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.

Feature: Geoffrey Rush

First published in Filmink Magazine, June 2007.

Feature: Home Song Stories

First Published in Filmink Magazine, August 2007.

TV Feature: Kramer vs Kramer

Without doubt, Seinfeld’s Kramer is one of the funniest and most original characters to ever stutter and shake his way through a TV sitcom. Filmink’s James Mitchell met Michael Richards, the man behind the myth, in Sydney recently.

Undoubtedly the defining comedy of the 90’s, the gloriously unsentimental Seinfeld tattooed itself on popular culture with phenomenal success. Branded as a show about nothing, it was really about the minutiae of sex, dating, friendship and a myriad other life matters.

TV Feature: The Silence

Two of Australia’s biggest names in cinema – Somersault director Cate Shortland and in-demand actor Richard Roxburgh – team up for the striking TV crime drama The Silence. By James Mitchell.

While you’ll only see it on your television screens, don’t be surprised if The Silence, the new ABC mini-series from Somersault director Cate Shortland has you convinced you’re perched in a cinema.

It’s another in a growing line of television dramas – think Love My Way and Remote Area Nurse - with a depth of character, nuanced script and high production values that rival any quality film.

It’s no surprise then that a top notch team of Australian cinema are attached to the production. Shortland reteamed with Somersault collaborators, the producers Jan Chapman and Anthony Anderson while Richard Roxburgh (Moulin Rouge!), Essie Davis (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and Emily Barclay (In My Father’s Den) lead a talented cast.

The Silence tells the story of Richard Treloar (Roxburgh) a Sydney police detective still reeling from the gruesome death of an informant and now relegated to curating an exhibition of crime scene photos from the 1960’s at a Police and Justice museum.

Added to that, he’s facing a relationship on the skids and has to endure enforced counselling sessions in an attempt to get his old job back. As the photos become his obsession, one crime begs to be solved leading Treloar on his own journey of self discovery.

While it may sound like just another police drama, The Silence is a taut, strikingly atmospheric production that expertly weaves murder mystery, relational drama and film noir into one striking whole.

For Roxburgh, the decision to return to television after compelling performances in 2002’s The Road from Coorain and Blue Murder was heavily influenced by The Silence’s script and talented director.

“I thought it was a really complex script, really quite tense,” he says “It was a script that had obviously had a

lot of work done on it. That’s pretty rare. Also the fact that Cate and Jan were involved in it. I really admired what Cate brought to Somersault.”

Roxburgh’s role, says Shortland was far more challenging than she’d envisaged.

“He brought a real fire to the role,” says Shortland. “He didn’t want the character to be passive and neither did I. Part of the reason it’s called The Silence is because his character doesn’t speak or can’t speak about his feelings. 

"It was kind of a struggle. Richard’s incredibly smart and nothing was easy because he wanted to be pushed. He said to me ‘I want to be vulnerable’. He’s not usually vulnerable in his roles.”

In a powerhouse performance which is amongst the actor’s best, Roxburgh believes it was Shortland’s craftiness that contributed to his getting under the skin of the emotionally muted Treloar.

“I had a really strong contract with Cate from the beginning,” says Roxburgh. “She knew where she was allowed to take it, that I was happy to be pushed around a bit. She’s a very psychologically crafty director.

“On a few occasions in the middle of a scene she would either whisper something to me, or to the actor I was working with. She would slightly change the situation and throw a depth charge into the middle of it that surprised either me or the other actor. There were pretty terrific results from that. She’s a very clever director.”

Roxburgh, no stranger to police related characters – he played infamous dirty cop Roger Roberson in Blue Murder and can be seen as a detective alongside Toni Collette in the forthcoming Like Minds – was intrigued by the psychological stress endured by policemen.

“I’d met a couple of police officers for this project,” he says.

"There was one officer in particular who had to leave the force because of trauma and so meeting him and talking to him about what he went through was a revelation in the way that he dealt with it and the way the police force dealt with it.

“You really go through all the phases of grief that you go through when somebody close to you dies, this whole period of uncontrollable depression, rage.”

But Roxburgh says he learnt not to bring the angst of his character home.

“What I find now, and this is quite interesting, is the only time I take angst home with me is when I think the project is crap,” he laughs.

“That is really when I go home with a lot of angst.”

Indeed, the gifted actor has had plenty of call for home-angst appearing in forgettable Hollywood popcorn flicks from Mission Impossible 2 to the vapid Stealth and his most prominent role as Dracula in the horrifically awful Van Helsing. At least on that production he met his now wife, Italian actress Silvia Colloca.

“Everything has a silver lining,” Roxburgh says diplomatically.

“Although I would temper that by saying not everything! Playing a detective concurrently is infinitely better than “playing the undead,” he quips.

The actor and budding director is heavily in the midst of refocusing his attention on passion projects such as his feature directing debut Romulus My Father which begins shooting this month with Eric Bana.

“I hope I don’t fuck that up!” he laughs.

Asked whether he hopes to spend more time behind the camera he replies;

 “I’d be asking me that in three months time! What I can say is that I absolutely love it so far.”

So don’t expect Roxburgh to pop up in any dire Hollywood fare any time soon.

“It’s just that I’ve come to a point now where I’ve been there and felt the pain of doing projects that I didn’t believe in,” he reflects.

“Even though those projects might be allowing you enough security to do things that you dearly love, there’s a lot of pain involved in that. It’s a real trade off. I’ve found that a genuine conflict at times.

“Whereas with something like The Silence, I thought ‘No matter what I have to go through when the cameras are rolling, at least I can go home thinking this is a beautiful story’.”

This is an edited extract of a feature first published in Filmink Magazine, May 2006.

Star Interview: Stefan Dennis

After finding international fame on the never ending Aussie soapie Neighbours – which he returned to this year after a lengthy layoff – Stefan Dennis has now put on the producer’s hat with the romantic comedy The Truth About Love.

Filmink’s James Mitchell spoke to this local icon about his new career direction.

Star Interview: Gyton Grantley

Gyton Grantley, exuberant with a touch of the lovable Aussie larrikin in him, pinpoints the moment he decided to be an actor.

“I did puppet shows when I was six in grade one and every single kid loved it. I think that’s when I first liked performing,” he says in his charismatic style. 

News Feature: Balibo - The Politics of Murder

On a stark wall in Balibo, west of the East Timorese capital of Dili, a lone handprint is etched in blood. It’s a powerful motif employed by the makers of the impressively bold Australian feature Balibo and serves as a potent reminder of a 34 year old cover up, and the dawn of one of the darkest periods in a nation’s history.  By Jim Mitchell.

On October 16, 1975, five Australian journalists, forever labeled the Balibo Five – Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart of Channel 7, and Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters of Channel 9 – were murdered in cold blood by Indonesian militia after filming that country’s invasion of East Timor. They were claimed to have been killed while caught in a cross fire.

Film (Creature) Feature: Crocs & Shocks

After redefining the horror genre in Australia with the smash hit Wolf Creek, writer/director Greg McLean heads into new, but equally bloody waters with the killer crocodile flick Rogue and takes actors Radha Mitchell and Michael Vartan along for the ride. By Jim Mitchell.

Few Australian creatures represent humankind’s uneasy interaction with nature, as ferociously as the crocodile. Enmeshed in our cultural psyche, it’s surprising that these brutal and relentless creatures haven’t torn their way through more Australian films.