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