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."

Rachel Griffiths pipped for PM cameo

 

Actress Rachel Griffiths at the QT Hotel, Sydney / Picture: Picture: Bradley Hunter Source: News Limited

 

 

Jonathon Moran, The Daily Telegraph, reports

She has been one of our most successful acting exports and last night Rachel Griffiths threw her weight behind the new Royal Randwick grandstand.

The Academy Award- nominated actress was among a legion of A-listers, including international model Nicole Trunfio, who rolled out to open the Australian Turf Club's $150 million jewel with a ritzy gala dinner and horse show.

Tipped to cost $500,000, the extravagant party celebrated the official opening of the five-level venue, designed by Fitzpatrick + Partners.

Griffiths' appearance at the social occasion of the season comes amid rumours that she may be playing former prime minister Julia Gillard in a biopic.

Going by the actress's coy reaction to Confidential's questions, a script may already be in the works.

"No comment," she said, raising her eyebrow before adding: "I'd find it interesting to play someone that is so liked by those close to her but such a controversial figure as you get further away and to try and bridge those things I would find fascinating."

Pulling off Gillard's trademark twang may require some work: "The accent would be a challenge."

Based in Melbourne, Griffiths has been in town this week to promote her first horror film, Patrick, a remake of the 1978 classic. It is in cinemas on October 17

Herculean effort from Twilight star Kellan Lutz

Kellan Lutz with Sharni Vinson. Source: The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph reports

Honorary Sydneysider and Twilight hunk Kellan Lutz has landed a breakout role, nabbing the lead in the upcoming multimillion-dollar action epic Hercules 3D.

Lutz, the long-time boyfriend of Shire gal Sharni Vinson, beat out a slew of other actors for the role.

Director Renny Harlin will begin filming the $70 million flick in Bulgaria next month.

"It takes more than a good physique to portray the most legendary, mythological personality in history, and Kellan has exactly that: personality," Harlin told The Hollywood Reporter.

Vinson recently completed the Aussie horror flick Patrick opposite Rachel Griffiths.

Blockbuster Aussies making home movies

On set during shooting of the film 'The Great Gatsby' at White Bay in Sydney. Picture: Stephen Cooper Source: The Daily Telegraph

Vicky Roach, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Cashed-up Australian film makers are enticing a growing number of our A-list exports back home to work, according to production figures released yesterday by Screen Australia that reveal a bumper year for the local industry.

Toni Collette, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Sam Worthington and Xavier Samuel all made $8-$30 million films in Australia in the last financial year.

When the two big studio-funded blockbusters - Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby and Stuart Beattie's I, Frankenstein - are included in the mix, Australian feature production totalled $296 million in 2011/12, the second highest figure on record.

And the trend looks set to continue in 2012/2013 with Rachel Griffiths, Joel Edgerton, Mia Wasikowska and Guy Pearce all confirmed to appear in projects green-lit for the coming months, alongside high profile international imports such as Robert Pattinson and Ewan McGregor.

"This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern," said Screen Australia's chief executive Ruth Harley.

"And it's because the films are of sufficent scale to attract this major talent."

The increased budgets are also luring our established filmmakers back home.

Before shooting Mental with Collette in Queensland last year, PJ Hogan (Peter Pan, Confessions of A Shopaholic) hadn't made a film in Australia since Muriel's Wedding (1994).

And honorary Australian John Curran, who began work on the Robyn Davidson story Tracks in SA earlier this month with Wasikowska in the lead role, hadn't worked here since Praise (1998).

After the international success of his crime thriller Animal Kingdom, director David Michod could have shot his follow up anywhere in the world. He has opted to shoot his futuristic Western The Rover, with Pearce and Pattinson, in SA early next year.

In the past five years, the number of Australian features being made for between $8 and $30 million has more than doubled (to an average of seven per year), according to figures provided by Screen Australia to complement their annual drama report released today (Friday).

