Sia usually covers her face with a wig, but harsh criticism of \u00ab\u00a0Music,\u00a0\u00bb her controversial movie with Maddie Ziegler\u2014\u00a0not to mention affair accusations against Shia LaBeouf \u2014\u00a0make her all too visible.<\/b>
\nSia \u2014 the singer-songwriter behind \u201cChandelier\u201d and \u201cElastic Heart\u201d \u2014 rarely gives interviews. On stage, she hides behind wigs that cover her entire face. Privacy is her thing. But lately, Sia Kate Isobelle Furler has found herself in an uncomfortable spotlight. And those who know the reclusive artist say she is no doubt pained by it. Her former manager Tim Clark told The Post that it can turn one of two ways: \u201cShe\u2019ll either be incredibly angry or else go back into herself and retreat.\u201d That spotlight will burn brightly Sunday as her film-directing debut, \u201cMusic,\u201d is up for two Golden Globes \u2014 Best Picture in the musical or comedy category, and Best Actress in that genre for Kate Hudson. The movie centers on an autistic girl \u2014 played by 18-year-old Maddie Ziegler, who has starred in many of Sia\u2019s music videos and who\u2019s not on the autism spectrum herself \u2014 and her drug-dealing sister (Hudson). The Post\u2019s Johnny Oleksinski described Ziegler\u2019s performance as \u201can uncomfortably heightened imitation that never rings true and verges on mockery,\u201d adding that the actress \u201calways has her mouth open with a wide grin and exaggerates facial expressions like she\u2019s Marcel Marceau.\u201d It has drawn fire from the autism community. \u201c[\u2018Music\u2019] seemed like it made fun of people on the autism spectrum,\u201d Camille Proctor, executive director of the Color of Autism Foundation, told The Post. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t guess that Sia feels bad about it.\u201d More than 55,000 people signed petitions calling for an official condemnation of \u201cMusic\u201d by the film industry. With criticism piling on, Sia,45, earlier this month said she would remove scenes in which Ziegler\u2019s character is physically restrained \u2014 a dangerous tactic discouraged by autism advocates. \u201cI listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility\u2026\u201d Sia tweeted. (She has since deleted her Twitter account.) It was just two months ago that she admitted to having listened to another wrong person: Shia LaBeouf, who starred in Sia\u2019s 2015 music video for \u201cElastic Heart.\u201d After the actor\u2019s ex-girlfriend, singer FKA Twigs, filed a suit accusing him of sexual assault, Sia tweeted that LaBeouf was a \u201cpathological liar, who conned me into an adulterous relationship \u2026 \u201d And those who know Sia say all this public turmoil is likely taking a high toll on her. \u201cShe is an emotional person,\u201d said Ryan Fitzgerald, a DJ in Sia\u2019s native Australia who has interviewed her a dozen or so times. He added that Sia \u2014 who has said she suffers from PTSD and neuralgia after a misdiagnosis of Bipolar II disorder \u2014 \u201chas had hard times. This will hurt her. She will be finding it really tough.\u201d Born and raised in Adelaide, Australia, Sia came from a splintered family. Musician dad Phil B. Colson was often absent, and her mother, Loene Furler, worked as an art lecturer. While wait\u00adressing at age 17 in 1993, Sia fell in as the vocalist for a local acid-jazz band called Crisp. \u201cShe was amazing,\u201d former bandmate Jeremy Glover told The Post. \u201cWhat resonated, beyond her incredible vocals, was that she was always herself. There was no act on stage, no glitz on her sleeve.\u201d As for the lifestyle, he remembered: \u201cWe were all drinking. She enjoyed white wine. It got her into the mood.\u201d It became a crutch to get her through shows, as Sia never seemed comfortable performing live. The band split up in 1997 and Sia traveled to Tokyo and then Thailand, where she met Dan Pontifex, the man who has been described as her first true love. They were set to reunite in London but, before Sia arrived, Pontifex was killed in a hit-and-run by a taxi driver in the city. She ended up still moving to London where, for a time, as she told Australian Rolling Stone, \u201cI drank a lot and did a lot of drugs with all of his grieving friends.\u201d She also got back into music, joining trip-hop act Zero 7 and signing a management deal with Clark\u2019s company. \u201cShe had an eccentric view on life,\u201d her ex-manager said. The first time Sia met him and his partner David Enthoven at their office, \u201cshe took off her shoes and asked \u2018Where\u2019s the dunny?\u2019 In Australian lingo, that is an outside toilet. David and I \u00addecided that Sia is the girl for us.