Nadia Lim, 29
‘You have to realise that you’re NOT superwoman’
Approaching her 30th birthday, Nadia Lim has a lot on her (very healthy) plate. Her food business has gone international, she has a new cookbook about to hit the shelves, a charitable project gaining momentum, and baby plans in the picture.
But this is a time in her life when the bubbly celebrity cook is feeling reflective. In August last year, her beloved father died, an event that prompted her to reassess her priorities.
“Something like your dad passing away, it makes you re-evaluate what’s important, and re-calibrate everything that’s happened to you,” she says thoughtfully.
It was her father’s stories of growing up in poverty, and his will to help others, that spurred Nadia on to her latest project. She has been working with The Cambodia Charitable Trust to help support the country’s fragile education system, and has just returned from an eye-opening trip to the impoverished nation. “The money we contributed went towards two teacher training colleges,” Nadia explains. “A lot of people think about sponsoring kids, which is great, but the trainee teachers are the future of the education system and need help too.”
Nadia and her husband of three years, Carlos Bagrie, plan to visit Cambodia again next month, to see what other projects need tackling. “I view it as reverse karma,” she says. “Usually with karma, if you do good, you get rewarded for it, but I feel like I’ve been rewarded my whole life so I need to give back to justify it. It feels about time we did something like this.”
With her business, My Food Bag, in growth mode, and a tour coming up to promote her fourth book, Nadia Lim’s Fresh Start Cookbook, time is typically in short supply for the trained dietitian. And as she considers her advancing years, there is another, more family-focused plan to add to the mix.
“The big 3-0 is always associated with looking at your life and going, ‘Ooh, I haven’t had kids yet,’” she says. “Every time I go on Facebook, everyone from school, and my friends, are all about babies, babies, babies – there are babies being born everywhere!”
“I view it as reverse karma… I feel like I’ve been rewarded my whole life, so I need to give back to justify it.”
Having babies of their own is certainly on Nadia and Carlos’ wish-list. The couple’s hectic workload, which includes Nadia getting on a plane at least once a week, has stalled their baby plans before, but they have become philosophical. “We’ve got so many projects going on, we thought, ‘We can’t really look after another human being,’” says Nadia. “But then we start to think, ‘You know what, we just have to – we’ll find a way.’ There’s no ‘right time’. Family comes first.”
The tight-knit pair have been together for more than 10 years, and Southland-born Carlos works alongside Nadia at My Food Bag, which is now taking off in Australia. “He’s been a part of it from the beginning,” she says of the business, which launched in 2012. “He’s a really good cook now!”
Working with food, and teaching people to cook and enjoy wholesome meals, has been a lifelong dream for the winner of MasterChef 2011. While few can boast achieving their key ambitions before their 30s, Nadia is well on her way. Influenced by Jamie Oliver when she was growing up, she knew she would follow her heart into the food industry. “I always had this vision that I wanted to get people to eat healthily, love healthy food; to show the world that it can be amazing.
“This whole western mind-set has always been around what you should be taking out of your diet: ‘You can’t have this, you can’t have that, this is bad for you.’ There’s a list of things that you can’t eat and I absolutely hate that,” she continues. “My food philosophy is about flipping that on its head and focusing on the positive.”
As such, Nadia’s latest cookbook is adamantly not a diet book, but one packed with healthy, tasty recipes that will likely lead to weight loss.
If her svelte frame, glowing skin and boundless energy are anything to go by, Nadia clearly walks the talk. She puts her good health down to not only eating well and limiting alcohol, but also learning to slow down and take time for herself, despite how busy things get. “I think with any business you have to go crazy and put your heart and soul into it, but it’s not sustainable; you can’t keep going like that. You have to realise that you’re not superwoman. I’m lucky I’ve managed to see the bigger picture and realise what’s important and what’s not.”
“Once you’ve turned 40 it’s like, ‘What was all that about?’ Nothing is any different.”
Angela Bloomfield, 42
‘We’ve attached these stories around age and they’re not real’
Having joined Shortland Street as a teen, actress Angela Bloomfield has grown up on our screens. She is acutely aware that the inevitable ageing process, although it affects us all, has in her case been broadcast into the living rooms of thousands of Kiwis.