This coincides directly with the introduction of the Federal Government's Producer's Offset scheme.

"It's not that everybody is putting more money in their pocket. These are ambitious films," said Harley

The actual number of films (28) produced in 2011/12, however, was significantly down on the five year average (34).

Harley identified this as a shift from quantity to quality.

There were parallels in television where 2011/2102 also saw a strong performance in high-end adult dramas such as Underground: The Julian Assange Story , Howzat and Puberty Blues.

"The trend again is towards higher production values, higher budgets," said Harley.

"There are fewer hours and more money spent. This is resulting in fantastic, quality drama."

Q&A with Rachel Griffiths

Rachel Griffiths in Underground.

Paul Kalina, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

What did you make of Underground when you read the script?

It's really quite a critical study for me. Apart from the giant question, which was there from the moment Julian stepped onto the world stage - which is ''What makes a man like that?'' - it's very clever. It's not trying to tell a big story. It's a fragment of a biography. It focuses on a critical point.

What did it tell you about how much activism has changed?

For me, sociologically and historically, what's interesting is the schism in time between an organic and analog activism, represented by Christine parading outside an embassy trying to draw attention to what she feels is a wrong, and reaching what Julian sees, in the movie, as a certain kind of futility, the energy of the baby-boomer optimism waning in its ageing years - the voices aren't as clear, the feelings between people to create protest aren't as strong. A point where he recognises a new activism of information in a digital age.

You have protested yourself against gambling in Melbourne.

I did an incredibly analog protest at Crown. It couldn't have been more analog. [That was] old-school protesting. It goes back to the mediaeval girl on a white horse, naked, protesting a tax. It's ancient and it's very female because it requires community. It uses voice and body and organisation. But in this moment, in Julian's mind's eye, the future that he can see is one where the power to protest lies in disseminating information and using it against those that want to keep it.

Do you think it works?

If we move forward to the Arab Spring, to how Twitter is being used in Iran, to non-traceable satellite phone technology being used so massacres in Syria cannot be kept from either the West or their own people, it's been a more powerful tool. It's destroying secrecy. How many boys are being liberated because they're finding out they weren't the only one being molested by their parish priest? I think that is so positive. It's very masculine, it's digital, unemotional and it's the strength and weakness of Julian. I don't … believe all information should be in the public arena, but who decides? Who has that power?

Portrait of a teen hacker

Alex Williams, who plays Julian Assange in Underground, won the part in his first audition after graduating from drama school.

Paul Kalina, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Julian Assange. While the producer of Channel Ten's feature-length biopic chooses her words carefully as she shows the Green Guide around one of the Melbourne Underground locations that's doubling as hippie outpost Emerald circa 1979, actor Anthony LaPaglia just can't help himself

Immersed in a dog-eared paperback in his private trailer, LaPaglia is happy to share his views about the controversial WikiLeaks founder. He believes that far from being the traitor that many world leaders insist him to be, Assange is a beacon of light for exposing sensitive military secrets the public has the right to know about.

The Adelaide-born actor, who has spent most of the past two decades working in the US, proffers his own list of traitors who deserve to be put on trial for war crimes. It's a list that includes senior figures of past and present US governments.

LaPaglia says he would love to meet and talk to Assange; so, too - albeit for entirely different reasons - does Detective Ken Roberts, LaPaglia's character in Underground: The Julian Assange Story.

Roberts is a shaggy cop who's about to discover just how ill-equipped he is to tackle the new frontier of cyber crime. The irony of playing Assange's would-be nemesis isn't lost on LaPaglia.

With a blockbuster movie still years away - last year Steven Spielberg acquired the rights to WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding - Matchbox Pictures was interested in developing a quick-turnaround film about Assange.

To circumvent the thorny legal issues that surround Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, the producers decided to focus on a pivotal two-year span of his teenage years, a period defined by momentous events in Assange's personal life and his initiation into the clandestine world of computer hacking.

