Clare Bowen Reflects On An Unusual Childhood And Her Upcoming Album

Country music soap Nashville has proven popular enough not just to last for five seasons, but for its songs to be taken on tour. Clare Bowen, one of its stars, lives in Nashville, but hails from the NSW South Coast, and admits to being "a shy, introverted person" off-stage. So it's interesting to consider the relationship between actress and character. When Bowen is performing under her own name, she's herself. When she's performing on the TV show, she's her character. What about when they're touring the songs of Nashville?

"Whenever we're on tour, I'm myself," says Bowen, 33, "but in those moments people do see Scarlett in me. They get a little bit of both. It's refreshing to perform [those songs] as myself, because poor Scarlett has so much drama going on in her life, I don't know if I can cope with bringing along all that."

Bowen's own life has been not without drama. At three, her family lived in a Zimbabwean village next to an elephant orphanage; leaving due to mounting civil unrest. On her fourth birthday, she was diagnosed with a rare form of early childhood cancer; and, under doses of chemotherapy and morphine, the "real elephants became pink elephants".

"It definitely shaped me," Bowen says, of her three-year battle. "I grew up with things that the average four-year-old shouldn't see." In the absence of school, her dad would take her to the zoo, aquarium, or museum. "So, I can't count very well, but I know what a thylacine is." This meant that Bowen "felt more comfortable around animals than other people", and struggled to adjust when she was "finally able to go to normal school"; astounded by the kids who "had all their arms and legs, weren't bandaged up [or] in a wheelchair", and who would judge others by the way they looked.

She took respite in her parents' record collection -"everything from Vivaldi to Gilbert & Sullivan, Sondheim, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Elvis, Edith Piaf" - and singing. She started writing poems, and fell into acting when cast in the Australian film The Combination, which led to more local movies (The Clinic, Not Suitable For Children), and a stint on Home & Away.

As Bowen found fame on Nashville, she worked at turning her poems into songs ("like my character on Nashville," she admits), with country vet Buddy Miller serving as a mentor ("he taught me how to use a microphone," she laughs). Her forthcoming debut LP was written during "the little pockets of time in between shooting the Nashville show". Co-writers range from music-biz vets (like Ed Sheeran supplier Amy Wadge) to her fiance Brandon Robert Young and brother Timothy James Bowen.

"It's quite a humbling experience, writing with [others] to find your own voice," Bowen says. Her album, she thinks, is a "love letter to the world" whose songs are "rooted in Americana, folk music, Celtic music". But she's happy to wait for others to define it. "I think I'm going to let other people decide what kind of album it is. To me it's just important that I'm me."