That was Broadway’s Dreamgirl Jennifer Holliday singing on “American Idol” this week. Do you remember her? Did you wonder what ever came of her?
Holliday, 51, has been through quite a metamorphosis.
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A showstopper in “Dreamgirls” on the stage with “And I am telling you I’m not going” and “I am changing”, Holliday maxed out at 400 pounds in the mid-’80s. She was making pop albums by then, but the Tony award-winning actress says record company execs decided she was too fat for the new era of music videos.
Holliday told an audience this story, and talked about having struggled with clinical depression, between belting out songs at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts a few years ago. By then she had lost hundreds of pounds, but not those powerful pipes.
In a lengthy interview with Metro Weekly last year that delved into her life and career, she said she was one of the first people to have a gastric bypass, in 1990. Ironically, she said, she’d once received a letter from none other than Barbra Streisand, warning her “never lose weight because if I lost weight I would lose both my identity and my voice.”
So much for that advice!
You know that Idol alum Jennifer Hudson played Holliday’s Effie role in the “Dreamgirls” movie, right? And how Hudson, who was overweight herself, later snagged a hefty Weight Watchers contract and slimmed down, showing off her new body in the TV commercials?
Holliday missed that boat, too. She told Metro Weekly:
”Gee, if I’d only gone up and down, do you know how much money I could have made by now by being a Weight Watcher or Jenny Craig? I can’t make that money because I haven’t had a problem with my weight in such a long time. When I was a big girl, I didn’t get any sponsorships and now that I’m small, I missed out on all that. Maybe I should put on 60 pounds and see if they’ll give me $100,000 to lose it.”
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