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'I eat to fill the void': Janet Jackson interview

With an Oscar-tipped role in Tyler Perry's new film and a handsome young billionaire in her life, Janet Jackson is, finally, 'in a good place'. But it's been a bumpy ride. She talks to Michael A Gonzales about her fraught relationship with her father, food and her first love – acting

The first time I ever saw Janet Damita Jackson was years before she became a superstar. It was the winter of 1974 and the seven-year-old was comic relief during the Jackson Five's world tour.

Dressed in a pint-sized Bob Mackie sequinned gown, the cinnamon-skinned child stood before the sold-out audience of 5,000 screaming fans inside Radio City Music Hall, in New York, and performed skits with her brother Randy.

The youngest of nine brothers and sisters, hailing from the blue-collar community of Gary, Indiana, the little girl performed impersonations of Cher and Mae West to perfection.

'Come up and see me sometime,' she said, rocking back and forth, as the audience laughed and clapped.

'My father wanted me to be in the show,' says Janet Jackson today. 'I really didn't have much of a say in it. I can't remember whose idea it was that I do Mae West, but it was Michael who worked with me to get it right.'

The moment she says her late brother's name an affectionate smile steals over her lips.

Dressed entirely in black, including her nail polish, the 44-year-old sits across from me inside the Trump International Hotel, in New York.

Across the street the sun shines brightly on the autumn foliage of Central Park, but our conversation takes place inside a generic conference room in the basement.

Hers has been a week of non-stop press interviews surrounding the American première of her latest film, For Colored Girls.

Tyler Perry's controversial adaptation of Ntozake Shange's 1977 award-winning play details the loves and struggles of seven African-American women. Jackson plays Jo, a steely-faced high-powered magazine editor.

Having done two other films with Perry – the box office smashes Why Did I Get Married? (2007) and Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010) – she trusted him.

'I was supposed to start shooting [Why Did I Get Married Too?] in a couple of days when Michael passed away,' she has said. 'Tyler stopped work to come and be with me. He was on my side.'

In one scene Jackson's character smashes up her home with a golf club. 'It really gave me a chance to release the emotions I was going through,' she says. 'I had real tears. It was draining, but it helped me get through it.'

There is already talk of Jackson being nominated for an Academy Award, but she quickly quashes this.

'Just because there's a buzz doesn't mean it's going to happen,' she says in her breathy voice that reminds me of a femme fatale. 'All of that is very exciting, but it's better that I stay focused on what's going on right now.'

In fact, Jackson was so focused that she barely spoke to the other actresses on set, who included Thandie Newton, Whoopi Goldberg and Macy Gray.

'I tried to stay in character between scenes, so that meant I wouldn't socialise with the rest of the girls.

I would hear them over in the corner or backstage – I'd hear Loretta [Devine] laughing like crazy or Kerry [Washington] acting silly – and I so badly wanted to be a part of the group, but to stay in character and to stay focused, I couldn't.'

While the Jackson Five's 'Third Album' (1970) contained the track Goin' Back to Indiana, a groovtastic acknowledgment of their homeland, Janet has never suffered homesick blues.

'I was two when we left Indiana and I don't really remember it that well,' she says. 'The only things I remember are my sister Rebbie getting married and my playmates Gregory and Rodney.

I also remember Roosevelt High School across the street, because that's where my brother Jackie went to school.'

In recent times the former factory town has slid into decay. 'I know it sounds horrible, but I haven't visited there since I was 11.'

When the Jackson Five were signed to Motown Records, five-year-old Janet went on the road with her brothers and later appeared in the short-lived variety show The Jacksons (1976 to 1977).

It wasn't until being cast in the classic sitcom Good Times, aged 11, that the youngest was allowed a little freedom.

'Being on Good Times was the first time I was around a group of people that wasn't my family,' Jackson remembers. 'At home we might have had a few friends, people around who knew us, but we never went over to other people's houses or anything like that.

I was used to my brothers and sisters being my only friends. But, once I started doing the show, suddenly the actors on the set became like my second family.'

In her forthcoming book, True You, which Jackson describes as a kind of self-help book filled with autobiographical anecdotes, she describes how the wardrobe department would bind her breasts with gauze.

'I was young, but I began developing early,' Jackson says. 'From the first day I was on set the wardrobe woman would wrap my chest; she said it was to make my boobs smaller.

Maybe they didn't mean to, but that sent a weird message to me. I thought I wasn't good enough, which is why you have to be careful with kids and truly explain what's going on. Even now I don't think they needed to do all that.'

Jackson wrote the book with David Ritz, who has helped Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin with their autobiographies.

She writes and talks frankly about her experience of binge-eating, which has caused her weight to yo-yo dramatically over the years.

'Food has always brought me comfort and the bingeing is triggered when I'm in a space that is not positive,' she says. She's currently in great shape, but the compulsion to binge, she says, can strike at any time.

'When I'm feeling down on myself or not feeling good about who I am, or maybe something happened and I'm feeling depressed, I eat to fill that void. Afterwards I'll beat myself up about it. I regret doing it, but I'll turn around and do it again.'

