Kiwi nanny Dorothy Waide knows the best-kept secrets of Hollywood’s celebrity parents. Having travelled the world and shared the multimillion dollar homes of stars like Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Russell Crowe and Danielle Spencer, she’s been part of their most private and precious moments with their children.
Now that she’s back in New Zealand after years of living a life most can only dream of, Dorothy (55) can finally reveal how she worked as a loved and trusted “baby guru” to the stars.
Dorothy was known as “Doe” to Catherine and Michael’s two children Dylan (10) and Carys (7), who adored her, and the Hollywood actors wrote glowing references for her.
After she cared for baby Dylan for 18 happy months, the couple wrote, “We have been able to rely on her skill, dedication, calmness and fierce devotion and protectiveness to our son.”
When Carys was born, Dorothy was asked back to help Catherine with the two gorgeous littlies for eight months. Afterwards, Michael described her “enormous sense of warmth and love” in a heartfelt letter of thanks.
“In our busy lifestyle we needed someone who could adapt to any situation and be able to work very well underpressure,” he wrote. “Dorothy fulfilled our highest expectations.”
Dorothy gained a reputation as a natural “baby whisperer” for her uncanny ability to calm a crying child and was nicknamed “Mary Poppins” by celebrity mums.
Surprisingly, Dorothy has never married or had children herself but says years spent babysitting as a teenager set her on her life’s course. Even as she is being interviewed by the Weekly, one small boy can’t stop grinning at her. “This little man has been chatting me up!” Dorothy laughs. “I’m great with men under 10, but not so good after that.”
Dorothy also spent time working as a Karitane nurse, looking after Kiwi children, but the life-changing transition to caregiver to Hollywood offspring came after she had a spooky premonition. While working in Los Angeles as a baby nurse for Jennifer Lopez’s personal trainer, she picked up a magazine and noticed actress Catherine Zeta-Jones was pregnant.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to do that job!’ Then I got a call from my agency asking me if I would work for a high-profile family they couldn’t name. I asked, ‘Is it Michael Douglas?'” she smiles. “And it was!”
Dorothy was so nervous about her interview with the Fatal Attraction actor that she turned up a day early at the hotel where it was scheduled to take place.
“I had mucked up the days and was sitting there in the foyer twiddling my thumbs. I had to come back,” she laughs. Sitting in front of Tinseltown’s royalty the next day, Dorothy found her nerves melting away. At all times, they were gracious and kind to her, she says.
“I didn’t feel nervous because I’d mucked up the time the day before – but I never told them that. “I didn’t think of them as different from any other parents. But I did have to pinch myself when I first saw them because I knew Catherine from The Darling Buds of oay and I recognised Michael from The Streets of San Francisco.”
In fact, Dorothy admitted to Michael years later that she had always had a soft spot for him. When Michael teased her about being photographed with George Clooney and the children, she cheekily quipped, “There’s only one male star I have a thing about and that’s you!”
Throughout her time with Catherine and Michael, she says photographers rarely bothered her and the children.”At the time of Michael and Catherine’s wedding [in 2000], a journalist came to the door with flowers trying to get a story and I just had to ignore her – it was my job.
oostly they left us alone, which was nice.” But she says life was quite different for Catherine, who often walked with eager photographers snapping her every step.
After she’d worked three months as their maternity nurse, the Douglases asked Dorothy if she wanted to stay on as the nanny. She says it was then that she really found out how the rich and famous lived.
The jet-set family travelled frequently and took Dorothy along for the ride; visiting Catherine’s family in Wales, George Clooney’s villa in Italy, Toronto for the fi ming of Chicago; skiing in Aspen and enjoying luxury holidaysin oauritius, Spain and Bermuda.
Stars she had only seen in magazines became familiar faces. “I met Tom Cruise, Renée Zellweger, Julia Roberts and John Cusack. I met Renée twice and didn’t recognise her either time, but she has a great memory and remembered me!”
Dorothy says she has always had a close bond with new mums and it was no different with Catherine. “You’re the support system. With a first-time mum it’s special,” she says.
“The second time, it’s a different dynamic, because there’s a toddler and a nanny as well. There are more people around.” Dorothy was working for another family when the Douglases found out they were expecting Carys. “They called to say, ‘We’re pregnant!’ and to see if I was available. I was in New Zealand on holiday when Catherine gave birth so I flew back to New York and picked up where I left off.”
Michael and Catherine recommended Dorothy for her next high-profile job, as the maternity nurse for Russell Crowe and his wife Danielle Spencer. She met the Gladiator star and his wife at their hotel in LA.
“People think they’re interviewing you, but you’re actually interviewing them. When I looked at Russell and Danni, I said to myself, ‘You’re not going to be like this when you have the baby!’ Everyone has preconceived ideas of what it will be like. As long as you have a rapport with the family, that’s fine,” she says.
She accepted the job and loved living in Sydney with the couple, where she cared for Charlie Crowe for 15 months. She says she wasn’t yet ready to return to New Zealand and when the publisher and editor of Rolling Stone magazine, Jann Wenner, was looking for a baby nurse, she headed back to the US. “I wanted to work for different families. And I also thought,’Well, that’ll help my mortgage.'”
Having already bought a house in west Auckland, knowing one day she would return to New Zealand, Dorothy is now enjoying a more relaxed pace of life far from the glittering events, exotic holidays and jet-set lifestyle.
“When I look at what I’ve been doing overseas, I feel that life is so much better in New Zealand,” she says
Dorothy still keeps in contact with Catherine, Michael and the Crowes. She treasures their memories together and says she’ll keep their secrets safe.
Now training as a childbirth educator, Dorothy admits that every time she looks out her window and sees the sky, she realises how good it is to be home. “I always said when I reached 55, it’d be time to hang my gloves up from working 24/7 with only a couple of hours off a week.
But it hasn’t been like a job to me – it’s been a passion. I just did the hours each family needed. Now I’ve got to slow down a bit and find a different way of life.”