As documented in Suelette Dreyfus' 1997 book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier, Assange, using the pseudonym Mendax, first came to the attention of authorities in the late 1980s, when he and a posse of international hackers infiltrated what were supposed to be secure websites.

As the film tells it, their modus operandi was to look around but not steal anything. But having stumbled upon military intelligence that anticipated the civilian casualties of the first Gulf War, the experience galvanised Assange into his next act.

Writ large in this small slice of Assange's life are the larger themes that dominate the current debates about him and WikiLeaks.

For LaPaglia, Underground is an opportunity for audiences to engage with a perspective that challenges the one-sided profiles that have emerged since Assange went into hiding following the publication of classified Pentagon material and allegations of sex offences in Sweden, for which formal charges are yet to be made.

Playing Assange is newcomer Alex Williams, who landed the role after his first audition since graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at the end of last year. With his cleanly parted fair hair and soft voice, Williams bears an uncanny resemblance to Assange.

To portray him, Williams wanted to understand as much as he could about Assange's activities as a fledgling hacker. But he also wanted to detach himself from the contemporary figure.

''There's another 20 years of hacking and going around the world, dealing with journalists and governments,'' Williams says. ''He's much freer in this. I didn't want to play a 20-year-old or 40-year-old Julian Assange, I just wanted to play him as a teenager.''

Assange, he says, was ''an intense dude'' who saw the internet as a ''whole new frontier of exploration''.

Unlike the stereotype of computer buffs as nerdy, friendless misfits, he and his fellow hackers were regarded as cool - the punks of their day.

Rachel Griffiths, who plays Assange's mother, Christine, has little doubt of the defining role his mother played in nurturing his rebelliousness and moral backbone. Assange's itinerant childhood was anything but conventional or cosseted, and Griffiths believes the young Assange was inspired by the activism of his mother, who was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. She, in turn, was impressed with his developing political conscience.

''There's part of her that's the true believer, but the argument that [attending rallies] is not a powerful way to lobby must have crossed her mind,'' Griffiths says. ''I think she's in awe of the possibilities … of a world where you can tweet a revolution, and in which it's becoming increasingly hard for people to hide what they're doing.''

Griffiths has a clear memory of what she thought the first time she heard of Assange: ''That guy must have an interesting mother.

''I viewed him with this kind of psychological curiosity. What makes a man like that? I thought, that man doesn't have a father and must have an interesting mother because there is some intrinsic molecular revulsion of authority in that man. It's compulsive. It's in his DNA.''

Unsurprisingly, in light of the headlines that the Assange matter continues to generate, Underground has attracted considerable interest around the globe. Unusually for a telemovie that was made in only five weeks on the smell of an oily rag, it was invited to screen at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, where it was well received by critics.

For Channel Ten, it promises to be a much-needed salve from the drubbing its latest batch of low-rent reality shows have received, while for viewers, it's a challenge to the widespread perception of Assange as a cold, callous - and possibly immoral - whistleblower with a chequered past.

''What I like about doing this film,'' Williams says, ''is that most people won't see any of this portrayed in the news or by a journalist writing a story.''

Rachel Griffiths has revitalising new role

Rachel Griffiths starred in Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters. Picture: Channel 10 Source: National Features

Colin Vickery, The Daily Telegraph, reports

It is time for Rachel Griffiths to spread her wings. The award-winning actress has spent the past decade starring in two highly acclaimed TV shows - Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters.

Those two shows have brought Griffiths widespread acclaim and a healthy pay cheque, but they have also restricted her acting options.

Playing the same characters - Brenda Chenowith and Sarah Walker - for five years at a time has its downside.

Now Griffiths is starting afresh. Last October, she made her Broadway debut in the stage play Other Desert Cities.

And on Sunday, she stars as mum Christine Assange in Underground: The Julian Assange Story.

