CHERYL COLE:SHE'S THE HERMIT OF HOLLYWOOD!

Cheryl Cole: She’s the hermit of
Hollywood – never going out, living on room service and
hiding behind her sunglasses. Is this really the best way to relaunch her career.

All work, no play: Cheryl on her way to the Hollywood recording studio hiding behind dark sunglasses

It is shortly before 7am and a slim woman dressed in black exercise gear slips out of Hollywood’s Sunset Marquis hotel and into a black Range Rover.
She is driven three miles to an exclusive apartment block where she disappears inside – emerging an hour later with her hair damp from a work-out.
A lone paparazzo follows her every move, but he has to admit: ‘It’s a waste of time. She never does anything. She is the most boring woman in the world.’
It is certainly not a description normally associated with Cheryl Cole: a celebrity never out of the headlines in Britain, whether it be for her turbulent on-off relationship with her ex, footballer Ashley Cole, or her falling out with Simon Cowell when he dumped her as a judge from the American X Factor in May.
For the past month, Cheryl has been leading a hermit-like existence at the five-star hotel off Sunset Strip, apparently in a desperate effort to ‘crack’ the American market and prove Cowell wrong.
Cheryl is attempting to record a new album and the Sunset Marquis – frequented by stars including Justin Timberlake, Bono and Robbie Williams – has the state-ofthe- art Nightbird recording studio in the basement.
It helps that all staff members sign a confidentiality agreement. Cheryl is determined to maintain a low profile, even though, ironically, few Americans know who she is.

Home: The Sunset Marquis hotel where Cheryl has been staying that has a recording studio in the basement

A source at the hotel said: ‘It’s become a joke among the staff that, of all the celebrities who stay here, she is the most privacy obsessed, even though she has no profile at all.’
Indeed, since the humiliated 28-year-old arrived at the hotel last month to lick her wounds, she has become such a recluse that she is known as ‘Cheryl Mole’.
‘She is as dull as ditchwater,’ said one photographer. ‘She never does anything except go to the gym, lie by the pool and work.’
Cheryl has not been photographed in public since she arrived back in Los Angeles at the start of last month with her Girls Aloud bandmate Kimberley Walsh. Kimberley left after a short stay, leaving Cheryl in the ‘care’ of her younger brother Garry Tweedy, 23.

Public profile: Cheryl at a film premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year, left and right, arriving for the British Television Awards at the O2 arena in Greenwich, London last year

Oddly, Cheryl has chosen not to stay in the £2 million apartment she bought earlier this year – on the Avenue Of The Stars in Century City.
Instead, she prefers to be close to the recording studio, paying £3,500 a night for one of the hotel’s villas which, as befits her grand ambitions, is 3,200 square feet of luxury, with a private cinema and a 24-hour butler.
The two-storey building nestles in hotel gardens filled with palms, colourful bougainvillea and honeysuckle.
The jokey motto of the Sunset Marquis is: ‘If we were any more Hollywood our pool would be shallow at both ends.’

Cheryl with Ashley Cole, left and American manager, Will.i.am from the Black eyed Peas, right

When it comes to her morning exercise regime, however, Cheryl always takes a car to her apartment block.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want hotel guests to see her sweat,’ said a source at the Sunset Marquis hotel.
‘No one here in LA knows who Cheryl Cole is, which makes her behaviour even weirder.

Little black dress: Cheryl arriving for the 2011 National Television Awards at the O2 Arena in Greenwich, London

‘We are used to seeing big stars here. U2 come here all the time, Steve Tyler was in last week. Mick Jagger always stays here when he’s in town.
‘The hotel is steps away from Sunset Strip and tons of restaurants, clubs and bars, but Cheryl and Garry stay in their suite.
Most of the time she orders food from room service. She gets oatmeal, fruit and salads and he’ll go for a burger and beer. She always over-tips so the room-service guys fight over who gets to serve her.
‘They occasionally eat in the restaurant. The pool is private and she spends a lot of time there although, again, it is odd as she will cover her tummy with a towel, almost like she’s embarrassed or hiding her figure,
which is nuts as she’s superskinny.

Judges: Cheryl with Simon Cowell on The X Factor

'She chain-smokes Marlboros and goes to the spa. She always wears dark sunglasses, even in the morning when it’s cloudy.’
However, last weekend she was spotted having a rare drink – tequila – in
the hotel’s Whisky Bar, which is run by Cindy
Crawford’s husband Rande Gerber. She was with R&B superstar Usher, a sighting that prompted speculation that he is collaborating on Cheryl’s new album, along with her mentor and American manager manager Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas.
The lacklustre performance so far of her Girls Aloud bandmate Nadine
Coyle doesn’t seem to have deterred Cheryl in her quest for Stateside
stardom. Irish-born Nadine has spent the past three years trying to break into the American market, but without success.

Cheryl far right with the X-Factor judging panel: Steve Jones, Nicole Scherzinger, L.A Reid, Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell at the 2011 Fox Upfront at Wollman Rink in Central Park, New York in May this year.

Nadine, who had been living in California – she owns Nadine’s Irish Mist, a pub in Sunset Beach an hour south of LA – has recently moved to New York in yet another attempt to recreate her British success.
She was recently photographed performing in a New York gay bar,
which was described by a music industry insider as ‘a last gasp of
desperation’.
Cheryl is determined to outshine her former bandmate – and she has
some powerful friends in Hollywood.  Will.i.am has called her ‘one of the most talented singers I have ever worked with’ and in recent weeks even the frosty relations with
Cowell have appeared to thaw. It is said that once Will.i.am is happy with the new songs she is recording, he is planning to host a party to formally
introduce Cheryl to Hollywood.
He has said: ‘Once people get to know her and hear how good she is,
I know she will be a huge success. She is one of the hardest workers I
have met.’

Cheryl at a party with Ashley Cole, left and right, arriving at the Sanderson hotel in London earlier this month to celebrate her birthday

Meanwhile, a source close to Cheryl attempted to explain her
decision to hide away: ‘She has been humiliated and hurt.
'People have written her off. She is determined to prove everyone wrong. She is not going out because her sole focus is her work.’
Someone who socialised with Cheryl before she decamped to LA
said: ‘She isn’t the most forthcoming of people. I don’t think she likes
socialising unless it is to do with work.
She’ll work a red carpet because that promotes 'brand Cheryl' but when she has nothing to sell, she is rather dull.’
How long Cheryl stays in America remains to be seen. A rumoured rapprochement with her estranged husband disintegrated two weeks ago when a series of women revealed they had been intimate with the England player while he was attempting to win back his wife.
Louis Walsh, a judge on The X Factor, likes to say of Cheryl that she ‘may look like a Barbie doll, but beneath that exterior there is an iron maiden’.
Maybe it is appropriate, then, that Cheryl’s album is taking shape in a
studio once used by the heavy metal band. ‘Iron Maiden always stay
here,’ laughed the hotel source. ‘But I can tell you they are a lot more fun
than Cheryl!