Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma mea podcast. I don't think it
Speaker 1: was really about me.
Speaker 2: I think I was a catalyst for a conversation that
Speaker 2: people were wanting to have, and there hadn't been an
Speaker 2: opportunity as clear I suppose. So somebody's suddenly attacking me.
Speaker 2: And I'm a farmer, so i'm you know, why should
Speaker 2: I look at a standard? And I think people have
Speaker 2: a fear of getting older because women become very invisible.
Speaker 1: As they get older.
Speaker 2: Yes, and if they, you know, aren't able to rest
Speaker 2: on the glory of their youth and their beauty and
Speaker 2: their sexuality, who are they?
Speaker 1: Where are they?
Speaker 3: In late December last year, Rachel Ward, legendary actress, farmer,
Speaker 3: wife of Brian Brown, mother of many grandmother, posted a
Speaker 3: video to her Instagram account. She was standing in a paddock,
Speaker 3: no studio lighting, no red carpet, no retouching, a sixty
Speaker 3: eight year old woman on her farm, speaking plainly, and
Speaker 3: within hours the commentary began. Some people praised her for
Speaker 3: looking natural, Others were less kind. There were comments about
Speaker 3: her face, about aging, about how she used to look,
Speaker 3: about whether someone who was once a global screen icon
Speaker 3: was somehow supposed to remain frozen in time. In this
Speaker 3: episode of No Filter, Rachel and I talk about that
Speaker 3: viral moment and what it revealed. We trace her life
Speaker 3: from British aristocracy to Hollywood glamour, from being dismissed as
Speaker 3: beautiful but not bright, to walking away from film and
Speaker 3: eventually becoming a regenerative farmer on the mid North coast
Speaker 3: of New South Wales. We talk about mental health, about
Speaker 3: the crumbles she speaks so openly, and about how she
Speaker 3: has known instinctively when each chapter of her life was over.
Speaker 3: This is the magnificent Rachel Ward.
Speaker 1: Welcome, thank you, very happy to have you. Thank you.
Speaker 3: And then you sat down and you were horrified to
Speaker 3: see that you're well.
Speaker 1: I forgot that.
Speaker 2: Of course you're doing a podcast, but I forgot that
Speaker 2: you always film it. Everything's visual, so I didn't even
Speaker 2: think about it. And look, I was threw on a
Speaker 2: shirt that I've been wearing probably for the last couple
Speaker 2: of days, and I didn't realize I'd.
Speaker 1: Made such a pick of myself. Look in the mirror,
Speaker 1: did you come from the farm?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Who's looking after the farm? And no one right now?
Speaker 2: Because I can go for if I pre plan, I
Speaker 2: can go for as long as a week, as long
Speaker 2: as I've got someone I need to do a couple
Speaker 2: of moves.
Speaker 1: But yes, I have someone coming in and just moves
Speaker 1: the cattle. Right. But if I'm.
Speaker 2: Organized enough, I can go, and I just I can
Speaker 2: go at this stage. I couldn't go if I was
Speaker 2: you know, if I was in carving or something like that.
Speaker 2: But I can go now because they're all just frolicking
Speaker 2: around in their paddocks.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I do have a lovely guy who comes in
Speaker 2: and just moves the cars.
Speaker 1: But you obviously don't have someone doing your laundry. Do
Speaker 1: not have someone doing my laundry? That is shocking.
Speaker 2: I just, you know, you forget about looking in the mirrors,
Speaker 2: and you forget about doing your hair, and you just
Speaker 2: and you forget about doing your laundry.
Speaker 1: That is shocking.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Well, this is an interesting catapult into your life, really,
Speaker 3: and your life which has had many shades, many.
Speaker 1: Chapters, many chapters.
Speaker 3: Blessed leaders, long life are not as long as it
Speaker 3: will be, but it has seen you traverse very unusually
Speaker 3: I think a point at which you were applauded.
Speaker 1: For your talents.
Speaker 3: Yes, but your talents were appreciated because of your phenomenal beauty.
Speaker 1: Well, that's very SWEETI thank you. It's not arguable, is
Speaker 1: it what beauty?
Speaker 3: Well, your beauty, and that you came to I think
Speaker 3: world attention through your role in the Thorn Birds.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you were exquisite.
Speaker 3: I mean it brought you world acclaim yes, and attention.
Speaker 1: Yes. And what was your life like prior to that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: God, I don't know how I encapsulate that. I mean,
Speaker 2: just so far from where that was, I suppose.
