Why Mia Wasikowska is a secret star

Talented: Actress Mia Wasikowska. Picture: AP Source: AP

Megan Lehman, The Sunday Telegraph, reports

Soft-spoken and private, the gorgeously gamine Mia Wasikowska has largely flown under the radar at home while quietly taking over Hollywood.

And under that delicate exterior lies a somewhat mutinous soul.

Wasikowska admits she's drawn to rebellious characters and her latest role, as a preacher's daughter in John Hillcoat's Lawless, is no exception.

"It's not necessarily a conscious decision," she says. "But then, looking back at it, I guess there's a through-line where my characters are often at odds with their time and the expectations that are upon them and I find that really interesting."

From whimsical fairytale heroine to worldly LA teenager, Wasikowska's roles have shown an actress keen to explore the many facets of human nature.

And after a star-making turn anchoring Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland and critical acclaim in films such as Jane Eyre and The Kids Are All Right, the 22-year-old Canberra-born actress is fast gaining on her idol Cate Blanchett as one of the country's most sought-after stars.

Time magazine named her one of their 100 Most Influential People and she has won praise from Meryl Streep and her Albert Nobbs co-star Glenn Close.

In Lawless, we first meet Wasikowska's bonnet-clad Bertha Minnix petting a timid fawn and being properly pious and dutiful. But soon she's flirting with danger in the form of moonshiner Shia LaBeouf.

"(I'm interested in) the struggle all these characters have between how they're perceived and how they perceive themselves," she says.

The middle child of two visual artists, Wasikowska has a keen interest in photography and prefers an unfussy style when it comes to fashion, although she's currently starring in a Marie Antoinette-inspired campaign as the new face of designer Miu Miu.

She is rarely photographed out and about and her love life remains oddly unscrutinised, so how does she manage to keep such a low profile?

"I don't think I'm that interesting to (the paparazzi) yet. I never get bothered, I can usually sneak back home really easily. I just hang out with my friends and read books and watch movies, play with my nephew who's 1 1/2 now - all very simple things."

Her presence provides a welcome softer note in the blood-soaked Lawless, with its tommy guns and hooch-swilling outlaws. Based on real-life Prohibition bootleggers, the movie follows the fortunes of the Bondurant brothers, whose thriving backwoods operation draws the attention of crooked city cops.

Australian director Hillcoat's second collaboration with screenwriter-composer Nick Cave (after the Aussie western The Proposition) has a testosterone-heavy cast of A-listers including LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman.

Adding another touch of femininity is Jessica Chastain, as Hardy's love interest.

"The female characters in the story were a contrast to the more brutal elements in the movie," Wasikowska says.

She was particularly pleased to have so many Aussies working on the film.

"I continue to bump into Australians on set. Even the one I'm about to start filming (The Double, an upcoming comedy inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novella) - Noah Taylor's on that."

She has also wrapped horror film Stoker, in which she plays Nicole Kidman's daughter, and is to join Cate Blanchett in filming Carol, an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel.

"I'm really excited to work with (Cate). It still doesn't quite feel real."

- Lawless opens Thursday

Dr Chris Brown a bachelor worth snaring

Bondi Vet Chris Brown goes for a swim in Bondi / Pic: Splash News Source: The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph reports

Are there any rational reasons that uber-telegenic Bondi Vet star Chris Brown is not married yet? Let's look at the diagnosis. The 30-something stud ...

* HAS abs that could grate cheese;

* THE chiselled jaw of a supermodel;

* RESCUES animals for a living;

* GREW up in the suburbs of Newcastle;

* FOLLOWED in his dad's footsteps as a veterinarian

* HAS a dog called "Rusty"; and

* WRITES "Dr" before his name (!).

The sandy-haired hunk came out of a long-term relationship with actress Zoe Ventoura last year and has since been seen with TV personalities like Kylie Speer and Nine Network sports reporter Roz Kelly.

But, according to friends, Brown remains single, making him - arguably - Sydney's most eligible bachelor. Can someone get this guy to an altar, and soon? And let us know as soon as you do? Awesome.

Kidman shocked at low budget role

Nicole Kidman shows off her figure in a sexy minidress in new stills from upcoming movie The Paperboy. Source: The Daily Telegraph

 

The Daily Telegraph reports

Audiences have been shocked by Nicole Kidman's role as a trashy Southern blonde in controversial new thriller The Paperboy.

But not as shocked as the Aussie actress herself when she learned the realities of low budget filmmaking.
Shot in New Orleans, The Paperboy was made on the kind of budget ($12 million) Kidman hasn't experienced for years and it's understood she had to source much of her on-screen outfits in op shops.

