Tina Cross - Still On Song

Story by Sarah Nealon. Photography by Jessie Casson. Makeup by Sharon Laurence-Anderson

After 32 years in the spotlight, Tina Cross ought to look, perhaps, as if she’s been around forever. But as we sit and talk at her spacious North Shore home, the 48-year-old is sleek in jeans and high-heeled boots, unfazed to be nearing her half-century. “I know I’ve been around a while and I’m proud of that. I’ve never lied about my age.” A self-described “health freak”, she hardly touches alcohol, favours organic food and takes supplements. A weekly walk plus gym classes keep her trim and toned and no matter what time of the night she gets home, she always removes her make-up and flosses her teeth. “I’m really pedantic like that.” Then there’s the vitality – and that just seems to be built in. “Tina’s a bundle of positive energy,” says close friend and fellow singer Suzanne Lynch. “Whenever Tina’s around, you can feel her coming in.”

Cross’s name has appeared in the credits for stage shows and cabaret acts as well as TV programmes. Ready to Roll in the mid-1970s? Cue Tina. Gotta Dance TV special with the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company in 1983? She was there too. She has strutted her stuff around Australia with the Village People and been a support singer for huge stars like Tom Jones, Neil Sedaka and Sammy Davis Jnr. Her voice has hit the rafters in high-energy musicals like The Rocky Horror Show, Cats, and Chicago (rave reviews there), she sang the original Shortland Street theme song and has enchanted vast crowds at Christmas in the Park concerts.

She played Beth Heke in the stage production of Once Were Warriors, has belted out songs at balls and glittering corporate events up and down the country, and was a vocal coach for TV2’s reality show, So You Want To Be a Popstar?

But one of her most illustrious moments – and one she was least expecting – occurred this year when she was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. It was a day made even more special when she discovered the Governor General had once known her late father, Joseph Prince Cross.

He told her how proud her dad would have been to see her so honoured. “In all honesty I was gobsmacked at getting the award. I still don’t know who nominated me.”

Raised in Otara by a Maori father and a Maori-Croatian mother, she was one of seven children. Joseph was an ex-navy officer whose later career moves included periods as a fisheries inspector and a bus driver. When Tina was 11 the family moved to Kaitaia, because her grandfather lived there and was very ill with cancer. “My mum, Phyllis, was the oldest of his children and had to be the minder. He’d been told he only had a short time to live but he lived another 27 years.”

Back in Auckland three years later, Tina fetched up at Penrose High School and the beginnings of her musical career. “I was in the sixth form and in a band called Chalk Dust. Ray Columbus auditioned us for [TV talent show] Opportunity Knocks. That was how I started.” Despite having a natural ear for music and a powerful voice, Cross did not envisage earning her living from music.

“I had a guitar chucked at me at very young age and I fiddled around with chords but I thought I would be a social worker when I left school. I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up saying, ‘Mum, I want to sing, I want to dance.’ In fact I used to have to be pushed forward. I didn’t have the ambition.”

Yet, by the time she was 23, Cross had recorded two albums. She won the Pacific Song Contest with the song Nothing But Dreams, was a regular on television shows and had become a household name.

“Light entertainment was huge on telly then and I had lots of exposure, but it got to the point where I felt like I had run out of room and needed more experience.”

Keen to spread her wings, she shifted to Sydney in 1981 and spent the next nine years in Australia. She sang on the cabaret circuit, on television shows hosted by the likes of Mike Walsh and Bert Newton and, as one half of the pop duo, Koo De Tah, scored a Top 10 hit in the Aussie pop charts with the song Too Young for Promises.

But when show biz began to take a toll on her health, Cross knew she wasn’t cut out for the rock ‘n’ roll scene. “I wanted to be a rock chick, but I really struggled because I wasn’t suited to the partying, touring, drinking and late nights. I used to get sick and run down. I couldn’t live the lifestyle.

“People kept saying to me, ‘Why aren’t you doing musical theatre?’ and I remember saying, ‘I can’t imagine doing the same thing night after night.’ And yet when I did my first show in 1995, playing Columbia in Rocky Horror, I realised it was exactly what I should have been doing. I loved it.”

Tina came back to New Zealand in 1990. By now she had a husband, Wayne Sullivan, and a baby son, Sean. It was a move that meant starting all over again. “I remember thinking, ‘Does anyone remember me?’ I’d never had a day job in my life, so I put the feelers out and teamed up with Suzanne Lynch for a while and we sang in a band for a few years. I’d had a great time in Sydney, but it was good to be back home.”

The couple’s second child, Leah, came along in 1993 and while Cross loved motherhood, show biz kept calling. She landed a string of stage show roles and is still in demand today. She and Wayne, a successful businessman in the building trade, have now been wed almost 20 years. They met when she was just 22 and singing at a hotel in Apia, Samoa.

“He was sailing back to New Zealand on a yacht with some friends and his parents were staying at the hotel. His mother would say to me, ‘My son is due here any day, dear. I would really love you to meet him.’ “He had long, unkempt hair and was having the time of his life sailing all over the world. He didn’t know me from a bar of soap, which was wonderful.”

Photographs of their children, now aged 17 and 14, grace the fridge and the bookshelf. Her father died at the age of 52 when Tina was 23. Her mother was 49 and never married again. She now lives on the Gold Coast. Tina is looking forward now to a summer of fun as one of the Lady Killers quartet.

What’s the secret of her longevity in such a fickle business?

“Reinvention,” she declares. “I’ve done the early days on New Zealand television, been in a pop band in Australia, had children, done musical theatre and now it’s time for the next phase. “I need to go back to my roots. I need to fulfil the Maori in me.” She is determined to learn te reo, and has recently joined the Maori Women’s Welfare League.

As a successful Maori woman from Otara, she has, in a sense, already broken the mould and is keen to inspire others. Her late aunt, Dame Mira Szaszy, the first Maori woman university graduate, was involved with the Maori Women’s Welfare League. “I’ve been thinking about her a lot and feel like

I’ve got a bit of a calling with her saying, ‘You need to pick up where I left off.’” She has the drive and a belief that anything is possible. “There is a big, wide open world out there and there isn’t anything we can’t do if we put our minds to it.”

And don’t expect her to shy away from the spotlight just yet. “I could be singing in little wee jazz bar when I’m 65 – if someone will employ me.”

Reprinted by permission. Copyright 2008 Plenty magazine Summer 2008 published for Hanover Group. Subscribe to Plenty today.

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