Speaker 3: I know that you grew up in an English family.
Speaker 3: I've heard you speak about how you were had like that,
Speaker 3: a traditional sort of upper.
Speaker 1: Middle class English upbringing. So were you at boarding school? Yes?
Speaker 2: I was at boarding school and I was Yeah, I
Speaker 2: had a very it was a very Edwardian upbringing. I mean,
Speaker 2: in a way the upper middle classes was stuck in
Speaker 2: aspects as far as women were concerned. So I was
Speaker 2: brought up in a world where I mean a great
Speaker 2: privilege and I had a fantastic childhood in many regards,
Speaker 2: because I grew up in the country, and I had horses,
Speaker 2: and I had a little village which we grew up in,
Speaker 2: and I had some really one particular girl who was
Speaker 2: the chauffeur's daughter, right, who was.
Speaker 1: My best friend. Oh, that's like a novel. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is like a novel.
Speaker 2: And I spent most of my time in her house
Speaker 2: because we grew up totally with paid people to look
Speaker 2: after us. So you could say, I mean, when I
Speaker 2: look at the way I brought up my children and
Speaker 2: the way that my children bring up their children, it
Speaker 2: just could not.
Speaker 1: Be further from it.
Speaker 2: And I wonder how my mother did it.
Speaker 1: But she did not live with us.
Speaker 2: She basically from the age that before the age we
Speaker 2: went to boarding school, she would spend her weeks in
Speaker 2: London with my father. We were left in the country
Speaker 2: with a nanny, and then she would come down with
Speaker 2: a lot of guests and have parties and social life
Speaker 2: during the weekend, of which we would probably join in
Speaker 2: on a Sunday lunch or something. But that was pretty
Speaker 2: much it. So you could say it was neglectful. But
Speaker 2: you know, we were safe, we were warm, we were fed,
Speaker 2: we were you know, we had all the sort of
Speaker 2: things that come under the heading of privilege.
Speaker 1: But was it privilege. It was a I don't know.
Speaker 2: My self confidence has always been very low, and I
Speaker 2: think that has to do with a lot about just
Speaker 2: not being supported as a child, and we would have
Speaker 2: like if you told a story, you were told to
Speaker 2: shit or get off the pot, you know, because you
Speaker 2: just don't take up too much time from adults. You
Speaker 2: were very much seen and not heard. My father had
Speaker 2: a classic line when he said, at one point I
Speaker 2: was going to go to university, and he said, what
Speaker 2: on earth do you need an education for you pretty
Speaker 2: enough to marry someone very rich, which, and you know,
Speaker 2: I was brought up in a world at primogenitus, so
Speaker 2: that women were definitely second class citizens and you did
Speaker 2: not get a good education. Primogenitus primogenitor is when when
Speaker 2: everything goes to the firstborn son.
Speaker 1: Ah, so as a.
Speaker 2: Daughter, you are expected to marry someone rich who will
Speaker 2: then look after you. So it's very Victorian and that
Speaker 2: was still going on when I was so my father.
Speaker 2: I was not mentioned in my father's will, neither was
Speaker 2: my sister, but my brother and I even have an
Speaker 2: intellectually handicapped brother and he was in front of me
Speaker 2: and the will right for inheritance, for inheritance and running
Speaker 2: the running the estate or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So as a woman and you, we were brought up
Speaker 2: in a thing like when there was dinner and things,
Speaker 2: the women would leave the dinner table at the end
Speaker 2: of the meal so that the men could talk politics
Speaker 2: and smart and whatever else they could take business. No,
Speaker 2: we went out, We left them and they would have
Speaker 2: their cigars and da da da. So women were not
Speaker 2: considered part of that conversation. So you did grow up
Speaker 2: with this, you're not. I don't know how women didn't
Speaker 2: grow up with terrible inferiority complexes. I certainly did. And
Speaker 2: then it was compounded by going to Hollywood, of course.
Speaker 2: So what was compounded was your value was your physicality
Speaker 2: or sexuality, your beauty, your how you elevated the status
Speaker 2: of a man by you know, being a beautiful woman
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: So everything was everything was emphasized.
Speaker 2: On what you looked like and how you presented yourself
Speaker 2: and your social cachet.
Speaker 3: So at what point did it become apparent that you
Speaker 3: had received the gifts of the gods of this physical beauty.
