Rachel Griffiths relishes new role in remake of Aussie cult film Patrick

Rachel Griffiths says the original Patrick was "probably the scariest movie I've ever seen".

 

Neala Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Rachel Griffiths doesn't reckon too much has changed for Aussie actors in the 20 years since she jetted off to the US.

"I mean, I grew up when Judy was nailing it, and Bryan, Jack and Mel ... The fundamental difference," says the 44-year-old Melburnian, "is that I went over on Muriel's Wedding, on a movie that had grossed millions worldwide. That opened doors and it gave me a confidence.

"These younger actors - Sharni Vinson's a good example, or a Poppy Montgomery - that go over with a dream and a hope and a lot of f---king balls ... I really love them for that."

With Six Feet Under then Brothers & Sisters wrapping Griffiths up in American TV land for a decade, she has made the last couple of years "about doing everything different".

"I did Broadway, I played Dulcie Boling (in ABC TV's Magazine Wars) which is really out of my repertoire, I did Rob Connolly's Assange movie (Underground) ..."

One offer Griffiths received during this time during this time was so out of her repertoire, her agent almost didn't tell her. It was a part in a remake of cult 1978 Aussie horror film Patrick, about a coma patient with telekinetic powers and a dangerous crush.

"My agent said, 'Oh you don't really want to do that do you?'," Griffiths recalls. "I grew up watching this movie - my cousins and I would watch it when at my Aunt Mary's house and we'd always scream." It's probably the scariest movie I've ever seen because after Patrick I couldn't watch scary movies."

In the new Patrick, the nurse is played by Vinson and the creepy doctor by Charles Dance. As the matron, Griffiths was thrilled to meet a "gruesome end".

Different again for Griffiths last year was shooting a role in Saving Mr Banks, about Walt Disney's attempts to convince Australian author P.L. Travers to let him turn Mary Poppins into a movie. Starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson, and with an Oscar-friendly January release date, it's a big deal movie.

But for Griffiths it was just "a small, drop-in role".

"I'm playing a fragment of a memory of an idea of a notion of a child's view of the past. So it was nice to be part of it, but it wasn't a big deal for me."

Between acting gigs, she's also been developing two TV ideas she hopes will find a home on the US cable networks: "They're very American, quite paranoid, convoluted propositions."