‘I see strength, softness and acceptance.’

Without resorting to Google, TikTok or their CD collection, a generation of Australians can immediately tell you what singer Tina Arena looks like. Her soft face with expressive brown eyes, along with her strong voice, have been etched on the public consciousness since “Tiny Tina” first appeared in 1974 as a performer on the television variety show Young Talent Time, hosted by Johnny Young.

More than 50 years ago, Arena sang a cover of the ABBA hit Ring Ring and a nation answered the call. “I would never have had this life without Johnny Young saying to Mum and Dad: ‘We think that Pina [Arena was named Filippina, shortened by her family to Pina] should be here every week, because every time she is on the TV the switchboard lights up.’ I’m just doing what people really want me to do.”

Australians have listened and watched as Arena evolved and matured from the child singer with the adult voice to recording artist, musical theatre performer and star. But for the past hour, the 57-year-old has been looking at herself and coming to terms with what she sees.

Arena is looking at an image captured by fashion photographer Georges Antoni that will be unveiled on September 5 at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, where it will join portraits of Jimmy Barnes, Olivia Newton-John, Nick Cave and Chrissy Amphlett, among others. The portrait celebrates her 50 years in the entertainment industry and counting – next year she will release an EP produced by François Tétaz, who’s won a Grammy and an ARIA for his work with Gotye.

“I walked in and gasped,” Arena says of entering the gallery’s store room and seeing the work for the first time. “I was a little nervous – I mean, it’s too late to change things, right? I didn’t expect someone to capture me so authentically.

“I see my heritage, very strongly and very beautifully,” continues the singer, who was raised in the Melbourne suburb of Keilor East by her Sicilian parents, Franca and Giuseppe. “I see strength, softness and acceptance. Just accepting that nothing is perfect, it doesn’t exist. It’s being happy with who I am, what I have done, and being a little softer, not so hard on myself. I’ve always been hard on myself.”

With a 50-year career, there’s a lot to capture in a single portrait. There’s the child star who joined the permanent cast of Young Talent Time in 1976. The multi-award-winning recording artist who achieved international success with the 1994 album Don’t Ask, which spawned the radio staples Chains, Sorrento Moon and Heaven Help My Heart. The actor who starred as the feckless Sally Bowles in Cabaret and the polarising Argentinian first lady Eva Perón in Evita. Then, on a more personal level, the mother of 19-year-old Gabriel, her son with former partner Vincent Mancini, a French artist.

Arena hasn’t always recognised herself in the countless magazine covers and photographs but is adamant that this is her. “Boom! Georges got it,” she says. “I know who I am at 57, nearly 58. If I don’t know who I am by now, we’ve got problems, right?

“I was harder on myself in my 20s, even into my 30s. Focusing that kind of energy on yourself in negative ways is not seeing yourself for who you truly are.”

I first interviewed Arena 31 years ago, before the release of Don’t Ask, and met a quieter, less confident woman slumped in a chair in a Melbourne record company office, almost hiding inside an oversized shell tracksuit.

It was a period of mixed emotions for Arena. The upside was the eventual success of the album, the downside her troubled relationship with her then manager, Ralph Carr, whom she married in 1995 and divorced in 1999.

“I believed in that record,” Arena says of Don’t Ask, her rich voice still anchored in a strident Australian accent that detonates four-letter f-bombs with shameless ease, despite living in Paris from the late ’90s until 2012. “I didn’t know what that record was going to do to me emotionally, or where it would take me when I realised how humans can behave inappropriately.

“I was exposed to things that I should never have been exposed to and had to navigate my way through all of it – betrayal, lack of transparency, inappropriate behaviour…”

Following the breakdown of her marriage, which wiped her out financially, Arena took solace in Paris, where she gained fame with people who had never heard of “Tiny Tina”. Ironically, it took a mask to make her a recognisable face overseas – the duet I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You, recorded with Jennifer Lopez’s ex-husband Marc Anthony for the soundtrack of the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro, becoming a hit in France.

Arena’s first French-language single, Aller Plus Haut followed, consolidating chart success and acceptance that seemed elusive at home. She made her home in Paris and further reward came in 2011, when she was awarded France’s Knighthood of the Order of National Merit for her contributions to French culture, the first Australian to receive the honour. It would take another five years for her home country to bestow the Order of Australia on her, “for services to the music industry … and as a supporter of charitable causes”.

“Look, Australians really do suffer from the tall-poppy thing,” she says. “I don’t think we inherently enjoy celebrating people’s success. I believe it has a lot to do with conditioning. We’ve been conditioned in a particular way to suppress. It’s like, ‘Don’t talk about your ability.’ If you do, you come off as cocky.”

Arena broke up with Mancini, who lives in France with Gabriel, five years ago. “I’ve just been two months in France as my son is there, and his dad,” she says. “We all still get along, which is beautiful, but I spend more time here now.”

Since returning to Australia, Arena has found her voice off-stage. Receiving her lifetime achievement award at the ARIAs in 2015, she criticised commercial radio for being ageist, something that remains an important issue for the singer. “Women, particularly assertive and strong women, are muzzled or put to the side,” she says. “There’s no room. You’re 40 years old, you’re not relevant any more. According to who? In whose fantastical world does that concept exist? Not mine.”

During the COVID-19 lockdowns Arena used her voice again, this time to criticise the Victorian government’s restrictions and their impact on the arts community. Her forthright views drew a mixed response but, along with trying to go easier on herself, Arena is no longer listening to the critics. She’s following the same advice her mother gave her when she was teased as a child for her growing fame.

“She told me that there’s no point in retaliating or buying into it, to just always walk away and always be elegant. When COVID happened, I started to see things for what they truly were, and understood that I am what I am. Before I’m able to love anybody else fully, I need to learn to love me and respect me.

“You realise that a difference of opinion from the masses doesn’t make you a lesser person. It doesn’t make you less worthy. Differentiation is a beautiful thing because it’s where we learn so much.”

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There was a widely publicised difference of opinion during one of Arena’s concerts at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne earlier this year, when the singer did her best to remain elegant but refused to walk away, chastising members of the audience for disruptive behaviour.

“It’s not being outspoken, it’s just speaking up, and it’s defending my space. I pay the f—ing rent in the theatre. I’m the one that pays the cheque, so I am going to say, ‘Please madam, if there’s something that you need to rectify, would you just be able to take it outside?’ And I’m very polite. I’m not saying to her, f— off, get out of my theatre.”

This woman in control of her voice and her life is a beautiful thing to behold. She has grown from the little girl who just loved to sing and the performer sinking into a record company sofa despite being on the brink of stardom.

While looking at herself today, she can still take a moment to look back at the child singing Ring Ring. “I don’t know how she survived,” she says.

And in the coming years, the view of Tina Arena might change again. “I’m trying to reprogram myself so I can celebrate myself and go, ‘I’m happy here.’ My faults, my good points, my shit points, the things I’ve got to work on. I might never get to be perfect, but I’m proud of who I am.”

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