But the biggest shock was when director Lee Daniels told her the film couldn't afford a make-up artist and Kidman would have to do her own hair and makeup.

"I thought we lost her," he joked during an event to honour Kidman in New York overnight.

A beautiful moment in soap history

Ronn Moss ... or as he is better known - Ridge Forrester baby, Ridge Forrester. Source: National Features

Sarrah Le Marquand, The Daily Telegraph, reports

There are two types of people in this world: Those who are dreading the looming departure of Ridge Forrester from The Bold and the Beautiful and those who pretend they have never heard of Ridge Forrester.

For the uninitiated - or at least those who insist on feigning ignorance of the high-rating soap opera - the impossibly chiselled-jawed Ridge has been a mainstay since its debut 25 years ago.

Now, after countless brushes with death, several hundred weddings and an ex-wife who rose from the dead on more than one occasion, the eldest son of the Forrester clan is about to wander off into the sunset.

There hasn't been a bigger event in daytime TV since a certain talk-show host walked off the set of The Oprah Winfrey Show for the final time last year.

For a genre which relies on the melodramatic potential of the shocking death of a main character, producers have resisted the urge to kill him off, assuring fans Ridge will eventually return.

We won't be seeing his perpetually married-divorced-remarried partner Brooke in black as she mourns the loss of her great love. Perhaps the notion of a grieving leading lady was too much for the wardrobe department.

A far more likely real reason, however, is that with Ridge's alter ego - actor Ronn Moss - reportedly declining to renew his contract due to a salary dispute the powers-that-be are clearly hoping that a few months of unemployment might prompt him to reconsider.

But if he refuses to return? Then it will be time for one of the peculiar staples of daytime soaps - the recast - in which the hunt will begin for actors who bear a passing resemblance to the 60-year-old.

Will viewers accept anyone other than Moss in a role he first originated in 1987?

In a series that over the years has served up storylines of bigamy, mistaken paternity, psychotic stalkers and mothers who accidentally sleep with their daughter's husbands (don't you just hate it when that happens?), stranger things have happened.

With Ridge's final episode scheduled to air in Australia in early December, a seminal moment in daytime television is fast approaching.

Critics might scoff, but with the long-running soap delivering Channel 10 double the audience of its rival networks each weekday afternoon, it would be a foolish programmer who underestimates the unacknowledged power of The Bold and the Beautiful.

The mother of all roles

Rebecca Gibney stars in Mental, which is in cinemas from October 4. Source: Sunday Magazine

 
Alice Wasley, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Rebecca Gibney is gyrating and singing, "I'm too sexy for this suit."

I've just been introduced to the actor on the filmset of Mental - which, today, is a two-storey brick house in Tweed Heads, NSW - and she's laughing about her transformation from one of Australia's most enduring beauties into frumpy Shirley Moochmore. Gibney gained 14kg to play the character and the rest of the work is done by the sung-about fat suit, which she offers to let me touch. (For the record, it feels like squidgy foam, not rolls of fat.)

A year later, I meet Gibney at a beautiful house on Sydney's North Shore, the location for sunday magazine's photoshoot. Having reverted to the svelte version of herself, she's squeezing into a size 8 lace dress and explaining she's having trouble shedding the last four kilos. But she's not too fussed, because losing it would mean giving up wine and chocolate.

With the shoot finished, Gibney puts on her own clothes - jeans, a blue long-sleeved top, a white T-shirt over the top and a striped blue scarf - and we sit in the manicured garden to chat. During her weight gain for the film, the 47-year-old discovered she was insulin resistant, a precursor to diabetes, so she had to tread carefully with food choices and seek the help of a nutritionist.

"I was eating a lot of rice, pasta, olive oils, peanut butter - essentially healthy stuff - and I stopped exercising. I'd go for walks, but I didn't do much strength training, so the weight came on really quickly. It was so sad!" she laughs. After filming finished, she lost the bulk of the weight by "upping the exercise, not eating rice and pasta, and switching to lean proteins, vegetables and salads".

Mental is the first film Toni Collette and director PJ Hogan have made together since the much-loved Muriel's Wedding 18 years ago. When Gibney caught wind of it, she campaigned heavily for the role of Shirley - the harassed mother-of-five dealing with a philandering husband (Anthony LaPaglia) and low self-esteem, who suffers a nervous breakdown and is committed. She donned a fat suit and a muu-muu for the audition.

"I'm just hoping people will go, 'Well, she can do something other than Julie Rafter or Jane Halifax'," Gibney says.

