SCREEN WRITER:Aussie soap stars are on the rise, writes DONALD CLARKE
WHERE ARE ALL the great movie stars coming from? In times past, if you required a gristly hunk to sweat all over your latest starlet, you would saunter over to some frightful theatre group in New York or Chicago.
Obviously no sane producer would go to see a show by Steppenwolf or the Wooster Group for pleasure. But pay attention during such an entertainment and you might just spot the next John Malkovich hiding within a dustbin.
Or you could spend time lurking around the stage doors of the world’s more prestigious drama schools. The Actors Studio is not quite as selective as it used to be, but you will still pick up the odd grumbly genius.
London’s Rada tends to produce actors who drone on about theatre being their “true love”, but wave a big cheque, promise them three weeks in Venice with Angelina Jolie and, likely as not, they will reveal a hitherto unsuspected passion for mainstream cinema.
Here's another suggestion. If you want to unearth the biggest movie star of 2013, then have a glance at the latest episode of Neighboursor Home and Away.
Have we been going heavy on the Foster's? Not a bit of it. Chris Hemsworth, the star of this week's blockbuster, Thor, was a regular on Home and Away.
Leigh Whannell, writer and co-star of Insidious, appeared in Neighbours. There's much more. Heath Ledger, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts and Isla Fisher have all appeared in one (and occasionally both) of those dramas.
In the late 1980s, when the arrival of Neighbourshelped fire a bout of "Australophilia" in the UK, it would have seemed inconceivable that this cheap, amiable soap opera could provide the American film industry with its next generation of stars. You might as well have argued that Antiques Roadshowwould make Hugh Scully the new Steve McQueen.
Yes, the Australians were good-looking, but it was in a low-key suburban fashion. Both shows peddled, to non-Australian viewers anyway, a very unthreatening class of glamour. Neighbours’ version of Melbourne was Maidstone with better weather (if you like the sort of weather that breeds venomous snakes).
What’s going on? Well, the first, rather dull, point to make is that Australia is a relatively small country and, given how much work those two shows provide, it is inevitable that a significant portion of the nation’s actors will pass through their portals.
Australian TV has, moreover, almost no visibility in the US. So, the faint hint of contamination that hangs around American daytime soap opera stars – Julianne Moore is one of the few to make the transition – does not attach itself to the former inhabitants of Ramsay Street.
And, of course, with all that sun and fresh air, Australians do look uncannily like Californians. Heck, if they’d just given her accent a polish they could have made a star of Mrs Mangel.
