'It takes time to figure out who you are. I am still discovering things about myself,' says Beyoncé She’s a pop princess, actress, fashion icon and all-round global superstar. So when Beyoncé Knowles announces she’s taking a few months off, it’s difficult to believe she’ll be kicking her heels
Beyoncé is so polite it is almost embarrassing. As soon as I am shown into the room where we are to talk, she pulls herself up off the ornate sofa on which she has been sitting (some feat in the vertiginous ankle-strap shoes she is wearing) and reaches out to shake my hand.
‘It is a real pleasure to meet you,’ she says, with such emphasis on the word pleasure that I can’t help feeling it should be the other way round – the pleasure, surely, is all mine.
Because Beyoncé is American royalty, and an audience with her is not just a pleasure, it’s a privilege. The 28-year-old is the most successful performer of the past ten years, with 64 gold and platinum certifications for sales, and 16 Grammys (13 as a solo artist and three with Destiny’s Child). With husband Jay-Z, she forms Forbes magazine’s top-earning Hollywood couple (between them they earned around £80 million from June 2008-2009), with impressive connections from Hollywood to the White House (Jay-Z is said to have Obama on speed dial, and Beyoncé was chosen to sing at the President’s Inaugural Ball). We meet for an exclusive YOU interview on the day of the US launch of her first signature perfume, Heat, which will be celebrated later that evening with a ‘private party’ (the guest list reads like a Who’s Who of popular music, with David Bowie and Usher among those expected to attend).
Gaining access to the room in which we sit (in the vast old Tiffany & Co building in New York’s Union Square) has not been easy. Security is tight – along with Beyoncé’s personal bodyguard (who is at least 6ft 6in and never more than two strides away) there are dozens of men and women in black suits hovering anxiously. Beyoncé, you sense, has a greater need than most celebrities for protection, not just from the paparazzi outside but also from journalists within – she is so polite and unexpectedly shy that without her entourage she would be vulnerable to questions she has always refused to answer.
Somewhat admirably, in the wake of overexposed media couples such as Brangelina and the Beckhams, Mr and Mrs Carter (Jay-Z’s real name is Shawn Carter) have chosen to keep their relationship private. There will be no questions today, her people insist, about the couple, and most definitely none about the subject on everyone’s minds – the possibility of a pregnancy (Beyoncé has announced that she is taking a few months off, prompting baby rumours).
Beyoncé and Jay-Z in June 
With Mike Myers in Goldmember; with fellow Destiny’s Child members at the 2001 Grammy AwardsOne of the ways in which Beyoncé has sought to protect herself was by the creation in 2008 of an on-stage alter ego called Sasha Fierce – more aggressive, sensual and outrageous than the shy, sweet woman I meet today. Although, she reveals, she has less need to hide behind Sasha now.
‘I don’t need Sasha so much any more because these days I know who I am. It takes time to figure out who you are and I am still discovering different things about myself – as I am exposed to different experiences I think, “Oh, I like this, I didn’t know I liked this.” That’s the journey of life that is so exciting. More and more I know who I am, I know what I like, I know what I want and that makes me feel so free. I don’t need to hide any more,’ she says, running one manicured hand (her nails are painted a luminous metallic red that exactly reflects her outfit) through her hair.
If Beyoncé has been cautious in the past about exposing her real persona to the public gaze, she has had no such fears, I point out, in revealing her true physical self. Bucking the size-zero trend and championing a move towards ‘bootylicious’ (a word that has, much to her amusement, now slipped into the Oxford English Dictionary), she is, I suggest, one of the few really positive role models for young girls. Not just because of her own body (up close, she is magnificent yet still somehow real) but also because of the strong, independent female messages of her lyrics.
‘I think I am a feminist in a way. It’s not something I consciously decided I was going to be; perhaps it’s because I grew up in a singing group with other women, and that was so helpful to me. It kept me out of so much trouble and out of bad relationships. My friendships with my girls are just so much a part of me that there are things I am never going to do that would upset that bond. I never want to betray that friendship because I love being a woman and I love being a friend to other women.
I think we learn a lot from our female friends – female friendship is very, very important. It’s good to support each other and I do try to put that message in my music,’ she says (she talks quickly, perhaps a little nervously) with a smile.
From a very early age, music was Beyoncé Giselle Knowles’s life. The elder of two daughters (her younger sister Solange is also a singer-songwriter) born to Mathew, a medical equipment salesman, and Tina, a hair stylist, she was raised in Houston, Texas, and won her first talent contest at the age of seven. By the time she was nine (along with close friend Kelly Rowland) she had become part of an all-girl rapping and dancing group called Girl’s Tyme.