\u201d She had mild success at first, with a break coming when her song \u201cBreathe Me\u201d closed out the 2005 series finale of the HBO show \u201cSix Feet Under\u201d \u2014 playing while each character\u2019s death was revealed. She began performing at increasingly larger \u00advenues and seemed to be gaining a foothold in the States. But there was a problem. \u201cShe was brilliant at touring but didn\u2019t like it,\u201d Clark recalled. \u201cWe\u2019d tell her a show was great and she\u2019d tell us she hated it.\u201d Sia was also self-medicating on the road and beyond. \u201cDrugs took me down really quickly. It was painkillers and opiates that were a real problem,\u201d she told Australia\u2019s KIIS-FM. Clark saw his old friend become someone else. \u201cWe were trying to organize various radio promotions\u2026 All of a sudden she was insisting that one of her dogs would accompany her\u2026 We told her that it\u2019s kind of not [OK],\u201d he recalled. \u201cThen she would say that if she flies to America it has to be first class. We couldn\u2019t pay for it and the record company wouldn\u2019t \u2014 her [album] sales did not support it\u2026 she became a real diva.\u201d Sia got sober. But she revealed to The New York Times that, in May 2010, she reached out to a drug dealer and ordered \u201ctwo of everything\u201d except meth and heroin. She kept her stash close and, months later, began planning her own suicide. She wanted to check in to a hotel and take the pills. She got as far as writing a note to her dog walker and another to the hotel manager. But a friend\u2019s call came at the right moment, and she changed her mind \u2014and her life. She began writing songs for others \u2014 Beyonc\u00e9, Rihanna \u2014 and it seemed like that might be her legacy: behind-the-scenes hit maker. \u201cWhen she works with \u00adRihanna or Katie Perry, she meets with them, learns their pain points and becomes a kind of empathetic character,\u201d music journalist Steve Knopper, who interviewed her for the Times, told The Post. \u201cIt makes for good songs that capture the artists\u2019 internal conflicts. She winds up being a therapist character for these pop stars.\u201d Everything changed in 2014 when her own song \u201cChandelier\u201d became an inescapable hit. She was everywhere, but no one really knew what she looked like \u2014 after all the self-loathing and stage fright, Sia had found a way to obscure herself: by casting Ziegler, then an 11-year-old star of the reality show \u201cDance Moms,\u201d as her Mini-Me. Former bandmate Jeremy Glover recalled being in a Berlin supermarket in 2016 and hearing Sia\u2019s Kanye West collaboration, \u201cWolves,\u201d playing over the PA system. \u201cMy first thought was, \u2018Oh, wow, Sia is singing with Kanye,\u2019 \u201d Glover told The Post. \u201cMy second thought was that Kanye needs Sia more than Sia needs Kanye.\u201d Sia was married to filmmaker Erik Anders Lang from 2014 to 2016, but the two didn\u2019t have children. Then the singer saw the 2018 HBO documentary series \u201cFoster\u201d and something clicked. One of the teens in the doc, Dasani, was about to age out of the Los Angeles foster-care system \u2014 which can often lead to homelessness. Sia is known for being tender-hearted. She has paid for groceries for strangers and spontaneously gave $100,000 to down-on-their-luck listeners of Fitzgerald\u2019s radio show. But it was a shock when she tweeted: \u201cHey Dasani from \u2018FOSTER\u2019 on HBO! I\u2019d like to adopt you \u2026 \u201d The doc\u2019s director, Mark Jonathan Harris, and Dasani\u2019s lawyer, Barbara Duey, both declined to comment on what happened. But Sia did end up adopting two 18-year-old men who had been in foster care and welcomed them into her Los Angeles home \u2014 where she\u2019s been known to joke about how a song she wrote for Zayn Malik paid for the $1.2 million flooring. Last year, she revealed that now, at age 45, she is a grandmother. \u201cMy youngest son just had two babies,\u201d she said on DJ Zane Lowe\u2019s Apple Music podcast. \u201cI\u2019m a f\u2013king grandma… I\u2019m just immediately horrified.\u201d She added that the children call her \u201cNana,\u201d but she\u2019s trying to get them to call her \u201cLovey.\u201d For the past year, she\u2019s been quarantining with her new family and has said that the kids in her family are \u201cdoing educational stuff that is good for them.\u201d And they have undoubtedly been a comfort as she\u2019s weathered unwelcome public attention. Still, said Clark: \u201cI don\u2019t think she will give up on filmmaking in the same way she would not give up on songwriting and making records. I think she will keep going. I hope she will keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n