The last time her body made headlines was the notorious 'nipplegate' fiasco at the Super Bowl in 2004.

Jackson was performing with Justin Timberlake during the half-time show of the American football match, when Timberlake tore off part of her costume (in what would later be described as a 'wardrobe malfunction'), revealing her right breast to a worldwide audience of about 100 million people.

The jury is still out on whether the incident was a publicity stunt or not, but Jackson insists it was a gruesome mistake.

Jackson is the first to admit that she never had the strongest singing voice in her family, but that didn't stop her father, Joe Jackson, from securing her a contract with A&M Records when she was 16.

While people tend to think of 'Control' (1986) as her first album, her true debut was a lacklustre self-titled record released four years earlier.

'It was my first time really being in the studio working with a producer, and Angela [Winbush, of the then-popular R&B duo René and Angela, who produced some of the tracks] made me comfortable,' she says. 'I had a very soft voice, but she'd get me to try different things with it. She made me surprise myself.'

The biggest surprise came in 1986 when Jackson went into the Flyte Tyme Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and emerged with 'Control', one of the most brilliant albums of the decade.

With hits including Nasty and What Have You Done for Me Lately?, the album was certified five times platinum and sold more than 14 million copies worldwide.

A machine-dream soundscape warmed by Jackson's girlish voice, 'Control' was a futuristic manifesto of independence. For the 20-year old singer being in control meant becoming her own woman.

'When I was 17 I did what people told me/Did what my father said, let my mother mould me, but that was long ago,' she sang on the title track.

'I've never been one for keeping a journal, so my songs were my journals,' she says now. 'They allowed me to express my feelings and let people know what was going on with me. I knew that somebody would relate.

Recording is more autobiographical than acting. It's me – either how I'm feeling then or once felt at some point in my life. It's all me.'

It was only a matter of time before Janet Jackson fired her domineering daddy and, along with Madonna and her brother Michael, became one of the biggest stars on Planet Pop.

Twenty-four years later I wonder what 'control' means to her now. 'I think I've discovered and realised that we're really not in control,' Jackson says.

'It's really about God being in control of it all. To a certain degree, we have control to navigate things the way we want, but, in the end, it's really about God. That's what I've learnt.'

Jackson sees herself as a spiritual person. 'I've never been really drawn to formal religion. I guess that stems from growing up a [Jehovah's] Witness.

'But when I was 18 Mother let us explore other religions. If we were to come back, so be it. If not, we had that foundation and she knew we would keep God in us.'

There are stories that, despite his fame, Michael remained a Witness until 1987, donning disguises when he went door-to-door.

With the exception of Again, the theme song from Why Did I Get Married Too?, Jackson hasn't been recording much lately.

She made that track with her former boyfriend and producer Jermaine Dupri. The couple broke up last year after seven years together.

None the ess, Jackson says, 'It was easy working together, because we're still friends. I've never had any drama in the studio and that's not always the case with a former significant other.'

Jackson has since been dating Wissam Al Mana, a businessman from Qatar who is 10 years her junior.

Speculation about their possible engagement reached such heights that when she went on the television programme Good Morning America last month to promote her new film she set the record straight.

'People have been trying to marry me off for a very, very long time,' she told the interviewer. 'No, I am not engaged, I will say that. I am in a really good place.'

Despite winning countless awards and releasing seven more top-selling albums (including 'Rhythm Nation 1814' (1989), 'Janet' (1993) and 'The Velvet Rope' (1997), Jackson still wanted to be in films.

'My dream was to go back into acting,' she says. 'That was all I wanted to do. When I was a kid I told my father that's what I wanted my career to be. I wanted to go to college, study acting and become an actress. He said, "No, you're going to sing.'

In 1993 the director John Singleton offered her her first starring role in Poetic Justice, in which she played the love interest of Tupac Shakur.

'Pac was just silly,' Jackson says of the late rapper, who was shot dead in Las Vegas three years after the film's release. 'He was completely different from what people knew.

'Not that it was an act, the person that the world knew, because that was him, too. I adored him; he liked to play and laugh.

'I remember when he said he was going back into LA to get a tattoo. And, I said, "Why are you going to LA? We're not supposed to leave, we have to shoot tomorrow."

'He looked at me and said, "Square!' she says, laughing. 'When he came back he showed me the tattoo he got on his stomach. He was sweet. Granted, there was another side, but he wouldn't just snap or go crazy out of nowhere.

There had to be something that triggered that. I miss him,' she says softly.

Although she's no longer recording, Jackson still follows what's going on in pop music. She met Lady Gaga recently backstage at one of the flamboyant star's concerts.

'We had a good conversation,' Jackson says. 'She asked a lot of questions and I felt she really listened to what I had to say. I love how she puts melody in music and I think that has been lost in a lot of music.

It's a little reminiscent of Grace Jones, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It's a little left and over the top, but still good and fun. It's exciting to see what she is going to do next.'

Right now, it's exciting to see what Janet Jackson is going to do next.

'For Colored Girls' is out on 10 December

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8146009/I-eat-to-fill-the-void-Janet-Jackson-interview.html

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