Chrissie Amphlett

Blood Brothers is a challenging show. Mrs. Johnstone has to play the role as being from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. The actors playing Mickey, Eddie, and Linda start as children and go on to play adults. It’s an involved storyline with a lot of setting changes. Because of all this, it’s not terribly unusual for most of the performers to be roughly the same age. Funnily enough, in the original cast, the narrator was substantially younger than the rest of the cast, but the other three performers whose ages I can find were all the same age to the year. So it’s not surprising to learn that Chrissie Amphlett, born in 1959, played the mother of Russell Crowe, born in 1964.

Amphlett was born in Geelong, Victoria, first cousin of one of those Australian stars who never quite made it in the US, one Little Pattie. From the age of three to the age of twelve, she was a child model, helping to support the family. At age fourteen, she was arrested for busking. She traveled in Spain, then at seventeen, she joined the adult musical Let My People Come as the character Linda Lips. She then formed a band called Batonrouge with Jeremy Paul, formerly of Air Supply.

In 1980, after a Batonrouge show, Amphlett met Mark McEntee. They met again later at the Sydney Opera House. The trio formed the Divinyls. The lineup changed off and on over the years. Two years after forming, they recorded the songs for a movie called Monkey Grip, in which Amphlett acted. It was her only feature role. She would, however, act onstage. In 1988, she was Mrs. Johnstone; in 1998, she debuted the role of Judy Garland in The Boy From Oz, eventually playing the role opposite Hugh Jackman in the lead.

But that’s not where you know her. My American readers, which is most of my readers, know her from the video for “I Touch Myself,” their only number one single in Australia and their only hit in the US or Europe. They did perform songs for movies as diverse as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and some Yahoo Serious movie I’ve never heard of. During her years in the band, she was in a heated relationship with McEntee, which apparently involved addiction and physical violence. And, of course, many radio stations wouldn’t play their biggest hit.

Obviously, Amphlett did not live as long a life as some people we’ve covered. She died at 53 of breast cancer. Because of her already diagnosed multiple sclerosis, she couldn’t receive chemotherapy. Her family and friends, in partnership with Cancer Council NSW, launched the “I Touch Myself” breast cancer awareness campaign, which involved ten Australian singers performing a cover of the song. I’m not familiar with most of them, but one of them was Olivia Newton-John and one was her cousin, Little Pattie.