By Rose Donohoe

As a skinny 13-year-old, she captivated the world as the star of the Sydney 2000 Olympics opening and closing ceremonies – but Nikki Webster has been off the radar of most Australians in the decade since.

Belting out the patriotic ‘Under These Southern Skies’ in a pink sundress and blonde curls, Webster became every young girl’s hero when she flew 25 metres above Homebush Stadium and journeyed from the Dreamtime to modern day Australia with local icons Kylie Minogue, Yothu Yindi and Midnight Oil.

Sure, they had model Gisele Bündchen stomp the runway, but watching Rio’s effort last week, it was clear their opening ceremony would not produce a Nikki Webster.

But like so many child stars before (and after) her, Webster’s rise to fame was ultimately unsustainable.

Now 29, the mother-of-one and dance school owner boasts a resume that includes everything from a controversial appearance on Dancing With the Stars, a duet with Michael Jackson and a misdirected men’s magazine cover shoot.

“There were a lot people trying to dictate me doing the sexy thing … so I said to mum and dad, ‘I’m off’,” Webster told Today Extra on Monday.

‘She needed to be fearless’

In his book Master of the Ceremonies, director Ric Birch wrote that the decision to choose Webster in 2000 was unanimous.

“She epitomised young Australia – frank, friendly and fearless, an innocent on the edge of greatness,” he said.

When the crop of 2000 Olympic hopefuls was whittled down to a final four, it was clear Webster – who had already starred in stage productions of Les Miserables and The Sound of Music – had a unique advantage over the other girls.

“Some of them just weren’t keen at all about being suspended 35–40 metres above an arena with no net and on one single line, and which was quite safe, but scary,” choreographer David Atkins said.

‘So many beautiful memories’

Webster holds happy memories from her time in the spotlight, posting a message on Instagram last week in which she expressed her joy.

“Feeling very nostalgic and emotional today, remembering 16 years ago I was lucky enough to play the hero girl in the incredible Sydney 2000 Olympic opening ceremony,” she wrote.

“Thank you David Atkins and Ric Birch for believing in me and allowing me to play this beautiful role and bring your vision to the world. What a huge honor [sic].

“So many beautiful memories of everyone I got to work with and meet during the Olympics.

“I am so blessed to have an amazing career following my dreams and working in the entertainment industry – making music, and running performing arts studios teaching the young stars of tomorrow in my beautiful country.

“So proud to be an Aussie and so excited to watch our athletes bring home the medals.”

Post-Olympics and ‘Strawberry Kisses’

In the afterglow of Sydney 2000, Webster was signed to record label BMG Music and immediately produced a hit.

The sickly sweet and undeniably catchy ‘Strawberry Kisses’ shot to number two on the ARIA charts, playing on Webster’s status as a cutesy tween idol.

But five albums later, the singer still hadn’t come close to matching the success of ‘Strawberry Kisses’ and had unwittingly become a national punchline – something she blamed on tall poppy syndrome.

Trying to dismantle her pre-teen image, by 19 Webster had starred on not one but two men’s magazine covers.

“I need something to shock people a little bit,” she said at the time.

But the racy shoots did little to reinvent Webster’s image – so inextricably tied to the little girl in the pink dress.

“It was quite dark and I think that’s why I went to LA, because I thought ‘I need to do this by myself’,” she told The Daily Telegraph last year.

Returning to Australia in 2005, Webster still couldn’t catch a break, criticised as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars for having an “unfair advantage” due to her dance training growing up.

The media storm culminated in judge Todd McKenney giving Webster a paltry 1/10 for her routine and embarrassing her on national television.

Since then, Webster’s life appears much more settled.

The singer opened the first of her Nikki Webster-branded talent studios in 2010 with her brother Scott.

She’s also a mother her two-year-old daughter, Skylah, with husband Matthew McMah, who works in aviation.

Source: thenewdaily.com.au

Can you believe it’s been 16 years since she won our hearts at the Sydney Olympics?

Jennifer Fletcher

It’s been 16 years since Nikki Webster won us over with her amazing performance at the Sydney Olympic Games opening ceremony back in 2000.

But speaking ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics to the Daily Mail, the 29-year-old says that he time in the spotlight made her “grow up a lot quicker.”

“It was an amazing experience and journey for me and continues to be because it was such an amazing moment for our country… being Australian and being able to represent my country,” she reveals.

And speaking of the backlash the now mum-of-one faced after her public profile grew, she says it made her become “thick skinned.”

When Nikki turned 18 she celebrated by stripping down for the covers of men’s magazines FHM and Zoo.

