But while Aguilera is now respectable, it was not always like that. She went from a cute moppet on the Disney channel’s Mickey Mouse Club to a chaps-wearing raunch queen who boasted about her intimate piercings. Is that really what Simpson, and her parents, want? Simpson’s mother, 47-year-old Margaret, has thought about little else for the last six months. “If we don’t do this now, when she reaches 16 she’ll be off to London on her own,” she says from the family home in Cumbernauld.
“This way we’re going to be with her. It’s a dodgy business and if you’re not stable, with stable parents, you can go down the wrong road. I want to be there looking after her. She may have a manager, but she’s my daughter.
“This is the worst business in the world. I wanted my daughter to be a chemical engineer, or a lawyer or a dentist, not go into an industry with drink and drugs and everything going on. But at the end of the day, I will decide what happens to Nicole, I will be with her. We all saw what happened to Lena Zavaroni. No family went anywhere with her. I won’t make that mistake. If I see anything really nasty, I’ll be home faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”
The Simpsons have already had a taste of the show-business grooming process. They met their agent, Jaynie Jackson, at a talent convention, the Millie Lewis Actors Models and Talent Competition (AMTC), in June. Jackson is convinced that Simpson has what it takes. “Within 10 seconds I knew this was something special,” she recalls. “Some magic happened. I have been 20 years in the business, raised two children in the business and I know when someone has that ‘it’.”
Jackson, who first discovered Aguilera, as well as the R&B star Usher, clearly knows what she is talking about. There is no doubt that Simpson has a fine set of pipes. But the road to stardom is littered with broken dreams, shattered families and empty bottles. Is it possible to throw a child into the snake pit of show business and expect them to emerge without bites? And even if it is, would you really want to?
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Today’s stars are not born. They are moulded, monitored and created by teams of experts using blood, sweat, tears and hair straighteners. Once she was through the initial auditions and had been selected to attend AMTC, Simpson had six months of preparation with the organisation’s UK representative, the Glasgow-based Lynne Millar. This culminated in a 10-day boot camp, working 10am-8pm, and a further two days’ intensive training in London. In that time, says Millar, Simpson went from “quite shy” to someone who could hold her own at the huge AMTC event.
She had to prepare a song, a dance routine and a monologue. “We worked on how she should stand, her hair, how to approach agents, what she should say, how she should sell herself. We perfected her comp cards (a glossy handout of photographs) and her résumé. We organised her outfits for her performances and for walking around at the competition.”
At 11, Simpson has what Millar calls “a perfect body”. Her mother describes her as “a skinny wee thing, desperate to get breasts”. But the right measurements are an important part of the talent package. “Teenagers have to be careful of the weight issue,” says Millar. “Nicole need not worry, but for a lot of agents, when you are taking a child away from home, you have to be able to trust them. One of the first things a lot of kids do is overeat.”
In such a competitive business, one scoop of chocolate chip can be a deal-breaker. At AMTC, contestants are constantly being assessed. One girl lost her contract with a New York agent when she came out of a nutrition seminar and went for an ice cream. “They are just very, very strict,” says Millar. “This is the top level of the industry.”
Anyone who finds the run-up to AMTC too much hard work, is, says Millar, not cut out for show business. “If you think the training is tough, don’t go into the industry.”
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If Simpson gets her US visa — and it is by no means guaranteed — she has a lot of dreary, hard work ahead of her. It is not unusual for 1,500 people to turn up for a first audition. There might be up to four recalls.
A normal day might be school in the morning then learning scripts in the car on the way to auditions before going home to a tiny apartment. If there are no auditions, it is acting, singing or dancing classes. Her visa, if she gets it, will be for two years. If, after that time, she has not done enough work to convince the authorities that she is an economic viability, it will not be renewed.
Jackson’s game plan for Simpson would be for her to work on television, such as Nickelodeon or Disney, to build a fanbase, before moving on to recording work when she hits her teens, like Aguilera and Britney Spears. “This is just the beginning, a springboard,” she says. “We plan for longevity.”
Both Jackson and Margaret Simpson are adamant that it is possible for stardom and normality to coexist. According to the child psychologist Carol Burniston, however, this is a tall order. “At 11 years of age there are all sorts of hormonal, bodily and emotional changes going on,” she says. “The LA scene is liable to contain more pressures to conform to certain stereotypical body types and social behaviour. These pressures are harder to resist when you live within that environment.
“Show business is always looking for the next breaking story and it can be hard to keep reinventing yourself. Young people do experiment with different images, but they need to retain a core sense of self to stay mentally healthy and resilient.
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“Her capacity to cope will be determined by her own internal strengths. She will also need support from those around her, especially if she doesn’t succeed. They will need to help her to move on rather than feel a failure.”
Simpson puts it another way: “We are going to take a chance and if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It will have been an adventure.”
Child stars past
Shirley Temple
Spotted at a dance class at the age of three, Temple was America’s biggest box-office star for four years in the 1930s. As she hit her teens, Temple attempted to reshape her career, but never found anything like her early success.
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Macaulay Culkin
The star of Home Alone was a high-grossing, omnipresent feature at the start of the 1990s. Then, in 1994, at the age of 14 and after a couple of box-office disasters, he dropped out of acting. He has recently crept back on to the radar with the film Saved!
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Drew Barrymore
Barrymore became a star at the age of seven, playing Gertie in her godfather Steven Spielberg’s ET. She was also drinking alcohol by the age of nine, smoking dope at 10 and snorting coke at 12. After rehab she made her comeback in 1996 in the teen horror Scream. Since then the Charlie’s Angels franchise has kept her in shoes.
Kylie Minogue
Minogue was a soap fixture in Australia from the age of 11 playing Charlene in Neighbours. She went on to become one of Stock, Aitken, Waterman’s bubblegum pop darlings. After splitting with them in 1992 she experimented with images, producers, Nick Cave and Michael Hutchence. In 2000 a pair of gold hotpants heralded her return to global superstardom.
Lena Zavaroni
The smiling lassie from Rothesay who, at the age of 11, won Opportunity Knocks for five weeks running in 1974 and was whisked away to what looked like a glittering career. But she was developing an eating disorder that became anorexia nervosa. She died from pneumonia in 1999.