She found fame as a grungy, guitar-thrashing icon of teen angst. Then came the blonde makeover, the schmaltzy white wedding, the Hollywood roles - and the 'sell-out' accusations. So what is up with Avril Lavigne?
Avril Lavigne is sitting, feet up, on a granny-style sofa at the Beverly Wilshire, one of the most expensive hotels in the world, the one where Richard Gere made an honest prostitute out of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. She's looking at me like I'm about to tell her off. And looking like she's going to answer me back when I do.
made her the biggest teen-pop star since Britney. But while clean-cut, weddings in Vegas chapels, getting knocked up, giving the paparazzi no-knicker shots and generally going round the bend, Lavigne - the married, abstemious, financially prudent and, often as not, rather well Today, though, Lavigne is dressed down, in skinny-leg jeans, a yellow Sid wear ). Although 22, she comes over five years younger (in fact, a casting director recently told her she looked well, sort of 12 ).
And the only thing marking her out as a multi-millionairess, with 24 million records sold and stadiums squeaking to capacity worldwide, is a ring with a diamond the This is from her husband of not-quite-a-year, punk star Deryck Whibley from the band Sum 41. Only, these days, being punk royalty doesn't mean slashing your arms, sniffing glue till you're sick and stabbing your girlfriend in The Chelsea Hotel. It means living in a Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills, just up the road, getting married in Vera Wang and making all the I don't care about things, says Lavigne, meaning, you know, stuff.
She house, but that's really a great investment anyway) was on a couch, the price of which she feels uncomfortable discussing. I come from not having money so I'm not the kind of person who's like, 'I need a million cars', like the rappers who spend all their money and go broke. I'm low-key.
I'm really smart with money. I plan ahead. If something happens and I can't work stands for.
She's accused her of dressing like a showgirl and dancing like a ho, and has said that the reason she won't be pushed around by advisors is that she doesn't want to end up looking like Britney. When I ask casually if their Spanish-style house, the first thing she says is, Absolutely fucking not. That's the last thing on my list.
I'm no Britney Spears. What a drag! It's all very negative, says Lavigne of those party girls who live their lives for the tabloids.
It's not something I want to be part of. Someone like..
. I'm not going to say her fucking name..
. [I suspect she's talking about Paris Hilton or Nicole Richie here] some of these girls, that's how come they're famous, because of all the clubs they go to and they need that and want it and they like it. But I've got a career.
I don't go to the fucking Ivy for lunch. She means the West Hollywood celeb restaurant our own Posh Spice loves coming out of, her eyes shielded against the flashbulbs. I would be embarrassed to go to The Ivy.
It's like asking for it. When she says she comes from not having money, she means she comes from a regular working-class Catholic family in Ontario. With an early grounding in church songs, she was spotted by manager Cliff Fabri singing country covers in a bookshop, her only showbiz experience up till then having been winning on stage during one of her early tours.
She was signed to a major label at the age of 16 and her first album, Let's Go, released in 2002. Within months, she had become the youngest female artist to get to number one in for a female artist, on the back of international number ones like Sk8ter Working with seasoned songwriter Cliff Magness, the music was more rock than country, picking up on teen angst, rebelliousness, shouting, hair-shaking, door-slamming, out-of-control crushes, the whole teenage kit and caboodle, guitary ones. Eight Grammy nominations followed, giving credibility to an album that could so easily have been dismissed as so much teenage nonsense.
She even found herself hanging out with Marilyn Manson, for goodness sake. Boulevard to launch her third album, The Best Damn Thing, the second one having done similar business to the first. The world's press has been flown in at great expense and is being fed champagne in very tall, expensive boots.
A record company executive has reminded us what a very important artist Lavigne is, while the girl herself has told us if we don't have a fucking drink, then get one! and is now dancing wildly on a table with two punky, tomboyish-looking girlfriends she's dragged along for the ride. This energy of a hospital ward opening, with I'd just like to thank.
.. speeches and earnest discussions about how hard everyone has worked, but Lavigne is on a total high, totally burning calories .
