SYDNEY, Australia – Sydney schoolgirl Nikki Webster became one of the most-watched faces in the world Friday when she appeared as Hero Girl, the biggest nonsporting star of the Olympics opening ceremony.<\/p>\n
The 13-year-old aspiring actor had the most demanding role of any of the 12, 600 performers in the hour-long cultural segment: Not only did she act, sing and dance, she also “flew” in a harness about 100 feet into the air in front of 110, 000 spectators and millions of TV viewers.<\/p>\n
Like all the performers, Nikki had to sign a confidentiality agreement that meant even her parents didn’t know the full extent of her role until they saw it Friday night.<\/p>\n
She was chosen from about 500 hopefuls, a field that was eventually cut to three finalists after the contenders were put through their paces in the dafety harness.<\/p>\n
“Flying at the stadium for the first time was amazing,” she said in an interview in The Australian newspaper. “The flying is a bit demanding. There’s lots of practice, especially to stay stright.”<\/p>\n
“They took us up very high and we did some swimming strokes. Then I had to sing.”<\/p>\n
Her voice and stage presence made her a natual, organizers said.<\/p>\n
Opening ceremony artistic director David Atkins said the little girl’s journey, which was used to link all seven sequences of the creative segment, was what held the story together.<\/p>\n
She had previous “flying” experience from television commercials.<\/p>\n
Despite her youth, the girl is also a showbiz veteran who, according to her agent, started in the entertainment business when she was 5.<\/p>\n
Source: Detroit Free Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SYDNEY, Australia – Sydney schoolgirl Nikki Webster became one of the most-watched faces in the world Friday when she appeared as Hero Girl, the biggest nonsporting star of the Olympics opening ceremony. The 13-year-old aspiring actor had the most demanding role of any of the 12, 600 performers in the hour-long cultural segment: Not only … Continue reading<\/a>Schoolgirl transforms into flying Hero Girl<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,70],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3","category-olympics","tag-olympics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkiwebsterfan.net\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}