Underground is the first of what Griffiths hopes will be a string of one-off film and TV roles that will revitalise her acting.

Griffiths and husband Andrew Taylor had just returned to Australia when the Underground producers came knocking. 

The couple have three children - Banjo, 8, Adelaide, 7, and three-year-old Clementine.

Griffiths had planned to have time off, and Taylor is keen to resume his career as an artist.

"It (the Underground offer) came out of the blue," Griffiths says.

"I was really just coming back to Australia to chill out for a while. I didn't expect to work.

"I've been really lucky to do two big five-year shows but now I'm really loving doing these smaller projects."

Channel 10 is banking on Underground to turn around its 2012 ratings fortunes.

The Aussie telemovie heads up Ten's "Take a Fresh Look" campaign, which also includes a swag of fast-tracked US shows.

Ten is unleashing US sitcoms The New Normal and Ben & Kate, as well as dramas Vegas and Emily Owens M.D. plus the second series of Emmy-winning Homeland.

It comes after the network's horror stretch with ratings duds.

Underground is the jewel in Ten's crown. It has an outstanding pedigree.

Writer/director Robert Connolly's credits include The Slap and Balibo.

Best of all, it stars Aussies-made-good-in-Hollywood Rachel Griffiths and Anthony LaPaglia.

Underground charts the early years of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Newcomer Alex Williams plays the teenage computer hacker, Griffiths is mum Christine, and LaPaglia is detective Ken Roberts.

Signing Griffiths was a coup for the makers of Underground.

Underground shows that Christine Assange is as interesting a person as son Julian.

Christine is constantly on the move in fear of being tracked down by a former partner who has links to a cult. She is also a political activist, but one whose methods seem way too old-school for her hi-tech son.

"Christine has that activism; she's an artist, she was unconventional," Griffiths says.

"She was also very much a tiger mum when it came to defending Julian and protecting him from the dark powers in their lives."

Griffiths admits she knew little of Assange's teenage years before she read the script to Underground.

Christine protests by waving banners and building puppets. Julian can see that hacking top-secret US government websites is a far more effective way to cause havoc.

"I think a lot of people are intrigued about what made Julian (the way he is)," Griffiths says.

"When I first became aware of Julian I thought, 'That guy did not grow up with a father'.

"He had no legitimate source of authority in his life.

"This (Underground) is the moment where he became Julian Assange with a capital J and a capital A."

A week ago it was announced that Griffiths had signed to new Disney movie Saving Mr Banks, starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson.

Griffiths will play Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers' aunt.

"I've had an amazing experience in Hollywood and I've worked with some incredible people," Griffiths says.

"I've never been told I'm not pretty enough and I've never been told I'm too fat - despite putting on 60 pounds (22kg) with my second child.

"I've only ever been empowered and celebrated and rewarded." 

--- Underground: The Julian Assange Story, Channel 10, Sunday, 8.30pm

----

* A REVELATORY PROTEST *

RACHEL Griffiths is no stranger to protest.

The Oscar-winning actor made headlines in 1997 when she flashed her breasts at the opening of Melbourne's Crown casino.

Griffiths ripped off a kimono and paraded around in a loin cloth and a crown of thorns in front of a crowd that included then-Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett.

Griffiths' strip-protest reportedly had nothing to do with any anti-gambling stance.

Instead it was motivated by the lack of transparency about the casino deal between the Victorian Government and Crown. Griffiths said the Government had "succeeded in raping our state of its dignity, compassion and sense of community".

When she was asked why nudity was the best way to express her feelings, she said: "If I didn't flash my t--s, you wouldn't have put me in the paper."

Fifteen years later, Griffiths says she is proud of taking a stand.

"Maybe 100,000 naked women wouldn't have made a difference to that casino going up, but it is important to have a voice of dissent," she says.

"I don't believe there is a reason for a government and a private entity to ever have agreements that voters should not be able to peruse."