“I’ve seen myself on telly since I was 19 years old,” she says with a wry smile. “It doesn’t happen as much now but there was a patch there, five or six years ago, when I was sitting in the make-up chair and I just didn’t want to look at myself. I was getting too stuck on the fact that’s me in the mirror, and everyone is watching me grow.”
But as she now realises, what’s most important is her growth away from the camera. A devoted mum, Angela’s focus is on son Max, 11, and daughter Maya, nine. She has had to adjust to being single following her separation from her husband of more than 10 years, Chris Houston, but now is ready to find love.
However, she fears having a fictional alter ego could get in the way of the dating game. “I’ve got my odds stacked against me,” the 42-year-old says with a laugh. “I’m older, I’ve got children, but I also have this other thing where people would be like, ‘That’s the girl from Shortland Street.’”
Angela first appeared on the show in 1993. More than two decades later, she says people often struggle to separate her from her on-screen persona – that of staunch hospital boss Rachel McKenna. “We make jokes all the time about [the dating app] Tinder,” she says. “I could do it as a social experiment, to see if people are interested in me or if they just want to sit down with Rachel McKenna. I wouldn’t say I’m not at all like my character, but I’m not just my character.
“Imagine if Rachel McKenna went on Tinder?!” she continues with a shriek. “She wouldn’t get too many swipes to the right! She couldn’t do it, she’d be like no, no, no, no” – she playfully mimics swiping through photos of potential suitors on her phone.
Despite the light-hearted jokes, the past few years have been a big adjustment for the family, but Angela says she and Chris have reached a good place. “We probably spend more time together than your average separated couple,” she says. “We bring up our two children very much together. And we go out to dinner sometimes and do everything that people who are bringing up children together can do. It’s to maintain the stability, because of course it’s completely destabilising. My focus is to normalise it all.”
As she speaks, she glances at daughter Maya, who is sitting at the table beside her, absorbed in her drawing. “Tell them what you say to me Maya,” Angela teases. “At home Maya’s always going, ‘When are you going to get a boyfriend?’ Well, it’s not like I’m not trying! I think she’s bored of me!”
Although having a very public day job has its challenges, including being watched by curious fans when she’s out and about, Angela feels her years on screen have shaped her into the person she is today. “I think that in high school there should be a mandatory drama year, because it teaches you to get out of yourself and to think of someone else. It teaches you empathy.”
While her industry is notoriously appearance obsessed when it comes to ageing and body image, Angela doesn’t feel any pressure to look a certain way. “I’ve never felt anyone has projected anything on me, as in, ‘This is changing, fix it.’” Indeed, she feels more pressure from society – not least greeting-card companies.
“I kind of blame Hallmark cards for us having an issue with ageing – if there weren’t all these cards with 1, 8, 21 on them, we wouldn’t factor it in quite so much. We’ve attached these stories around age and what it means, and they’re not real. Once you’ve turned 40 it’s like, ‘What was all that about?’ Nothing is any different.”
Along with many women engrossed in the hubbub of family life, Angela has been guilty of putting herself last. “Especially when you’ve got young children – you kind of slide over your own birthday. But you shouldn’t do that; you need to celebrate you too.”
When she isn’t filming at West Auckland’s South Pacific Pictures, or cheering from the sideline at one of the children’s sports games, Angela still finds moments to squeeze in Pilates, dabble in painting and indulge her love of travel. Her other big passion is writing and directing short films, which she works on with close friend and Step Dave writer Kate McDermott. With so much on the go, running a tight schedule is essential.
“If I have a sense of order, and I’ve got things sorted and prepared for the week, that brings me closer to the person I like being,” she says. “If I don’t get enough sleep or I don’t get enough good food then I just slide off the rails. And I’ve got two lovely little people who are only too happy to point it out when that happens to me!”
“We are very lucky if we get older – it beats the alternative! You’ve got to make the most of it.”
Candy Lane, 54
‘Now it is my time’
It’s hard to believe Candy Lane’s professional dancing career began close to four decades ago – until you see her perform in front of our camera. She’s a master of movement, and with her long, shapely legs, perfect poise and cheeky sense of humour it is difficult to put an age on her. And until now you couldn’t, because she kept it a secret.
But as Candy moves into a new phase of her life, she is happy to share how many years she’s been on the planet, because it no longer feels important. Earlier this year she ended her marriage of nearly 20 years to businessman Chris Jones – and she is now looking forwards not backwards.