Speaker 2: Well, I never recognized it at all. I mean that
Speaker 2: was I don't know. I don't think you do. I
Speaker 2: don't I wonder if you do. I mean I think
Speaker 2: I wonder if you do. I mean, there were certain
Speaker 2: people who'd say, you know, oh you're lovely darling or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you know, you know, I always felt like I
Speaker 1: was overweight.
Speaker 2: I just you know, I was a model, and I
Speaker 2: was always too big to get in I was too
Speaker 2: busty to get into the clothes. I would very often
Speaker 2: sit on the sidelines while other You know, there was
Speaker 2: all sorts of reasons to give you insecurity.
Speaker 1: Of course, and modeling is rife with the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was when it came in that you have
Speaker 2: to be you know, extremely thin, right, and I certainly
Speaker 2: wasn't that.
Speaker 1: I was quite sort of wholesome.
Speaker 2: But someone had the idea that you could be a model. Well, really,
Speaker 2: yes they did. And the first thing I was told
Speaker 2: was to lose weight. And I was never a particularly
Speaker 2: good model. I didn't get much work.
Speaker 1: Why were you not a good model?
Speaker 2: Because I wasn't thin enough? Right, really, I wasn't quite
Speaker 2: thin enough. And there was a look at the time
Speaker 2: I was much more. I don't know, there was very
Speaker 2: much that.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was in the time of sort of Sheryl Tigues
Speaker 2: and right, it was a sort of the American thing,
Speaker 2: of the long legged, long blonde thing, and I was
Speaker 2: seventeen magazine. Yes, I wasn't quite you know, it certainly
Speaker 2: wasn't in that supermodel category by any means.
Speaker 1: Whose idea was it modeling? Can you remember? Well?
Speaker 2: Probably mine, because I was completely ill equipped to do
Speaker 2: anything else. You know, you left, you leave your education system.
Speaker 2: In that world, no emphasis was put on education. I
Speaker 2: was never expected. There was no expectation for me to
Speaker 2: do well in school. My brother got you know, smacked
Speaker 2: over the hand if.
Speaker 1: He got a bad report.
Speaker 2: Nobody cared if us girl's got bad reports, right, So
Speaker 2: there was no emphasis, was no talk of careers.
Speaker 1: There was no you were literally expected.
Speaker 2: And it does sound like I've stepped out of a
Speaker 2: you know, nineteenth century novel, But that's where That's why
Speaker 2: I say it was still an aspects that whole mid
Speaker 2: upper middle class thing.
Speaker 1: As far as women go.
Speaker 2: The middle class had moved on much more as far
Speaker 2: as women, you know, thinking about careers and stuff. But
Speaker 2: for us, it was totally about who you married, you know,
Speaker 2: had to, you know, it was My mother was a
Speaker 2: deb she went through that. Now I didn't do that.
Speaker 1: And she married will and she married above station.
Speaker 2: Yes, she married well, she was very beautiful and she
Speaker 2: did marry well, and her grand my grandmother, her mother
Speaker 2: was very pushy about all of that, you know, who
Speaker 2: she should marry and or anyway, she got married ridiculously.
Speaker 2: I'm at twenty one or something, had me at twenty
Speaker 2: one and was you know, completely unready to be a
Speaker 2: mother and to you know, run I mean, she could
Speaker 2: run a household, I suppose, but she was just too
Speaker 2: young to settle down and to think about kids.
Speaker 3: And she had that infrastructure that meant that she didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily have to take on no onerous aspects.
Speaker 2: She never I don't remember ever bathing us or anything,
Speaker 2: or being with us when we were sick or I
Speaker 2: mean she was a great mum when we got old.
Speaker 2: She wasn't a good one when we were when we
Speaker 2: were young, and mainly because I think my dad wanted
Speaker 2: her on his arm, and so she just wasn't around.
Speaker 1: And when she was around, she had quite a sort
Speaker 1: of short attention span.
Speaker 2: So it was very much that thing of you know,
Speaker 2: how you indulge children to express themselves and you're there
Speaker 2: forever well they tell long stories and things. There was
Speaker 2: none of that, none of that, you know, you just
Speaker 2: did not take up adult time.
Speaker 3: But It's funny because I think you often parent, you know,
Speaker 3: you take on board the way you were parented, or
Speaker 3: you push against the way you were parented.
Speaker 2: And you Yes, I knew very very soon that I
Speaker 2: did not want my children to grow up in the
Speaker 2: way that I grew up.
Speaker 1: And how did you know what the alternative was?
