IT IS not often, says Paisley-born actor and singer Erin Caldwell with a happy sigh, that you get to say you are “living your dream life.”
She adds: “That’s how I feel - I’m constantly grateful to be doing something that makes me happy, and brings happiness to others.If little Erin could see me now….she’d never have believed it….”
Little Erin fell in love with musicals watching them with her devoted gran Cathy Barrow.
“She introduced them to me, we'd watch them all the time - I remember the first one I saw was Meet Me in St Louis, and we’d sing along together, me with her knitting needles, and my gran wearing my papa’s hat,” laughs the former Gleniffer High pupil.
"Now, she comes to see me on stage, she comes to all the shows."
Erin is starring in the UK tour of Six: The Musical. She plays Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, who died just two weeks after giving birth to the male heir he so coveted.
The awardwinning show comes to Glasgow at the end of the month and Erin is excited to be performing in front of a home audience. She attended PACE youth theatre and the Dance School of Scotland in Knightswood, before moving to London to study at the Guildford School of Acting.
“Glasgow is where it all started for me, so I can’t wait to perform in the city,” she explains.
“I owe everything to PACE and to the Dance School of Scotland. I started going to PACE at the age of seven and then I got a scholarship to the Dance School, and it all steamrollered from there.”
She reflects: “I think I’ve known since I was about 11 that this was all I wanted to do. I was in an STV production called Jess the Border Collie, and I loved doing that.
“It’s not an easy career to decide it’s what you want to do, it takes a lot of hard work.”
After a role in the West End production of Pretty Woman, Erin landed an audition for the lead role in darkly comic musical Heathers, based on the 1988 cult film starring Winona Ryder.
She auditioned on the Thursday, got the job on the Saturday and started on the Tuesday, and the show played a “massive part” in her life.
Now she is excited about bringing Six - a dazzling, high energy musical that wowed audiences in the city last year - to the Theatre Royal. It runs from August 29 to September 2.
“Six is such an exciting show, it’s a wonderful piece of theatre,” says Erin, “I knew nothing about Henry VIII’s wives - the only one I’d heard of was Anne Boleyn - so it was really fascinating to learn about their stories.
“Jane is interesting - Henry made the whole country mourn for her for two years after she died, so, as the song says, maybe she was ‘the only one he truly loved’.”
Erin adds, with a smile: “And I get to sing Heart of Stone eight times a week, this beautiful ballad at the end of the show.”
Erin says the entire production team on Six is a “family unit”.
“It’s amazing - not just the six of us, but the band and the crew, it has been incredibly empowering and wholesome, and just really beautiful,” she says.
“After the tour, it’s a holiday for me, I think and then, who knows? I’d love to do more television as I enjoyed it so much when I was young.
“That would be another full-circle moment for me. But in this industry, you take what comes. It’s like a pie-chart, you do a little bit of everything. And whatever is next, I’m sure it will be just as exciting as what I have done so far.”
Of course, Erin’s beloved gran and papa, Cathy and Victor, will be cheering her on when Six opens on Tuesday, August 29, alongside her brother Matthew, and her mum and dad Micheline and Charlie.
“They’re all coming up from Paisley to see the show,” she says, adding with a laugh: “You’ll see them there. You’ll definitely hear them….”
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