A Pussycat tale of blood, sweat, tears

Nicole Scherzinger is just a Pussycat Doll, right? She's pretty. She sings. Fame and fortune probably just fell into her lap, don't you think?

Well, no. Scherzinger shares a trait with many celebrities who earn and keep stardom: She has achieved success by overcoming the fear and panic of putting herself on the line in school, at auditions and onstage.

"Everything I've done in my life" could be viewed as a scary leap of faith, she tells me.

But Scherzinger -- her Pussycat Dolls sing Saturday at the Palms -- has seen every pivotal moment as an opportunity, starting when she was a girl singing Whitney Houston at home every day.

Scherzinger, 30, grew up in Hawaii, then Louisville, Ky., in a supportive family that did not have money. So she had to sing her heart out to get into a performing arts school, where she learned to sing, dance and act.

"I had to go to an audition for that. That was maybe scary," she says. "Was I the best singer? Probably not. But I knew that's what spoke to me."

Then she auditioned her way into musical theater at Wright State University in Ohio, where she ignored more anxiety that comes with tryouts and performances.

While in college, one day she drove home to Louisville to audition to sing backup in the alt-rock band Days of the New. She was not daunted: "I had to try something I never tried before, and sing like Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance -- and I had just finished doing Julie in 'Showboat,' so I had no idea what (the band) was talking about."

She won the job, and after her brief time with Days of the New, in 2001, she was toiling at a Lancôme makeup counter. After one late shift there, she drove from midnight to 5 a.m. to Chicago, just to stand in line to audition for the TV show "Popstars," eventually landing in the show's pop band Eden's Crush.

Eden's Crush didn't last. Again, Scherzinger was jobless in her career -- but fearless as a negotiator in 2003.

"When I joined the Pussycat Dolls, I had nothing else going for me. And I still said, 'I will not join this group unless you give me a solo deal,'" she says. "Now that's a leap of faith, because I had nothing else. I could have said, 'I'll take whatever you've got, because this is a dream come true.'"

She didn't capitulate, because she's of "a certain breed" and "species" that thrives in showbiz, she says.

"When you have a dream, it's not even so much a dream. It's your own reality you see in front of you," she says.

"To other people, the fears might be great. But you don't really see them as fears. You just see them as hurdles.

"For people like me, we only know work. We only know: How am I going to get what I see in front of me? What is going to get me there?'"

There's sacrifice in this.

"The only thing recently I felt like I sacrificed was my family and my loved ones and my time for myself. But you really don't see it as sacrifice, because you feel like you're chosen to do this work.

"People think they know all this stuff about you, because I'm in this pop group and they think it's so easy. But if you come and see a show, your perspective will change."

Only now, though, is she learning to have more fun.

"When you first get into the industry, you say: 'This is my opportunity.' So it's all blood, sweat and tears. You're kind of relentless, and you never give up.

"But then, when you ... get to know yourself as an artist and your worth, you start to enjoy it more. And that's the stage that I'm at. I'm starting to take a little bit of a breather and say, 'OK, I don't have to be in a studio for four days straight without sleep, and I can enjoy myself on my days off on tour.'

"You just have to do the best you can to live in the moment and enjoy it, because you have it -- and then the moment's gone, and you're onto the next thing.

"I'm just happy I'm on the train and it's moving," she says. "I'm very grateful. I think that's the key to not getting burned out -- just to remain grateful, because you know what? It's not gonna last forever."

E-mail delfman@reviewjournal.com. The blog's at reviewjournal.com/elfman.