The New Zealand-born actor has been a TV fixture since her early 20s, when she starred in The Flying Doctors, and later the crime series Halifax FP. Her current role as suburban mum Julie Rafter on Packed to the Rafters has won her three Logies, including Gold in 2009.

"Maybe Mental will show people I'm not afraid to be different. I'm not afraid to look bad, I'm not afraid to do anything. I'm also at an age when I'm not afraid to give anything a go. When I auditioned, I said to PJ, 'I will stand on my head; I will do whatever it takes.'"

Hogan was sceptical about casting her. "When you read the character of Shirley on paper, the first name that springs to mind isn't Rebecca Gibney," he admits.

"Beforehand I said, 'Shirley's downtrodden, Shirley's let herself go - depressed people eat. Whenever I see pictures of Rebecca Gibney, she's on the red carpet at the Logies looking beautiful and wearing designer clothes. That's not Shirley.' My casting director said, 'People underestimate Rebecca Gibney and have done so for years.'"

But Hogan was forced to reconsider after Gibney auditioned. "Rebecca read for me and she was absolutely sensational," he says. Even so, he still needed further convincing. "I didn't want the great, beautiful actor peeping out from behind glasses. I said, 'Putting glasses on you isn't going to cut it.' Rebecca said she knew that and told me, 'I'll gain the weight; I know this character. You just have to trust me.' So I did."

Collette agrees Gibney lived up to her promise: "She cherished not being typecast; she wanted to try everything to make her character real and, man, did we laugh."

While initially "terrified" of meeting Collette, whom she'd "admired for so long", Gibney says her fears were allayed when she arrived for the first day of rehearsals and the Golden Globe-winning actor greeted her with a big hug. She recalls asking Collette about losing the 18kg she famously gained for her role as Muriel. "She said, 'Good luck with that one, because I'm not going to do it again!'"

Part of the reason Gibney identified so strongly with the role (which Hogan based on his own mother) is because she has experienced her own bouts of depression and anxiety, suffering a nervous breakdown in her 30s. She believes this stems from her troubled childhood and recognised her own mother, also called Shirley, in the character.

"My mother had a husband, my father, who beat her," she says. "He wasn't out having affairs, but he physically and emotionally beat her, so she raised six kids by herself.
I think we were a nightmare half the time but, in those days, we certainly didn't talk about it and there was no taking yourself off to a psychiatric institution. So, for me, it felt as if this was my homage to my mother.

"I wanted Shirley to have a real heart and to portray her with the softness and struggle my mum had. When I watched the film with Mum, I thought, Oh God, I hope she's OK with it," she says. "She cried a bit when she saw it, but she's proud of me because she did see herself in the character."

Does her upbringing influence the way she and her husband, production designer Richard Bell, raise their eight-year-old son, Zac?

"We're such a tight unit," says Gibney. "We talk about everything. Someone once asked me, 'What's the best thing about being a mum?' It's when I turn off the light after I've read Zac a story. It's those quiet moments when he talks about his deepest fears or his thoughts about everything, or he asks about the universe. We have an incredibly close bond and Richard and I are luckily very together on everything - on how we raise him, on how we feel about pretty much everything. Richard is my absolute soulmate."

Surprisingly, after a career spanning more than 30 years, this is Gibney's biggest film role to date. But don't imagine she looks at the crop of young Australian actors working in the US - such as her Rafters protégé and close friend Jessica Marais, who made the jump and is now filming the second season of the Miami-based TV series Magic City - and wonders what could have been.

"I went to Hollywood when I was 26, for about two-and-a-half weeks," she recalls with a laugh. "I got an agent and went to a Disney casting. I sat there staring at a life-size picture of Geena Davis, going, 'What am I doing?' I had a good career in Australia and I thought, I just can't do it. I didn't think I was that great an actor, or that good-looking. I thought, I'm kind of ordinary and I'm trying to crack Hollywood. Who am I kidding? This is stupid. By the time I went into the casting, I said, 'Sorry for wasting your time, I'm going home.' And I boarded the next plane back."

With Hogan at the helm and Collette in the lead, Mental is poised to be an international hit. I suggest Gibney could follow the path of Jacki Weaver, who caught the attention of Hollywood late in her career with her surprise Oscar nomination for low-budget Australian film Animal Kingdom. Is she prepared for that?

"Everyone has said, 'You could do a Jacki Weaver,' and I'm like, well, that would be lovely. I'm not going to chase it but, sure, if it makes it into a festival, I'll go overseas and strut a red carpet. Absolutely. At my age, it might be my last chance."

