Celeb Flashback: Susie Porter

There’s a certain guarantee that comes with almost every character on the resume of earthy actrine Susie Porter – strength by the bucket load and a vulnerability to match.

Whether portraying the sexually liberated, (Better Than Sex, Feeling Sexy), the manicured ball breaker (Two Hands, Little Fish), the resolute but flawed (Mullet, Remote Area Nurse) or the downright dowdy (Teesh and Trude), thirty-something Porter has garnered a reputation for delivering gutsy performances with a large helping of sass.

It’s not that she ravenously pursues these strong female roles says Porter but more that her own inner strength resonates with those that cast her.

“I always seem to be cast as strong women. I don’t know whether that’s because of typecasting or what,” says Porter.

“I suppose within that strength, the vulnerability is the important thing to focus on. I’m also quite grounded as a person so people get that there’s this strength in me rather than someone whose energy is very flighty. It’s Susie Porter’s energy, I suppose that’s what I’m known for. There are a lot of other sides to me as well. I can be flighty and neurotic at the best of times.”

In The Caterpillar Wish, a story of secrets and second chances, Porter adds another sinewy, vulnerable woman to her oeuvre.

As Susan, she’s a pig-headed single mum who has long given up on true love, keeping men at arms length through casual affairs much to the quiet chagrin of teenage daughter Emily (Victoria Thaine) who pines to know the identity of her father (a ‘tourist’ who breezed into their seaside town years earlier) and dwarfs her mother in maturity.

“I loved the relationship between the mother and daughter,” says Porter who occasionally punctuates her responses with a maternal ‘sweetie’ or ‘darl’.

“It was kind of reversed, so instead of the matriarch and the kid it almost seemed like the kid was the matriarch. I liked the idea of a relationship where the mother seemed more immature than the child.”

“I can never really understand why people say ‘You’re not the normal leading lady’. What is that? A back handed compliment? My ego can interpret those questions as ‘Ok, so I’m ugly…’.”

 

Porter’s reputation for bravery in her role choices has come not only from her gritty performances but from what she’s been prepared to do for her roles; whether it’s frank nudity and simulated sex in Better Than Sex, a lesbian tryst in The Monkey’s Mask, or appearing topless as a barmaid in The Caterpillar Wish (not to mention uttering the sexual advance “Part me beef curtains” in the spectacular misfire Welcome To Woop Woop).

Despite perceptions of gung ho bravery, Porter says these kinds of scenes affect her as much as the next person.

“They do bother me if I’m totally frank,” she hesitates.

“I’ll try and worm out of them at the 11^th hour to be honest with you. It’s not that I regret doing any of these scenes….. I’m not really strong enough to deal with it. People have this view of this strong Newcastle girl but nothing in life is what it seems - ever.

"I mean most people can’t even bare hearing their own voice on a tape recorder, let alone seeing themselves naked, simulating sex on [a screen] 40 foot high. It’s very confronting. It would have to be a pretty bloody good project for me to do that again.”

I love the smell of milkshakes in the morning.....

With a distinctly Australian charm, freckled complexion and a figure once compared to that of a Rembrandt, the actress is hardly your conventional leading lady. It’s an observation Porter seems perplexed and gently rankled by.

“I can never really understand why people say ‘You’re not the normal leading lady’,” she ponders.

“What is that? A back handed compliment? My ego can interpret those questions as ‘Ok, so I’m ugly…’.”

In truth, Porter is far too pragmatic to spend too long worrying about such matters.

“Maybe people do want to watch beautiful people all the time as a way of escapism, I really don’t know. The main thing I can do as an actor is to be as truthful and as honest [as I can] and have people respond to it.”

Acting says Porter, “ain't that hard. It ain’t that hard really to morph into another character and be completely different.”

Since childhood growing up in the coastal steel town of Newcastle, north of Sydney, the actress always knew her vocation.

“I was always a bit of a performer,” she laughs. “I was pretty gregarious. I was a confident kid but I was never precocious. I hope I wasn’t, I don’t think I was!”

As she reflects on her career so far and on the eve of an “adventure” to scope work opportunities in L.A, FILMINK asks this talented actress what her next desired role will be.

“I’d like to do projects that are really focused on story more than anything else and have the opportunity to play characters that I never play,” says Porter.

“ ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ Put me in a habit. Will someone do that one day? I would like to play a nun. I’d like to play an obsessive, religious freak.”

First published in Filmink Magazine, June 2006.