Speaker 2: Because I spent so much time in the chauffeur's flat, right,
Speaker 2: so I saw I'd seen a family. I'd seen her
Speaker 2: fill his hype and puttish slippers by, and I'd see them,
Speaker 2: you know how, all over her father, and I'd see
Speaker 2: mum cooking in the kitchen and everybody sitting down at
Speaker 2: the meal, and I just went, I loved it there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I couldn't, you know, have enough of it. But so
Speaker 2: I did see it, and I think that made a
Speaker 2: big impression on me.
Speaker 3: When you left basically the chauffeur's family to go, you know,
Speaker 3: and when they got divorced.
Speaker 1: When my parents got divorced and I.
Speaker 2: Was about I think I was about twelve, the first
Speaker 2: thing I said, is mister Hooper's not leaving, is he?
Speaker 1: He was the chauffeur, And I was that was my
Speaker 1: big worry.
Speaker 2: I didn't care about anything else, But I wanted to
Speaker 2: know that they weren't leaving.
Speaker 3: But my family, you ended up leaving them when you
Speaker 3: went to America.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I went to boarding school Rastache, so I
Speaker 2: was in boarding school at ten. So then that took
Speaker 2: me on a whole other you know, that was your
Speaker 2: home became boarding school.
Speaker 1: And I was much happier at boarding school than I
Speaker 1: was at home. Really why.
Speaker 2: Because it was just it was because you may your
Speaker 2: friends became your family, your girl, your intensely the intense
Speaker 2: relationship that you had with girlfriends that were, you know,
Speaker 2: your your peers and your classmates. Those relationships were unusually close,
Speaker 2: unusually tight. And I had a girlfriend that used to
Speaker 2: torture me because she was she was always going off
Speaker 2: with other girls, and it was just devastating. I've never
Speaker 2: loved her and I never felt that jealousy ever again.
Speaker 2: But you form those sort of relationships, and they're all
Speaker 2: girls too, who come from the same sort of world,
Speaker 2: who were also lacking that connection with deep connection with family,
Speaker 2: and we had these incredibly intensive relationships.
Speaker 3: I think that's still common in schools, yes, probably schools.
Speaker 3: Like every girlfriend I know who's been to a particularly
Speaker 3: a private school or boarded has had that real intensity
Speaker 3: of feeling for one of her girlfriends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that lasts forever. So I'm grateful for it too.
Speaker 2: But you know, I just wonder how parents could be.
Speaker 2: So it's just different, isn't it. Pedagogy is just a
Speaker 2: very different beast these days than it was. Well, it's
Speaker 2: what you know, it's what you know. And it didn't
Speaker 2: seem unusual to me. No, it seemed I had no.
Speaker 1: Perspective on it.
Speaker 3: No, So you would never say to your parents, can't
Speaker 3: you stay here with me?
Speaker 1: It wasn't even a concept.
Speaker 2: No, And you didn't want them to either, because they
Speaker 2: were quite frightening, right, They were.
Speaker 1: Quite frightening, and they were quite impatient. You know.
Speaker 2: They just weren't going to be They weren't the kind
Speaker 2: I look at my daughter now and what she gives
Speaker 2: to her children, and I just both of them, both
Speaker 2: of them, and I just I think, what was How
Speaker 2: was the nanny reacting when I was carrying on like this,
Speaker 2: age four or two or whatever, and you know.
Speaker 1: That you're not theirs?
Speaker 2: Yes, And we had a nanny that only really loved
Speaker 2: my brother, So we were always the scapegoats for everything, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: And I don't remember caring much, but it was a
Speaker 2: strange one and it definitely would have had I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what sort of psychological impact it had, but it
Speaker 2: would have had it had to have.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't.
Speaker 2: Remember that far back, but it forms your obviously, it
Speaker 2: forms your brain, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, And then it also even if it manifests in
Speaker 3: rebellion in some aspects or the opposite.
Speaker 1: Always having to be good? Which were you always having
Speaker 1: to be good? Yes? Maybe I did.
Speaker 2: I wanted my mother's attention a lot, and I was
Speaker 2: quite good at that. I was better at that than
Speaker 2: the others were, so I was the favorite, right, And
Speaker 2: I was very highly sensitive, so I could feel when
Speaker 2: her winds changed, so I knew when to get out
Speaker 2: of her way and I knew how to get to
Speaker 2: her right.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, And it wasn't necessarily being good,
Speaker 1: but it was.
Speaker 2: It was just Yeah, I was sort of highly sensitive
Speaker 2: about people's when people had had enough, when parents, adults
Speaker 2: had had enough, which yeah.