She's shouting and laughing and from her. It's unusual to see someone actually enjoying herself and her shows it to us again. This (omega) next song I wrote smashed on Limoncello.
.. she says about another track from The Best Damn Thing album hair thrashing, careless as to the fate of those expensive champagne glasses I've always been a good kid, she says to me back at the Beverly Wilshire the next day when I ask about the drunken song-writing, while she wanders across the room to pick at some fruit that's been laid out.
That was like the most I've ever drunk. I've never done drugs and I don't hang out with anyone who does drugs, she says, not in a aren't I good way, just straightforward, like it was a career choice. I like to have a couple of drinks with my friends but in moderation.
But moderation's no fun when you're a 22-year-old rock icon. She laughs. Yeah, but I think it's important or else you'll end up in rehab.
magazines, styled-up to the nines, looking like Nicole Kidman's younger sister and she's typically defiant. I don't know and I don't care, she says. I do what I do for me.
You have fans who adore you and people who don't care for you. It's like anything, a colour or a store: some people like it, some people don't. lesbians in the family, I know what I'm talking about) something Lavigne seems surprised about.
Maybe it's because they're girls and nothing to do with them being lesbians, she says. I have quite a few female fans. I'm of me because I'm a strong woman and I do what I want and say what I want.
Maybe they like that. And they probably go through a lot being gay and maybe they get that message from me: attitude, confidence, not doing what other people want me to do. It's like when she got married.
Most parents - especially when their barely out of her teens, but the Lavignes obviously accepted it either as an someone who seemed never to have put a foot wrong. They were just really excited for me, she says. They know me and anyone who knows me doesn't think I'm too young.
It's people who don't know me who think that. I'm much older than the average 22-year-old. Suggest to her that early 20s is perhaps a little young to be promising, in front of all your friends, family and a God you believe in, never to have much more conventional, old-fashioned even, than the skater punk of her videos.
She says that she knew she wanted to marry Deryck the second she met marrying and she absolutely, positively wouldn't even dream of thinking about having children unless she was legally married and settled down. I'm a good girl. I'm responsible.
I have respect for myself. I see why people are surprised that I wore a white dress and did all that..
. The wedding was, in fact, part-conventional, part-Gothic, with a blood-red marquee and a first dance to something by the Goo Goo Dolls. But I'm very sentimental and very emotional and very passionate and things mean a lot to me.
love, honour and obey. She did, however, take on Deryck's name: Everyone Whibley. I wanted to because I think it's special.
It's sweet. At this point, it seems a bit like her eyes are welling up. Is she getting teary?
No! she laughs. I have, like, mascara in my eyes.
paparazzi and spat in their lenses, all outside the Hyde Lounge where she's I've been spitting on paparazzi for two years, she laughs now, telling the they could sell it on eBay. So, I wrote 'fuck you, fuck you' and I spat on out I said 'fuck you' to my fans. Paparazzi are not fans.
I would never treat my fans with disrespect. These are annoying guys who follow me around every night and wait around for me. It gets stupid.
I'll have five guys on my tail while I'm driving up the hill in my car alone. What if they do something? It should be illegal.
signed up for and she'll have none of it. I've done a very good job of keeping my distance, she explains, but this last couple of years it's got out of control. I watch where I hang out.
I won't go to sceney places. You can kind of control it to an extent and I have. Quite how long she'll be able to keep the paps at, well, spitting distance is open to debate.
Not only is the new album looking like carrying on in the embarking on a movie career, with her first big film, Fast Food Nation, out also out next month. It's something she's very serious about - adamant as I may be a big rock star but I'm not a big movie star, she says of her new career move. For Fast Food Nation, I had to audition, which was very humbling.
.. and I have been rejected before, but as long as I know I've gone in and done my best and I'm proud of myself, then it's fine.
punk. But it seems that's what her brand of punk stands for: doing exactly I'm working for it and earning it, she says, of the film roles and of her life in general, and sounding like a sensible career woman twice her age. I don't want something just given to me.
I want to earn it.
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