Jason Donovan issues 'tragic' 18-month warning and admits 'I made the wrong decisions'
The former Neighbours star's days of cavorting on stage in a leather jacket and suspenders may be coming to a close, but he's finally happy in his own skin
Jason Donovan will forever be remembered for the run of cheesy pop hits spun out of his 1980s success in Aussie daytime soap.
But he’s spent the past 30 or so years trying to escape that legacy, most notably as the leather-jacketed star of rock and roll musical The Rocky Horror show, in which he has toured on and off since 1998.
Now well into middle age, Jason thinks he has about 18 months left before he has to hang up the jacket for good. He told the Daily Telegraph: “I’m 56 and I still look good in leather. I reckon I’ve got about a year and a half left before it starts looking tragic.”
He says he doesn’t quite understand how the camp humour of Rocky Horror fits into today’s more gender-fluid culture. He continued: “I don’t understand the whole woke thing. All I know is that people buy tickets by the truck-load. And the show hasn’t been cancelled. I think that enduring celebration of being different in all its forms strike a chord.”
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The other, less welcome, thing that Jason is famous for is his controversial court case agains The Face magazine in 1992. An article in the cool people’s style bible claimed that Jason was gay and concealed the truth from his fans.
He took legal action as he resented being called a liar. He won the case, and was awarded won £200,000 in damages with the magazine also having to pay a further £100,000 in legal costs. The victory harmed Jason’s career, with many regarding his complaint as homophobic.
Jason later admitted that that suing The Face had been the biggest mistake of his life. He spent a number of years trying to reinvent himself, rebelling against his squeaky-clean image and trying to follow his actor dad Terence Donovan in movies.
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In general, casting directors weren’t too interested in the soap star best known for scoring a hit with a song from Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat. He said: “I made the wrong decisions. But also I became Jason Donovan. That can be bad news for producers who want actors to be someone other than themselves.”
Problems with drugs – he was stretchered out of Kate Moss's 21st birthday party at LA’s notorious Viper Room club after overdosing on cocaine – blighted Jason’s life in the 1990s. And he only managed to get clean after receiving an ultimatum from now-wife Angela Malloch, who he met backstage on a Rocky Horror tour.
After all his various trials and tribulations, Jason is now happy in his own skin: “At the end of the day, I’m just a f*****g soap star from Oz with a bunch of hits,” he says. “I’m not out there saving lives. I’m just keeping people happy.”
