Shirley Manson, singer for the 1990s hit rock band Garbage, has moved on from music to pursue her new acting career. Manson told reporters at WonderCon that her current role as Catherine Weaver in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles gives her more of a creative thrill than making new music could.
“I’m 42,” she said. “I have been in bands since I was 15. There gets to a point where you are stepping out in front of 100,000 people and your blood pressure doesn’t change. I felt like I wanted to do something in my life that scared me.”
Manson isn’t going to step away from the music industry without taking a few shots at its demise. “I was sickened by my record company’s approach, which was, to me, essentially an uncreative process,” Manson said. “I felt like there was nothing I was ever going to be able to do that was going to please them. I didn’t want to play the corporate music gig where they want women to make nursery rhymes. I wasn’t prepared to do that. They keep churning out pop hits that no one gives a (expletive) about a year later. The business is not being run in a smart fashion.”
The Terminator gig is Manson’s only acting job at the moment, but she insists that if the show is not picked up for another season, she will not go crawling back to the music industry.