Speaker 1: And my children, my siblings, never really got that.
Speaker 2: So I was always pulling them out by the hair
Speaker 2: and saying, come on, let's go, because it's it's it's
Speaker 2: over the time with.
Speaker 1: The time here is done. Yeah, it's done.
Speaker 2: So I think it's that thing of I mean, I
Speaker 2: still find this sort of thing quite hard because I
Speaker 2: have it in the back of my head always shit
Speaker 2: or get off the pot.
Speaker 1: Or don't be boring.
Speaker 2: You know, the worst crime you could be was boring
Speaker 2: in that world. I was interested when I met Brian
Speaker 2: and I used the word boring. He said, you use
Speaker 2: that word quite often. He said, I've never use that
Speaker 2: in my life. I've never been bored. I'd have been
Speaker 2: told I'm boring. It was the number one insult when
Speaker 2: I was growing up was not to be borught was
Speaker 2: to be boring.
Speaker 1: And in what way could you be boring?
Speaker 2: Banging on talking about talking about yourself. All the things
Speaker 2: that I've mastered, right, yes, that I've caught up with.
Speaker 2: Yet attention to yourself, particularly as a woman, particular as
Speaker 2: a woman to talk about yourself was very just very judgmental.
Speaker 2: It was a very judgmental world. Well, I think for women,
Speaker 2: probably terrible. There was a lot of things when women
Speaker 2: left the room and they would say she's got a
Speaker 2: huge ass or something. Oh yeah, it was brutal brutal,
Speaker 2: a lot of things about being stupid, A lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of prisoners.
Speaker 1: She's so stupid, you know, a lot of stuff about that.
Speaker 2: So you were very self conscious about being stupid or
Speaker 2: not right.
Speaker 3: And in that regard, they also had you coming and
Speaker 3: going because you weren't deemed worthy of age or bettering yourself. No,
Speaker 3: but then you were also tired with the brush of
Speaker 3: being stupid. Yeah, so in this scenario, how do you win?
Speaker 3: You exit and pursue your own.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm just always amazed by more women not being
Speaker 2: damaged by it. But maybe I'm just don't know them well.
Speaker 2: And I left too early. I got out very quick.
Speaker 2: I didn't like the men in that world. I didn't
Speaker 2: like the young men.
Speaker 1: In that world.
Speaker 2: They were very arrogant, very cocky, very clever. They'd all
Speaker 2: been to you know, big boys public schools, and they've
Speaker 2: been to Oxford and Cambridge. Yes, they had very good
Speaker 2: educations and you had none, right, I mean, and I
Speaker 2: left school at sixteen. So and you were literally just
Speaker 2: in a market for whether au had some money, because
Speaker 2: they all wanted to see a lot of them were
Speaker 2: second sons, so they were looking for rich daughters and
Speaker 2: whether you know, you were a good sword, so it was,
Speaker 2: you know, I.
Speaker 1: Suppose not that different than a lot of people.
Speaker 3: After the Break, Rachel explains why she left the world
Speaker 3: of glamour at nineteen and what it was really like
Speaker 3: being judged as beautiful but not bright. When you did
Speaker 3: The Thorn Birds, which I didn't realize was not shot
Speaker 3: in Australia because it was an Australian.
Speaker 2: Story, I realized that glamour had a high premium in
Speaker 2: that world, and I thought, you know, you can actually
Speaker 2: be boring and but be glamorous and you can get
Speaker 2: away with it. You can be dumb if you're glamorous
Speaker 2: and get away with it. So I kind of recognize
Speaker 2: that and I went, right, well, then I'm not educated,
Speaker 2: I'm not the brightest in the forest. I'll be glamorous
Speaker 2: and so beautiful. I guess I never saw that, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I definitely got Well, you know, you move in a world,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of beauty. There's a lot of beauty, right,
Speaker 2: a lot of bety. I didn't feel exceptionally beautiful at all, but.
Speaker 3: You were exceptional your background you, as you say, in
Speaker 3: that time where it was all like big white teeth
Speaker 3: and font here, and you were I'm going to say
Speaker 3: English rose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I got out of that very quick. So
Speaker 2: by nineteen I'd moved to America. I'd gone to America,
Speaker 2: and then you were taking face value. It was much
Speaker 2: more about your own, your own efforts, your own you know,
Speaker 2: you were you were, You were credited for your own.
Speaker 1: What you brought.
Speaker 2: You know that.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like the Earl of Dudley's North No, new Country.