Rachel Griffiths lets her hair down at home

Rachael Griffiths at the South Pacific Opening Night. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis, Source: The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph reports

Moving home appears to be agreeing with Rachel Griffiths.

The Brothers & Sisters favourite was one hot mamma on Saturday night, rocking the red carpet at the season opening of South Pacific in Melbourne with a new look and noticeably longer tresses.

Having relocated her family from the US last year after 10 years abroad and following the axing of family favourite Brothers & Sisters, the 43-year-old has been settling in down south, appearing in the well-received The Julian Assange Story, currently filming Paper Giants: Magazine Wars and soon to start work on remake Patrick with Sharni Vinson.

"It's nice to be Australian again," Griffiths said recently.

And it's working for her, too.

But the Six Feet Under star said strutting the red carpet was one of the most least-favourite things to do.

"I don't know any actor who does (like the red carpet)," she said. "It's an assault, those flashbulbs, you're hoping you're not sweating. What I do as an actor is inhabit people and hopefully express quite delicate human states, and that doesn't have a lot to do with red carpet. But I've always enjoyed being pregnant on the red carpet because you have a free pass!"

Rachel Griffiths lands lead role in Paper Giants sequel, Magazine Wars

Rachel Griffiths stars in the new series of Paper Giants. Picture: AP Source: news.com.au

News.com.au reports

Oscar-nominee and Golden Globe winner Rachel Griffiths will front the highly-anticipated sequel to ABC mini-series, Paper Giants.

Griffiths will be joined by Mandy McElhinney, who viewers will know as "Rhonda" from AAMI's Safe Driver rewards commercials as well as Rob Carlton who will reprise his role as the media mogul Kerry Packer in the latest installment, Magazine Wars.

Set in 1987, the follow-up series tells the story of Nene King and Dulcie Boling, who started a circulation war that totally rewrote the rules of journalism in Australia.

Their rivalry transformed publishing and "created a monster" - paving the way for a potent magazine mix of celebrities, gossip, clairvoyants, paparazzi which gave rise to chequebook journalism in Australia.

Griffiths (Brothers & Sisters, Six Feet Under) plays Boling, the regal New Idea editor who broke the glass ceiling in Rupert Murdoch's corporate empire, while McElhinney (Howzat: Kerry Packer’s War, At Home With Julia) plays Nene King, the fiery former deputy who fought her own personal demons to take Woman's Day to the top.

Griffiths returned home with her husband and three young children after Brothers & Sisters was canned in the US.

Producer, Mimi Butler of Southern Star said, “We're very excited to have Rachel and Mandy playing these formidable women, Dulcie Boling and Nene King. It's been a dream story to work on, the drama's all there - it's quite Shakespearian. Set in the kingdoms of Packer and Murdoch; there's rivalry and rebellion, love and tragedy, and great victories along the way - all taking place amid the decadence and rock and roll of the 80s and 90s.”

The series goes into production on goes into production in Melbourne on Monday August 13.

Rachel Griffiths on gun control and mental health in light of the Colorado massacre

Actress Rachel Griffiths believes more needs to be done about mental health. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

Fiona Byrne, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Oscar-nominated Australian actress Rachel Griffiths believes mental health issues need to be focused on as much as gun control legislation in the aftermath of The Dark Knight Rises massacre in Colorado.

Griffiths, who has spent much of the past decade based in the US working on TV series such as Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters, told 774 ABC morning host Jon Faine she did not believe the situation of young men "tripping over" and becoming a danger to others was isolated to America.

"I think so much of the (US) gun lobby issue is so based in a constitutional fundamentalism I don't think Australians can ever grasp," Griffiths told Faine today.

"But I think what we have in common is we have young men that reach a certain critical point were they become a harm to themselves or others, and I don't think that happens more or less here than it does in the States.

"I just wanted to bring the discussion around to how do we identify these young men, that on this verge of tripping over and how do we as families and societies get them the help they need.