“It made me grow a thick skin. It made me grow up a lot quicker in terms of I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was to prove a lot of people wrong.

“I guess it gave me a lot of life experience,” she added. “I’m not angry at anyone for it, it is what it is and it happens to a lot of people in this country.”

Now Nikki is a mum to her two-and-half-year-old daughter Skylah, and is a dance teacher.

Source: Yahoo

She captured hearts across the globe back in 2000, when she took centre stage at the Sydney Olympic Games opening ceremony.

And 16 years later Nikki Webster says she’s enjoying life away from the spotlight, but will always cherish the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that catapulted her to fame at the age of 13.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics, which kicks off this weekend, the now 29-year-old mother-of-one and dance teacher admitted stardom ‘made me grow up a lot quicker’, though ‘it wasn’t [necessarily] a bad way to grow up’.

‘It was an amazing experience and journey for me and continues to be because it was such an amazing moment for our country… being Australian and being able to represent my country,’ she said.

Back in 2000, the then teenager hovered above Sydney’s Olympic Stadium while belting out the patriotic, Under The Southern Skies.

Wearing a pink summer dress and her golden hair tied with pink ribbons, she looked every inch the innocent star on the rise.

But as her public profile grew, so did the criticism surrounding her.

‘It made me grow a thick skin. It made me grow up a lot quicker in terms of I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was to prove a lot of people wrong,’ she explained.

Following the 2000 Olympics, Nikki signed on with BMG records, with her subsequent first single Strawberry Kisses reaching the second spot in Australian music charts in 2001.

She then went on to star on Channel Seven’s Dancing With The Stars, which led to her finding love with dance partner Sasha Farber.

But despite her professional arts training, which began well before the 2000 Olympics, the bubbly personality was given a dismal one out of ten for one of her dances by judge Todd McKenney, which fans argued was utterly unreasonable.

‘I guess it gave me a lot of life experience. I’m not angry at anyone for it, it is what it is and it happens to a lot of people in this country unfortunately,’ she told Daily Mail Australia, addressing the criticism she faced at such a young age.

The negativity certainly got the better of her by 2006, as she had relocated to the US to pursue a showbusiness career abroad.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph in September last year, Nikki said: ‘I was the punch line of everyone’s joke and I was just a kid.’

‘It was quite dark and I think that’s why I went to LA, because I thought “I need to do this by myself”,’ she admitted.

‘I did question whether I wanted to come back as an artist here at all.’

Nikki also felt pressured by the public to remain as the little girl who graced the Olympic stage.

‘At some point as a young girl when you finish school, you don’t know what you want,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.

Upon turning 18 she decided to celebrate the milestone birthday by stripping down for the covers of men’s magazines FHM and Zoo.

Ditching her curly locks for a straightened, platinum blonde mane, the singer was seen provocatively posing in a tiny yellow bikini on the cover of Zoo.

Meanwhile when posing for FHM, she wore a black mesh one-piece and mini hot pants as the caption read: ‘Nikki Webster. Look who’s turned 18! But it’s you, dear reader, getting the goodies…’

She was subsequently voted seventh in the FHM Australia 100 Sexiest Women 2005 list.

Claiming she’s ‘not the kind of person who lives with regrets’, Nikki says there’s nothing she would change about her racy magazine spreads.

‘They’re beauty shots to me. They’re glamorous,’ she said.

‘It’s just we do it [growing up] publicly and hopefully we do it as respectfully as possible because at the end of the day, I know my daughter’s going to find these photos at one point so I want to be respectful.’

‘It’s a journey being a teenager. It’s about being a young woman,’ she continued.

‘It’s about exploring things and having fun – you get boobs and you get a body and everything changes. Some want you to grow up and others don’t.

‘You can’t impress everybody, I think you’ve just got to be true to who you are and not get caught up in the whole transformation of character which is a hard thing I think.’

Meanwhile, it’s been 11 years since those racy magazine covers themselves, and Nikki has done even more ‘growing up’ since then, entering a new chapter in her life – motherhood.

‘I suppose I’m a regular mum,’ she candidly confessed, no doubt enjoying raising her daughter Skylah, born in February 2014.

‘At times I’m at home and I do regular mum things and at other times I’m at work and at other times I get to do fun things like perform, get up on stage and do interviews. So I have three areas of my life, it’s all very different.’

No doubt looking forward to showing her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter her famous Olympics performance from over a decade ago, Nikki said: ‘She can differentiate between the old posters of me that are stuck up in my studios and she knows that’s mummy’.