Speaker 2: New Country. Yes, face value. You were totally taken it
Speaker 2: face value. And I was always quite hard worker. I
Speaker 2: understood about working. I worked hard at school and I
Speaker 2: wanted to do well. I was quite quite driven. I
Speaker 2: don't know why.
Speaker 1: I think in my character was your English. No, I
Speaker 1: wasn't good at English. No, I wasn't because I was
Speaker 1: a useless speller and things like that. No I was.
Speaker 2: I didn't discover that writing and things till much later.
Speaker 1: I was good at art. I was good at art, and.
Speaker 2: I could work so I could get I was very
Speaker 2: good at putting in the work so that I could
Speaker 2: do well in the exams.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it didn't do me much good because I know, but.
Speaker 3: Good for being an actor, which actually requires quite a
Speaker 3: lot of work, particularly to take a lead role in
Speaker 3: one of the first mini series.
Speaker 2: No, not what a lot of work. No, it takes
Speaker 2: you know what it takes.
Speaker 1: It takes real guts.
Speaker 2: I was gutsy, I was brave, and I remember going
Speaker 2: to auditions very early on and there'd be a lot
Speaker 2: of other models in the audition room and I was focused,
Speaker 2: and I was you know, I was very focused. I
Speaker 2: was doing my whatever I used to do to get
Speaker 2: myself into the place, and the others were just you know,
Speaker 2: chatting away and all of that.
Speaker 1: So I was quite focused. And when you got cast,
Speaker 1: when you got the job, can you remember that the
Speaker 1: thorn Birds? Oh well, i'd moved. I'd spent a couple
Speaker 1: of years.
Speaker 2: In New York, first as a model, and then I
Speaker 2: started acting and I did a couple of horror movies
Speaker 2: there and then I moved to la and I did
Speaker 2: so I've done a movie with Burt Reynolds before then.
Speaker 2: I'd done Sharky's Machine was my big break. So that
Speaker 2: put me into a big league and there was a
Speaker 2: you know, I had a lot of publicity because at
Speaker 2: the time, Burt Reynolds was the Brad Pitt of the day.
Speaker 2: So it was a big coup to get that role.
Speaker 2: And it had to go to an unknown because the
Speaker 2: lead disappears after about first twenty minutes, and if it
Speaker 2: had been Jane Fonder or somewhere, you know, she was
Speaker 2: coming back. So I had to it had to be
Speaker 2: in And then, oh, yeah, I had that was very
Speaker 2: competitive and I basically beat out most of the women
Speaker 2: of mine, so I was quite I was obviously pretty,
Speaker 2: you know, I had my wits about me. Then, yes,
Speaker 2: definitely had my wits about me, and I worked hard
Speaker 2: and I had guts, and those auditions were just horrifying, horrifying.
Speaker 1: Always are that traumatic, and so then yeah, thorn Burd's
Speaker 1: was one of those ones. And I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it at first.
Speaker 2: I read the script and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is ludicrous, you know, because it was all written
Speaker 2: in I am but Pantameter. Oh so it was very,
Speaker 2: very wordily, and it wasn't and it wasn't naturalistic. And
Speaker 2: also it was very it was very American, and it
Speaker 2: took itself very seriously. And I went in on the
Speaker 2: first audition and was probably quite light with it, which
Speaker 2: had served me well in Dead Men don't wear plaid
Speaker 2: that I would I done already with so I had
Speaker 2: a sort of lightness and a humor with my work
Speaker 2: and all of that. And then I went into and
Speaker 2: I did it so I normally did. And I got
Speaker 2: like four out of ten for my audition because I
Speaker 2: wasn't taking it probably seriously enough, right, and they gave
Speaker 2: that no, I didn't get the role. And then I went, oh,
Speaker 2: I really want this role, you know, I suddenly went
Speaker 2: out I wanted and I got them to get me
Speaker 2: in again to audition again, and I changed the way
Speaker 2: I did it. I knew that they wanted, you know,
Speaker 2: I knew they wanted sort of soap opera kind of
Speaker 2: drama in tears, yearning, yearning and all of that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, you say derisively, but they are very powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, well you know, I mean they are, yes,
Speaker 2: But for me, they needed the complexity of a bit
Speaker 2: of light and shade. And for me it was just,
Speaker 2: you know, every scene I had someone with my father died,
Speaker 2: my brother died, he left me. It was a dirge
Speaker 2: and I think in the end probably I was a dirt.