"........ If it is your brother, or your cousin, or your son, I think we have to do more to intervene and make sure that they see mental health professionals.

"Clearly this boy over some time has been moving away from people and going through some kind of depression and moving to a point where people observe some things but did not feel that they could interfere and say, 'Are you OK?'"

James Holmes, 24, allegedly opened fire during a packed midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in the Denver suburb of Aurora on Friday, killing 12 people and wounding 58 others.

If you, or someone you know suffers from mental health contact Lifeline 13 11 14, beyondblue 1300 22 46 36, or Salvo Care Line 1300 36 36 22.

Griffiths, LaPaglia for Assange telemovie

Rachel Griffiths has joined the cast of Underground.

The Age reports

A telemovie about the early life of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange starring Rachel Griffiths and Anthony LaPaglia will begin filming around Melbourne shortly.

Network Ten announced newcomer Alex Williams has been cast to play the young Assange in Underground, with Griffiths taking the role of his mother Christine Assange and LaPaglia a policeman investigating Assange's hacking abilities.

"Everyone has an opinion about Julian Assange," said Ten executive producer Rick Maier in a statement.

"This film will deliver a compelling insight into who Julian is, and how he became one of the most talked-about figures of our time."

Written and directed by AFI Award-winning filmmaker Robert Connolly (Balibo, The Slap), Underground will be screened on Ten in the second half of 2012.

Gum leaf mafia spreads its branches

Red Dog star ... Rachael Taylor shines. Photo: Getty Images

Michael Idato, The Age, reports

In the corridors of power in Los Angeles they call it, jokingly, Aussiewood. But the invasion of the film and television industry's Mecca by Australian actors is a very serious business.

First there was Mel, Nicole, Russell, Hugh and Cate. Then the LaPaglia brothers, Heath Ledger, Miranda Otto, Guy Pearce and Julian McMahon. To that we add Melissa George, Eric Bana, Rachel Griffiths, Matt Passmore, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten and Josh Lawson. For the 2012 television ''pilot'' season we can add almost a dozen more names, some well known, some still emerging, who form the vanguard of Australia's biggest Hollywood invasion in recent memory.

Almost 100 pilots will be filmed during the pilot season, for the US broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW, and leading cable channels such as FX, HBO and Showtime. Not all survive but for emerging Hollywood talent they are a toehold on the entertainment industry's main game.

Of those pilots, easily the most Australian is Americana in which Anthony LaPaglia will play a fashion industry titan and Natalie Mendoza will play a ''beautiful 30-something bitch''. To rub a little more Australian salt into the wound, Rabbit-Proof Fence director Phil Noyce will co-produce and direct the pilot.

Other pilots featuring Australians include the futuristic military thriller Last Resort, which stars Dichen Lachman, Daisy Betts and Daniel Lissing, a more traditional firehouse drama Chicago Fire with former House star Jesse Spencer and a supernatural thriller 666 Park Avenue, which will star Rachael Taylor.

There are no fewer than two iterations of the Beauty and the Beast tale in development as pilots and both feature Australians in lead roles. Chris Egan and Meegan Warner will star in a version that remains true to the Disney fairytale for the US network ABC, and Jay Ryan will star in a contemporary take on the story for the CW.

American television industry analyst Nellie Andreeva last week described casting non-American actors as leads for US television shows ''a growing trend over the past decade''. Notable examples include Welsh-born Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters) and Ioan Gruffudd (Ringer), English-born Damian Lewis (Homeland) and Hugh Laurie (House) and New Zealand-born Martin Henderson (Off the Map).

Australian casting director Faith Martin says the trend is in part due to a more ''universal'' process in American casting and producers who are more mindful that overseas program sales are a bigger part of the balance sheet.

''They are choosing people who will speak to a more universal audience,'' Martin says. ''Equally, a lot of our actors are well trained, they have a basic training that is a little more thorough.''

