By LEONORA LaPETER, Times Staff Writer
Published September 4, 2005
[Times photo: Mike Pease]
Gabrielle English, dressed as Princess Anastasia, the Russian movie and cartoon princess, says goodbye to 1-year-old Zionanna Hardrick of Tampa during a visit to St. Joseph's Children's Hospital. English does charity work as well as appearing as a princess in paid roles at conventions, festivals and parties.
She would love to be working as a princess for the Magic Kingdom.
But Gabrielle English is an inch too short.
And maybe it's just as well because Disney princesses typically have to start out as fur characters, which means she would have to don one of those suffocating Goofy or Pluto costumes, which might ruin her complexion.
Not that she has given up on her dream, which is not to be a princess per se, but to be an actor. For some reason though, she always ends up a princess. That's what they want. That's what she gives them.
"I think all little girls want to be a princess at some point, but I never thought that it would come to this where I would get paid to play one all the time," said English, who is 5 foot 4.
Most people head for New York City or Hollywood to make it big, but some find their inner actors simply playing well-known characters at festivals, conventions, birthday parties and corporate events right here in town.
And so we find the 25-year-old princess for hire running across a hot parking garage roof at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Tampa one day a few weeks ago, searching for an elevator, any elevator.
She had gotten ready at home and had her mother drive her to the hospital, but somehow they ended up on the top floor of the wrong side of the hospital, in valet parking, no less.
And the valet guy started to give her mother a hard time. Until Gabrielle spilled out from the back of the one-door Chevrolet Blazer onto the hot pavement in a pool of satin, chiffon, sequins and rhinestones. Then the valet guy said nothing, just waved them on.
She was wilting in a $100 tiara beneath a beating sun, lifting the skirts of her handmade cream-colored gown so as not to tread on the hem with her practical black loafers.
At that moment, she seemed a downtrodden princess. She complained of thirst and not feeling well. She explained that she was getting over a thyroid problem and she was between doctors and her thyroid medicine had run out six days before. And she had no health insurance.
To be sure, she has had lots of princess work this past year. She made a number of princess appearances at Florida International Museum, first as Princess Barbie at its Barbie exhibit and later as a princess for Princess Diana's exhibition.
But like many things, summer is a slow time for princesses and English's illness didn't help.
Her fall schedule, however, is lit up like a Christmas tree. And she's branching out, working as a queen and a governor's daughter. She's playing Queen Padme Amidala (English resembles actor Natalie Portman) from Star Wars at Dragon*Con, a fantasy and science-fiction convention in Atlanta. Then she's off to the Panama City Seafood Festival, where she'll likely play a governor's daughter in a pirate show.
In October, she has princess appearances at Lowry Park Zoo, Busch Gardens and the Sarasota Medieval Fair. In between, she will do a half-dozen princess birthday parties for $175 an hour.
"Princesses are hot right now," she said. "And it's not just about wearing a tiara. You're supposed to work really hard."
English has embraced the notion that she, like the characters she plays, must do charity work to help the sick, the young, the elderly, the poor.
"When I was doing Princess Di at the museum, I went up to her brother and I said, "Your sister has given me the desire to open up my own foundation and do my own charity work.' And he looked at me, and he said, "Good luck with your foundation,' and that was like the greatest moment in my life."
Her St. Joseph's Children's Hospital visit was for charity. She visited sick children as Anastasia, the Russian movie and cartoon princess. On the way home, she had the following conversation with her mother, Celeste English:
Mom: "In the future, I'd like her to do what she really wants to do, which is act."
Gabrielle: "That's what I'm doing, Mom, acting."
Mom: "I mean really act on TV. Eventually, I'd like to have her get in a movie and have a talking part. She could also be a very rich designer. Of course, I want her to do what makes her happy."
Gabrielle: "It's a crappy business, mom. I'm more into my charity work right now."
Coincidentally, Gabrielle's path here began from her own sick bed. As a child, she had chronic fatigue syndrome, and her mother, who was raising her alone in West Palm Beach, took her out of school.
"She lost so much weight and she was so bored; she was home by herself," said her mother, who worked at a hospital in medical billing. "And Disney was the only thing that made her happy."
So one day when she was 10, English asked her mother to take her to a fabric shop to get the materials to sew a mermaid costume. She sewed on thousands of green and turquoise sequins and called around until she found an American Legion post that would let her do a show.
She passed a GED test when she was 16 and got her first princess job when she was 17. "I was wanting to perform so badly, I called all these birthday party places . . . and they started paying me $50 to $100 to do it." Now she has 150 handmade princess dresses and dozens of tiaras.
She played every princess imaginable. Pocahontas. Snow White. Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Belle. Even the Anne Hathaway princess from The Princess Diaries. She did them all, though she changed their names to avoid violating Disney's copyright.
Her good friends are character look-alikes and pirate re-enactors. One friend gets a lot of Nicole Kidman jobs; another is a Marilyn Monroe look-alike. Her ex-boyfriend is Orlando Bloom's stunt double. Her current boyfriend plays a pirate. They met when she decided to learn sword fighting.
"It's like Hollywood on a different scale," said the boyfriend, Lance Stangle, 34, who also works as a weatherproofer on the beach. "She's going to her shows. I'm going to my shows. There's a lot of give and take."
She's not sure how long she'll play a princess. "I can't do it forever," she said, then pauses. "Well, there are girls in the (theme) parks who are like 45 and still play princesses."
English has an audition Wednesday in Orlando to play a princess at Disneyland in Japan. Apparently, they like their princesses an inch shorter over there.