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."

David Lyons in apocalyptic Revolution

David Lyons stars in Revolution, set in a post-apocalyptic world. Picture: Supplied Source: National Features

Holly Byrnes, The Daily Telegraph, reports

For a self-confessed "technophobe", the irony of starring in a new futuristic series about a world without power is not lost on David Lyons.

Revolution, the latest drama from Alias, Lost and Alcatraz creator JJ Abrams, explores a post-apocalypse society struggling to define itself without electricity and mod cons.

"Outside of the famine and the wars and everything that ensues after the power is cut off, it's probably quite a good idea," Lyons says.

"In a lot of ways, (technology) has become the death of human interaction which is ironic because it was meant to further our connectivity."

Speaking (on his mobile phone) from the North Carolina set of the TV series, the 36-year-old says he's loving playing Sebastian "Bass" Monroe, a former US Marine sergeant and leader of the Monroe Republic, desperate to seize back the power.

The role follows the disappointment of The Cape, where Lyons played a vigilante detective.

The drama was pushed heavily by its US network, NBC, but was axed after 10 episodes.

"There was a part of me that felt immense failure but also a part of me that felt I needed to just rest and go away," he says. 

-- Revolution, FOX8, tonight, 8.30pm

Mad about seeing natural beauty Christina Hendricks in the flesh

Christina Hendricks arrives at Sydney Airport. Picture: John Grainger Source: The Daily Telegraph

Amy Harris and Joel Christie, The Daily Telegraph, report

Exactly what skin care products does Christina Hendricks use and where does one find them?

Fresh from the Emmys red carpet, the buxom Mad Men beauty jetted in from Los Angeles ahead of a promotional gig, but we couldn't stop staring at her amazing alabaster complexion.

A nice distraction from the Inspector Gadget trench, perhaps.

Voted Sexiest Woman Alive by Esquire magazine in 2010, she's here to announce Specsavers' Spectacle Wearer of the Year.

No doubt Hendricks, 37, who is married to Body Of Proof actor Geoffrey Arend, will find some time during her Sydney stay to pop into the Paddington boutique of Aussie designer Johanna Johnson, who famously made the voluptuous vixen's Emmys frock for the television awards last year.

Rumours are rife that Hendricks is the front-runner to play Anna Nicole Smith in a television biopic about the tragic star.

Comedian Jenny McCarthy is also up for the part.

Robert Pattinson heading to Australia

Robert Pattinson is coming to Australia. Picture: Getty Source: news.com.au 

The Daily Telegraph reports

The jury's still out on whether Robert Pattinson is single or not but his Aussie female fans will be swooning at the news the Twilight heartthrob is coming to Australia this month.

Pattinson, or RPatz, will appear at a fan event in Sydney on Monday, October 22, to promote The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, the final installment of the vampire franchise that made him a household name.

Details of the event will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Pattinson's on-screen squeeze and former flame, Kristen Stewart will not be joining him for the visit.

Based on Stephenie Meyer's bestselling novel, the movie is directed by Bill Condon and also stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner.

It will be released in Australian cinemas on November 15.

Winners & Losers put Melanie Vallejo off baby plans

Focused on her career: Actor Melanie Vallejo from TV show 'Winners and Losers'. Source: The Daily Telegraph

Zoe Nauman, The Sunday Telegraph, reports

Winners & Losers star Melanie Vallejo says preparing for her role as a dutiful step-mum on the show has put her off having children of her own.

As Sophie Wong on the Seven hit, the actor has been getting to grips with her best friend Bec O'Connor (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith) giving birth. And it was this that made Vallejo go from clucky to disinterested. "We thought it would be good to do some research before the labour scene, so we got out a home birthing video," she says.

"After watching that home birth, I wasn't so clucky.

"This woman gave birth in a paddling pool to twins, and it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. But I thought I don't want babies. There has to be a better way. Who wants to go through that."

The actor says she was initially concerned about the triangle of Sophie's boyfriend Doug (Tom Wren) having a child with her best friend Bec.

"It's a difficult situation in the beginning - I was struggling with it and I was thinking: 'Is it too crazy or too Jerry Springer?' I think as the season went on, it's not that crazy. I actually think it has been a good spanner in the works for the dynamic of the four girls," she says.

Vallejo, who married Matt Kingston last year, says they watched the birth episode and it did prompt a discussion.

"The plotlines always start a discussion and we talk about them. The pregnancy thing did get thrown up, but after that, definitely not for while, I can tell you."