“I am 54,” she says matter-of-factly. “And I’m more comfortable than ever. I have spent a lot of time living for others, and doing what they want me to do. Now it is my time.
“I have made some big decisions recently and I am trying to live more for myself,” continues Candy, who has two children, Jaz, 21, and Zak, 18. “People say it’s a brave thing to do at this time of my life, and I say not really. I just keep working and doing what I’m doing – my kids are the most important thing to me, and so as long as they are happy I’m fine.”
A professional dancer since she was 15, the TV favourite has spent most of her adult life in an industry where physical appearance and ability is prized, and she is accustomed to the pressure that comes with that. Being in the public eye, most recently hosting and judging celebrity dance competition Dancing with the Stars, has put the spotlight on her even more.
When Candy first took the judge’s seat earlier this year, speculation around her age was rife. “After the first show, friends rang me and said, ‘We are listening to the radio and listeners are trying to guess your age.’ It was crazy!” she says with a laugh. “It happens more when you are well known. It’s just a fact of life I suppose, but for me I think it is because I’m working in a visual [industry] where people do tend to try and put you in a little box.”
A box she refuses to step into. In the final episode of Dancing with the Stars, the vivacious blonde performed a sassy dance routine with her ‘boys’, which she humorously dubs the ‘cougar dance’.
“You have got to test yourself and be able to laugh at yourself because that is part of life. There are always going to be people who say, ‘Look at her, she shouldn’t be doing this, she is too old.’ But as long as I’m not hurting anybody, I don’t think anyone is in the position to tell me that – just as I don’t pick my dancers because of their age. They can be 14 or they can be 40, as long as they have the talent, can do the job and look good.”
She says looking after her appearance is simply part of her job. “While I am in the public eye – performing and wanting respect from other dancers – I’m sure as hell not going to let myself go. I think that is just part of being a dancer.”
Thankfully, she’s inherited some pretty good genes. Candy’s great-grandmother lived to 107 and her mother, who lives next door to her in central Auckland, can still perform a mean cha-cha. “My parents were always beautifully groomed; my mother is 94 and still cares about her appearance. She looks amazing.”
Candy attributes no specific exercise or diet routine to her youthful outlook and lifestyle, but says dancing and teaching keep her young.
“Because I am working with young people all the time it keeps me relevant, and I think that is really important. If I am going to teach competitors for the future then I have got to teach them what is happening now – the styles change, the costumes change, the music changes, and so you have to stay up to date.”
Can she see a point where she would slow down? “When you have got a lot of people who depend on you – and I’m not just talking about my children, but my students too – you don’t want to let them down,” she says. “But I would like to be able to jig it so I have a bit more time to spend with friends and do all the things I haven’t been able to, like sit and have a glass of wine and not have to rush back to work.
“And like everyone, I would love to travel. I have travelled so much on the world dance circuit, and seen ballrooms all over the world, but I would just like to wander with no schedule. When people are dying, the last thing they’re likely to say is, ‘I wish I worked harder’!”
But for now it’s business as usual for the dance star, who is making the most of the opportunities coming her way, and having a laugh in the process. When asked what the word ‘ageing’ means to her, a smile spreads across Candy’s face.
“It means I’m still breathing,” she says. “We are very lucky if we get older – it beats the alternative! You’ve got to make the most of it and live every day as if it is your last.”
“I am very aware the 70s is when life could take a hit at you, but most days I don’t think about it.”
Dame Malvina, 72
‘I now have the knowledge to relax into life’
It’s 1pm and Dame Malvina Major has already been up for nine hours. The 72-year-old opera singer rose at 4am to pack her bags ahead of a flight to San Francisco tomorrow, before heading to her job at Waikato University.
Tying the great-grandmother down for an interview is no mean feat. Between her role at the university, where she is a Senior Fellow in Music, and running the Dame Malvina Major Foundation, which nurtures young performers, there is little time for anything else.
The San Francisco trip is to support one of her students who has landed a role there. Dame Malvina has always hated travelling, but it is part of the job for the treasured performer, who in recent years has shifted her steely focus towards helping up-and-coming stars.
