Behind the calm authority Marcia Hines brings to the Australian Idol judging desk – where she sits alongside Amy Shark and Kyle Sandilands – lies a life shaped by profound loss and hard-won perspective.
“My brother committed suicide in 1981 when I was recording my album,” Marcia, 72, tells TV WEEK. “I remember I had to go back to Boston to bury him, and I remember sitting on the plane and people were clinking their champagne glasses and having a great time.
“That’s when I had the epiphany that life does go on. It was horrible, but it was my life lesson.”
“Then I had to go and record, and I didn’t know if I could do it, but I sang a Jimmy Cliff song called ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ and, consequently, there was so much emotion in the song, it became a relatively big hit in some parts of Europe.”
While grieving, Marcia learned from a trusted mentor the importance of “hurting privately” – advice she leaned on again when her beloved mother, Esmerelda “Esme” Hines, passed away in 2003 while Marcia was preparing to film season one of Australian Idol.
“I’m a great believer that, if you get lemons, make lemonade,” she says. “I’ve always had good family and management around me, so it was much easier to deal with than being alone.
“And I’m also a great believer that, even though people have passed away, they have never left me. You can’t speak to them the way you once did, but they stay in your heart. If I’m in trouble, I still always speak to my mum.”
Marcia, who is the mother of singer Deni Hines, rose to fame at just 16 when she starred in Hair, later becoming the first Black woman to lead Jesus Christ Superstar and the first Australian-based female artist to score a platinum album. Five decades on, she’s still working at full pace – promoting the new season of Idol before heading to the Sydney Opera House in July for Velvet Inferno.
“Most of my career, I lived out of a suitcase and on a tour bus with lots of guys and very few women – it wasn’t easy,” she recalls. “But, having said that, it just gave me a very strong backbone. It made me realise this is truly what I want to do for a living.
“And the whole star thing, I never thought I’d be a star. I just thought I’d work hard and see what happened.”
Now, alongside singer Amy and radio host Kyle, Marcia is once again helping shape the next generation of artists as Australian Idol enters its fourth season since its Channel Seven reboot in 2023.
“All these kids want to do is what I do for a living,” she explains. “I try to teach them about presentation. Watching the lightbulb moment when you give them advice and they step up and get it is… wow! I remember seeing that with Guy [Sebastian] and Casey [Donovan].”
And music runs in the family.
Daughter Deni, 55, followed in her footsteps with her 1995 hit ‘It’s Alright’, before also dabbling in television, appearing on The Celebrity Apprentice and, more recently, as a contestant on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! But distance means Marcia doesn’t see her as often as she’d like.
“She lives in Thailand,” Marcia explains.
“I visit her, but not often enough. I look at it as like when I told my mum I was going to Australia to live. I’m sure she would have thought, ‘Why?’ But you have to let your children be themselves and do what they want to do.”
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