Speaker 2: It was just that there was no light moments and
Speaker 2: I had a director who would say to me like
Speaker 2: and I'd just be stumped over yet another ghastly scene,
Speaker 2: and he said, you're a little bird.
Speaker 1: With a broken wing, and that was my direction, you know.
Speaker 2: So it was it wasn't really encouraging me to bring
Speaker 2: more life to it, so I would have directed it
Speaker 2: very differently.
Speaker 1: But there you go. It was a huge success, So
Speaker 1: what am I was a.
Speaker 2: Huge success, And not only that, but not here it
Speaker 2: was I mean, it was success here, but god, it
Speaker 2: got pillared.
Speaker 1: Oh she got pillared who was the writer, Colin McCullough.
Speaker 2: She got pillariedge for selling it to the Americans, And
Speaker 2: it got pillared here because I got pillaried because it
Speaker 2: should have gone to an Australian and it went to me,
Speaker 2: and then I went off with you know, mister Australia,
Speaker 2: which was even the worst scene National Treasure exactly.
Speaker 1: So that was a sin. No. So I definitely got
Speaker 1: bollocked here, and that was hard. I got pretty.
Speaker 2: Bad reviews, really yeah, I got pretty bad reviews. And
Speaker 2: it took me a lot, and because I was already
Speaker 2: very insecure, I really took it to heart and it
Speaker 2: cruled me.
Speaker 1: It's like today having trolls.
Speaker 2: Yes, because it's public annihilation, Yes, and very public annihilation.
Speaker 2: It fills you kind of with shame and oh, my god,
Speaker 2: remember my physicality. When I read the New York Review
Speaker 2: in the New York Times which said everything that Penny
Speaker 2: whatever she was called or played the younger Rachel, that
Speaker 2: the younger Maggie does right, Rachel Ward does wrong. And
Speaker 2: I remember that, and Brand said, don't read it, don't
Speaker 2: read it, and I went, no, I have to read. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's IRRESISTI will never forgot it, never.
Speaker 1: Read the comments.
Speaker 3: And yet we're drawn to them because I think there's
Speaker 3: a quest that you know, the dal A Lama said,
Speaker 3: the worst thing about criticism is that it's true.
Speaker 1: There's always a part of you, yeah knows it's true.
Speaker 3: There's a part of you that for some reason, and
Speaker 3: I think particularly true in a sort of creative life,
Speaker 3: I guess because you see it on a platform where
Speaker 3: it's maybe in ordinary life.
Speaker 1: In normally life you don't see it so much.
Speaker 3: But there's a part of you that craves that dagger
Speaker 3: to the to the hearsh.
Speaker 2: And also I was hanging in La with a very
Speaker 2: with a quite a with a quite up themselves crowd,
Speaker 2: you know. They art was very serious to them, and
Speaker 2: proper films were serious to them, right, And I was
Speaker 2: in this soap opera, so it was like I had
Speaker 2: definitely stepped down. So it was so ridiculous. At a
Speaker 2: time when I should have been celebrating the success of it,
Speaker 2: I was hiding.
Speaker 1: I just I just hid. I remember when it came out,
Speaker 1: Brian and I were in Bathist.
Speaker 2: And because he was doing a yeah, I think we
Speaker 2: were in Bathist or somewhere way out back, and we
Speaker 2: were in this motel doing while he was doing a
Speaker 2: film there. And I remember the photographers and the press
Speaker 2: all at the windows, and I was just mortified by
Speaker 2: the exposure of being in the thorn Birds and the
Speaker 2: fact that I'd sort of felt pillaried and I felt
Speaker 2: like the trolls that had come down, And at a
Speaker 2: time when I should have been absolutely celebrating it, I
Speaker 2: was hiding with shame.
Speaker 3: So at this point you had fallen in love with
Speaker 3: Brian Brown, which was part.
Speaker 1: Of your definitely my kicking, kicking my life.
Speaker 2: That's accident that I married the most working class boy
Speaker 2: I could find.
Speaker 3: Yes, in a complete kind of rejection of where you
Speaker 3: had come from.
Speaker 1: How did your connection happen? It happened on set. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Was it an.
Speaker 3: Instant thing or was it I like this alaraken or
Speaker 3: something about his rock solid.
Speaker 1: Certainty all of that, all of that.
Speaker 2: It was definitely hot. He was definitely hot and hot,
Speaker 2: and he was cocky. You know, he was very cocky,
Speaker 2: and he was you know what it was. He was
Speaker 2: supremely confident and he had such faith in himself.