Managed by her father, who gave up his job and has subsequently become a renowned music manager, and encouraged by her mother (who designed their costumes), the girls competed in a national television talent show and eventually evolved, in 1997, into Destiny’s Child. Their years of hard work finally paid off, as the group achieved international fame and went on to pick up three Grammys. In 2000 Beyoncé signed a three-album deal and embarked on a hugely successful solo career, with spin-offs into acting (the lead role in an MTV modern-day version of Carmen was followed by her portrayal of Foxxy Cleopatra in
Austin Powers in Goldmember in 2002). In the same year she began dating Jay-Z (she had a teen romance with a boy called Lyndall from the ages of 13 to 17, but has subsequently said that Shawn was her first real boyfriend), marrying him in 2008.
She’s as ambitious and driven as her husband (she once said that she wanted a Tony and an Oscar to add to her collection of Grammys) and the couple have such frenetic working lives that Jay-Z admitted their Valentine’s Day date this year took place on Skype. Achieving a balance in her life, she confides, is difficult.
‘For me, balance is always really hard to find. I love so many different things, and to have the discipline to turn certain things away and focus on one thing at a time so that I can give it 100 per cent is really hard. Probably the biggest challenge in my life is time – making sure I have time to be a wife, to be a singer, to be a songwriter, to be an actor
and still have time for my clothing line and now for my perfume. I am like any other woman who has a child, who has a husband, who has a job. I think it’s the hardest thing about being a woman because we have so many responsibilities.’
Buoyed by the fact that she’s mentioned her husband first, I ask if that balance might soon be further challenged by a baby?
‘My ambition is to continue to learn about the world and to eventually have a family,’ she says with a shy smile.
Starring in Dreamgirls (centre)When pressed (I jokingly ask for times and dates), she laughs out loud and says that there are ‘no dates, no times – it will happen when I am ready’. Meanwhile, along with her perfume launch (she has, she says, been closely involved with the creation of Heat, which is as sensuous as she is, and Jay-Z gave it his seal of approval at the Grammys in January when, in the midst of giving her a congratulatory hug, he observed that she ‘smelled real good’), she is keen to pursue her acting career following her critically acclaimed roles in Dreamgirls and Cadillac Records. ‘I really feel I have learnt a lot about myself in the last two movies and I still want to grow as an actor,’ she says.
Widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world, she is not, she says, particularly vain. Beauty, she insists, is about more than just external looks. ‘I think a beautiful woman is someone who is confident but not competitive with other women – someone who is warm to everyone. Because my mother told me ever since I can remember that beauty is from within, that looks will fade, I have always been aware that you have to have something deeper to be really beautiful,’ she says.
As our interview ends – brought to a stop by one of her ‘people’ – she has been telling me how important her mother is to her (her parents split in 2009; Mathew has recently undergone a DNA test that reportedly proved paternity of his former girlfriend’s baby). Beyoncé and Tina have a clothing line called House of Deréon and are so close that she can tell when her mother enters a room because she recognises her perfume.
Granted ‘one last question’ by a stern-looking aide, I ask if it is family that keeps her grounded and if she has any other methods of keeping herself sane while leading such a busy life.
‘Family does keep me grounded. But you know what I do? I try really hard to make sure that every day I have my 30 minutes of quiet time. Mostly I just lie in bed and meditate and think what my goal is. Some days, of course, I can’t manage 30 minutes, but it’s really important to have those quiet moments,’ she says with a slightly regretful smile as I am ushered out of the room and an American TV crew are ushered in.
Later that evening, at the crowded, glittering Heat launch party, I get to observe the Knowles family bond first hand. I watch Beyoncé enter the room in which her sister Solange is acting as DJ and – whether guided by scent or sound I can’t be sure – find and embrace her mother. Tina, uncannily like her elder daughter, is brimming with maternal pride and, she tells me, wearing Heat tonight (a perfume Beyoncé won’t have any trouble recognising).
As I leave the party – and Beyoncé, tailed by her bodyguard, is still valiantly working the room – I bump straight into a lone man in a Burberry raincoat who has slipped, apparently unnoticed, past the security guards. It’s Jay-Z – the other half of Hollywood’s number-one power couple – and, encouraged by his smiling acknowledgement of our collision and several glasses of champagne, I ask if he can tell me the real reason why Beyoncé is taking a ‘hiatus’ from work. He doesn’t answer…
Beyoncé Heat eau de parfum launches on 15 August, priced £23 for 30ml and £29 for 50ml
source :dailymail
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