‘It doesn’t matter how many years have passed, I remember exactly where I had to stand, exactly who was standing by me backstage. I remember every moment and it was so electric.

‘To sit down and watch the Olympics with her will be a pretty proud moment for me. To show her that you can work hard and fulfil your dreams and whatever she wants to do, to follow her passions and dreams and I will support it.’

Now running three performing arts studios with her brother – in Sydney’s Leichhardt, Minchinbury and New South Wales’ Central Coast – Nikki hopes she can inspire the next generation.

‘It made me very driven,’ she again touched on the criticism she faced.

She added: ‘And very driven with the dance studios to be able to create a place where the kids understand that sometimes even if they’re doing everything right, not everybody’s going to see that, and it’s not a personal attack, it is just what happens’.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

It was Nikki Websters 29th birthday yesterday and we cannot believe it has been a whole SIXTEEN years since her performance at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Nikki has played a massive part in Australian Pop Culture, her performance at the Olympics literally soared to new heights as she flew above the crowd in her pink dress and matching shoes. She then went on to launch Strawberry Kisses the tune that was the soundtrack to every Thirteen year old girls life( don’t deny it!).

Since then she has had a stint on Dancing with the Stars, posed for FHM and ZOO magazine and lauched another single back in 2009. These days the Strawberry Kissed singer is a happily married, mother of one and and a dance school owner!!

Happy Birthday Nikki, you sure have packed a lot into your 29 years!

Throw it back to 2001 with Strawberry Kisses below!

Source: seafm.com.au

Australia has gone through its share of pop culture punchlines. The joke du jour is currently Shannon Noll, who’s become the subject of countless memes and tongue-in-cheek campaigns.

It’s fun. We centre on a target seemingly arbitrarily — usually some disposable piece of Australian cultural detritus — and have a collective chuckle before discarding the subject entirely.

Indeed, it’s pretty easy to forget there’s an actual person behind the memes and jabs. Sure, Nollsy seems to be in on the joke, but it’s harder for a teenage girl to take things in stride.

Nikki Webster experienced this phenomenon first hand. The Sydney native was catapulted into national attention at the tender age of 13 when she performed at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Dressed in a summer dress, with pink ribbons tying back her strawberry blonde locks, the entire world’s attention was on Nikki as she flew high above the Olympic stadium crowd.

It was an apt metaphor for the young singer, who was chosen out of 500 other young girls to perform at the Olympics. Webster capitalised on her Olympics stardom with a debut single.

‘Strawberry Kisses’ entered the charts at number two and stayed there for seven weeks. Meanwhile, Webster’s profile as Australia’s sweetheart rose and she became a household name.

But the child star, who’s now 28 years old, recently revealed that her post-‘Strawberry Kisses’ life was a “dark” period that left her confused and wanting to escape Australia altogether.

“I was the punch line of everyone’s joke and I was just a kid,” Webster told The Daily Telegraph. The singer moved to LA to escape harassers and negative attention in her homeland.

As she contemplated staying in LA to work on a legitimate music career on her own terms, Webster was being told to “be like Britney” and the harsh spotlight became her “norm”.

“People were telling me how I needed to change my career and break through like Britney and change my image and I was thinking, ‘is this me?’. It was confusing,” she told the Tele.

“I was just this young naïve artist trying to make a go and work hard. I’d worked damn hard and I wasn’t getting the reception, I couldn’t understand it.”

“It was quite dark and I think that’s why I went to LA, because I thought ‘I need to do this by myself’. I did question whether I wanted to come back as an artist here at all.”

Webster’s subsequent releases did not meet the expectations set by ‘Strawberry Kisses’, though it didn’t stop her label from releasing The Best of Nikki Webster a mere three years after her debut.

The singer’s popularity quickly waned as the decade rolled on and an appearance on Dancing With The Stars in 2005 saw her copping more flak for having an unfair advantage over other contestants.

The same year, a now-18-year-old Webster appeared on the cover of FHM and Zoo magazines and returned to music with a new, sexed-up image in 2009 with the song ‘Devilicious’.

That single, which indeed saw Webster attempting a Britney-like salacious reinvention, came and went quickly and Webster resigned herself to working behind the scenes of the entertainment industry.

Webster is now mother to a baby girl and recently opened a new performing arts studio in Minchinbury, in addition to her Dance @ Nikki Webster studios in Leichhardt and on the Central Coast.

According to the former child star, she never expected the harsh judgement she received after she shot to fame and reckons it’s just another case of the Australian Tall Poppy Syndrome.

Source: tonedeaf.com.au