“I started teaching in Canterbury a good 15 years ago, and I thought my career was winding down,” says Dame Malvina, who sought professional help to deal with the post-traumatic stress she suffered as a result of the earthquakes – which prompted a desire to leave the region. “When the earthquakes upended things down there, I got this amazing job at Waikato University,” she continues enthusiastically. “It’s really a good place to be at my age – even if my family don’t agree with that!”
In her eighth decade, Dame Malvina, who was awarded her title for services to music, is performing less than she used to, but is far from settling down with her knitting needles (although she does knit too). “There’s always a heap going on, about 3000 things I’m trying to sort out at once,” she says. “My family say, ‘Why don’t you slow down and put your feet up?’ I don’t know what that means!”
Having moved up to the Waikato, the mum-of-three lives closer to her children – a daughter in Taranaki and her daughter and son in Auckland. There are also 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. How does she feel about being the head of four generations?
“I can’t believe it actually – it makes you realise how old you are!” she says with a laugh.
Moving cities and jobs late in life would be a difficult adjustment for many, but resilience is something Dame Malvina has in spades. When her husband Winston Fleming died in 1990, she showed this same ability to adapt, throwing herself into her performance life and moving from her farm in Taranaki to Wellington so she was closer to the airport. She had a 10-year contract with the Brussels Opera House and travelled for at least three months a year. In the capital she shared a house with her daughter Lorraine, 44.
“I had a townhouse there and we lived together in it for nearly four years. It was fantastic. I remember when she moved in, I thought, ‘I don’t know if I am going to like this’, but it was brilliant – we went out to all the shows together and we walked a lot. It was a lovely period of time.”
It’s not the only thing she’s shared with her daughter – they often share clothes too, just one of many things that sets Dame Malvina apart from her own mother at a similar age.
“[Both my daughters and I] fit the same clothes, and they will often say, ‘If you don’t want that, Mum, I’ll have it,’ or we go shopping together. I would never have worn what my mother wore; we are definitely a different generation. My mother at 60 was quite a matron.”
Her mother died from bowel cancer at 64, something Dame Malvina has become increasingly aware of as the years have gone by. “When I turned 40, 50, 60, it didn’t bother me, but when I turned 70 it certainly did. It took me a little time to realise that three score years and 10 is a significant age – especially when two of my sisters died at 59 and 61, and my brother and dad at 76,” she says thoughtfully.
“I have one or two friends who have been struck down with illness, and I am very aware that the 70s is a period of time where life could take a hit at you. But meanwhile I am trying not to let it bother me and most days I don’t think about it. I’ve also got a brother who is 81 – we are living a lot longer.”
She says there are firm pluses to growing older.
“I love that I now have the knowledge to relax into a life where I don’t have to worry about what the future will bring. I see my children working flat out to secure their farms, houses and positions and I don’t have to do that. I can enjoy life, help them, and enjoy my grandchildren.”
Her lifestyle stands Dame Malvina in good stead for a long and healthy future. She swims three times a week before work, walks a lot, and when she developed allergies in her 40s, she completely redefined her diet. “I try not to have too much fat and I have pretty much knocked sugar right out of my diet,” she explains. “I make my own sauces, design my own pastas and eat lots of vegetables, greens, and soups in the winter.”
Staying fit and healthy has certainly contributed to the longevity of her career. “I always say to my students, ‘You have to keep yourself fit and trim,’” she says. “I was 50 when I played the part of teenage Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, and because I am so fit and active and I don’t have any arthritis at all, I was able to roll around on the floor and kick my heels up and play like a teenager.”
She’s always looked after her skin, even when she left opera between 1971 and 1985 to work on the Taranaki farm with Winston. It’s a routine Dame Malvina learned early in life from her older sisters. “They taught me about make-up and looking after my skin and clothes.”
Needless to say, thoughts of retirement are far from Dame Malvina’s mind. She recently rebranded her foundation, which has 22 committees across the country, and at Waikato University she is flat tack setting up a new postgraduate opera programme. And this month she will take to the stage in musical theatre show From Broadway to La Scala alongside opera star Teddy Tahu Rhodes and actress Jennifer Ward-Lealand.
“I don’t think anyone believes in retirement any more,” she says. “You just change your job.”
Words by: Sara Bunny and Nicola Russell
Photos: Mike Rooke
Styling by: Victoria Bell
Hair and make-up by: Claudia Rodrigues and Chay Roberts
