn't the girl all the boys fancied. Not in England anyway," says Nat. "But by the time I went to high school in America I started blossoming. I became a cheerleader and then guys started fancying me." Nat gained confidence and started to show off, even dying her hair red once. Suddenly Nat was the school babe, despite wearing 'men's clothes' like blazers and Levi's. "I once went out with this guy for just one day," says Nat. "He was so cut up he didn't go out with anyone for a year after that."

But before she got too big for her boots, Mel and Shaz brought her down to earth. They sent her a Valentine's card and Nat thought it was from this really good-looking guy. "But even though it was a hoax, it still made me feel special," she says. Ah.

Nat's ideal man would be Brad Pitt, "because he's really quiet and down to earth", and she thinks footballers are cute too, especially Ian Wright. She likes dark-haired, well-dressed men who can dance and don't try too hard to impress her, but are just good fun. She likes to have to fight to get her man - not to have someone follow her around like a lost puppy. But she's become pretty good at getting what she wants - she's an expert flirt (it must fun in the Appleton family). Her hot tip is so smile slowly and flutter her eyelashes. "You have to be different and original. If you're going somewhere dressy, don't dress up, and if you're going somewhere undressy, dress up," she advises.

Nat's pretty fussy because she was badly hurt when she was younger. She got married to an American when she was nineteen but sadly it all went horribly wrong. Luckily, one good thing came out of it - her daughter, Rachel, who she adores. So much that Nat nearly didn't join All Saints because she couldn't bear to be apart from Rachel while the band was out of the country. Fortunately for all of us, her parents stepped in to look after her while Nat's away.

She's now much tougher with boyfriends. "I'm a heart-breaker," she says. "If they're not perfect, forget it." But then Nat met someone who was perfect - Live & Kicking and the O-Zone presenter Jamie Theakson (who Mel jokingly calls Mr Giraffe). They started going out after Jamie interviewed All Saints on television in October '97 and everyone found out when they turned up at the Brit awards together. In April '98 they jetted off to Venice for a four-day romantic holiday and looked very much in love. "I've got a soul mate to share things with now and that's great," said Jamie. "And I get on brilliantly with her daughter."

Life couldn't be much better for Nat. Even if things don't work out with Jamie, she's in one of the most popular bands in the world, doing what she's always wanted to do -sing. Not only that, she's doing it with her three best mates. "Whatever happens," she says, "I'll always be behind them and they'll always be behind me. That's a good feeling."

STAR QUALITIES

Taurens born in the Chinese year of the Ox are careful, deliberate people, who think everything through extremely thoroughly. They make wise decisions and have the ability to explain things clearly and passionately. No wonder Nat was initially tempted by the idea of becoming All Saints'' manager. Their main aim in life is to success at whatever they do (they tend to be artistic) and gain fame and respect. They are workaholics, always pushing and striving for their next goal. Attractive and seductive, they also have a great ability to make others feel good about themselves. They adore home comforts and like nothing better than snuggling up in a big comfy armchair with loads of cushions. Taurean Oxes are confident with their own abilities and have very firm views, which they refuse to change even under fierce criticism. In family matters they can be a little overbearing and demanding (this explains why Nat is always trying to interfere in Nic's love life). They are suited to jobs where the hard work really pays off, such as an athlete, journalist or researcher. In relationships they can be cruel if they are not being treated properly but are normally extremely caring. They need partners who will be patient and allow them to blossom in their own time. Ideal love matches are Pisces, Cancer, Capricorn and Virgo.