Martin also said US casting directors were drawn to the ''natural beauty'' of Australian actors. ''There is a naturalness here that I think they find very attractive … underneath that is solid training and the ability to do the job.''

The former Seinfeld star Jason Alexander framed it in much simpler terms on Twitter. ''Amazing preponderance of Brit and Aussie actors in US TV and films,'' he wrote. ''Conclusion: we must really suck.''

Broadway debut all in the family

Rachel Griffiths and Thomas Sadoski perform in "Other Desert Cities" at the Booth Theater in New York. The family drama, which had its Off Broadway premiere in January, has moved to Broadway. Photo: Sara Krulwich/New York Times

Philippa Hawker, The Age, reports

RACHEL Griffiths apologises for ''talking American'', but she's just come off stage and it takes a while for her to shed her accent. She is on her phone, signing autographs outside the Broadway theatre where she has just made her debut in Other Desert Cities, which opened to glowing reviews. The New York Times called it ''a beautifully modulated Broadway debut''.

Griffiths plays a writer home for the holidays with a surprise for her patrician political family, particularly her parents, played by Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach. She has the manuscript of a memoir with her. For her siblings - and her mother and father, who bear some resemblance to Ronald and Nancy Reagan - its contents are potentially explosive.

The role is part of a continuum, Griffiths says wryly. ''I've made a career out of trying to understand the American family - how it can stay together and evolve out of its claustrophobic stereotypes.'' Coming from a different cultural background, she has been struck by, she says, an American preoccupation with appearance, with the way a family presents itself to the world.

Other Desert Cities is written by Jon Robin Baitz, who also created the TV series, Brothers and Sisters, in which Griffiths starred between 2006 and 2011. Before that, she was in Six Feet Under, the HBO drama about a dynasty of undertakers.

Spending 10 years on network television, Griffith says she relished the chance to do other work when she could, particularly films ''when the story is so important to the person making it''. She can be seen in an Australian movie, Burning Man, Jonathan Teplitzky's fractured exploration of a life in crisis. Griffiths plays a therapist who has a relationship with the central character, Tom (Matthew Goode), a volatile figure whose life seems out of control, for reasons not immediately apparent.

Her role is a small one, she says, but she could see that the movie had a cluster of female roles ''that needed to be the real McCoy, that needed gravitas. And I wanted to be part of the tapestry.'' She is a fan of Teplitzky's previous films (Better Than Sex and Gettin' Square) and regards him as ''one of our most underrated directors''. When she read the script, she says, she wasn't clear how the structure worked, ''but I didn't need to know that in order to do my job''. The important thing, she adds, ''was I knew that he would make sense of it''.

When she saw the finished film at its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, she says she was struck by the way Teplitzky had captured male experience. ''I got mad at him and told him he had made a much better movie than the one I signed on for. I knew it was going to be good, but not this good.''

Meanwhile, she's making the most of her Broadway experience. The play, she believes, has a good chance of winning a Pulitzer Prize. ''It's sharp and human and hopeful; I think there's a hunger for that.''

She talks about the role of the writer, of her interest in the author Joan Didion. There is a YouTube video, directed by Didion's nephew, actor Griffin Dunne, of the author reading from her work. Griffiths watches it every night. She says it makes her think about some of the issues at the centre of the play: what rights does a writer have? Whose story is she telling, and is it hers to tell? Whose truth, and what truth?

These are questions that ''resonate with audiences on every level'', she says. In Other Desert Cities, ''there's a moment when I take the manuscript and hold it up to the fire, and last night someone in the audience called out, 'burn it'; they couldn't help themselves''.

She thinks the play could do well in her homeland, ''although Australia, and the Australian media don't really understand the American right on a molecular level, and this play makes sense of it in a very interesting way''.

In fact, she says, ''I'd love to see how it would play. With Judy Davis, Jack Thompson … And me,'' she says, laughing.

Burning Man is now showing.