Speaker 1: And I wanted that.
Speaker 2: I just saw God, I'd love that to be so
Speaker 2: sure about everything, so sure about his politics, He was
Speaker 2: so sure about his his values, values, he was sure
Speaker 2: about his morality. I had none of that. I grew
Speaker 2: up in such a sort of funny, funny, immoral world.
Speaker 2: I mean it was sort of Epstein esque clear in
Speaker 2: any way. You know, you were definitely being groomed to
Speaker 2: be a commodity commodity. Yeah, so when he came up,
Speaker 2: he represented something so different and he definitely knew what
Speaker 2: was right or wrong. And definitely in Hollywood, you know,
Speaker 2: there is no writer or you know, it's very cutthroat.
Speaker 1: It's ambitious.
Speaker 2: People will do anything to get what they want and
Speaker 2: where they want, and so to also hold on to
Speaker 2: values at that time and to behave well, you know,
Speaker 2: according to values and you know what tiny bit of
Speaker 2: morality I had was was difficult and so I just yeah,
Speaker 2: I saw this rock who knew had.
Speaker 1: I've never met a person more confident.
Speaker 4: Confident enough also to pursue you yeah, ut yeah yeah,
Speaker 4: posh girl, yeah, posh girl, yeah, lay in the dare
Speaker 4: here yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And he yeah, I dare anyway it was. And then
Speaker 1: to bring you here or you came here, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean I came here, and I, you know, because I
Speaker 2: were not It was not attached to England. I was
Speaker 2: not attached to being to what I had experienced. And
Speaker 2: I loved England passionately, but I didn't like that world.
Speaker 1: I didn't like. I sort of knew very soon that
Speaker 1: I was very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: In and also being I didn't like being a posh girl.
Speaker 2: It was like every villain was a was a poshee,
Speaker 2: you know, every every idiot. It was a very cold person,
Speaker 2: every cold it was a very silly idiot who was
Speaker 2: a foe whah voice was a poshee. And I felt
Speaker 2: very tainted by that, and I didn't want to be
Speaker 2: a posh It was also a time when you know,
Speaker 2: it was very much the working class thing was coming.
Speaker 2: You know, it was very it was you know, it
Speaker 2: was Alan Bates, it was Oliver Reid, it was Terrence Stamp,
Speaker 2: it was Michael Caine, it was you know, I can't
Speaker 2: even think of the girls now, but they weren't posh girls.
Speaker 2: They were all you know, middle class or working class girls.
Speaker 2: And as as a model to everybody was you know,
Speaker 2: it was an anomaly to be a posh girl.
Speaker 1: It's sort of not now, but no, it's not. They've
Speaker 1: all in fla. But when I was, it was all.
Speaker 2: My timing was incredibly bad because it was sort of
Speaker 2: like at a time when the poshies were being maligned
Speaker 2: or I felt they were, or just being ridiculed quite rightly.
Speaker 1: I mean, at the time it was well social, social
Speaker 1: movement and social.
Speaker 2: That's right, definitely, And when I came here it was
Speaker 2: very much also about Australia finding its own voice and
Speaker 2: kicking out the voice of the you know, the English
Speaker 2: and here come I come. You know, absolutely, you know,
Speaker 2: basically a throwback to the old days, to the colonial days.
Speaker 2: So that became you know, it's sort of subconscious, but
Speaker 2: I think it was, you know, it was not the
Speaker 2: right time for me to be here as far as working.
Speaker 2: So when I got here, I really hard to get
Speaker 2: work for me, and because rightly Australia was very much
Speaker 2: finding it. You know, it's Mura's wedding. It was Crocodile Dundee,
Speaker 2: it was breaking morn. It was my brilliant career, it
Speaker 2: was all. It wasn't the colonial stuff, and I suppose
Speaker 2: my brilliant career was.
Speaker 1: But again, you know, it was a very It was
Speaker 1: a girl. She was the she was the underclass in
Speaker 1: that relationship. Yes, and then so you had babies pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Yes, I knew I didn't want to be in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: I knew it was the same thing. I was repeating
Speaker 2: the same thing when they where It was also Hollywood
Speaker 2: had changed, you know. It was interesting going to see
Speaker 2: his Cliff the other day because it is a real
Speaker 2: We don't do romance, big romantic films anymore.
Speaker 1: And that's why I wanted to be an actress.
Speaker 2: I think, because I was just so taken by the
Speaker 2: romance of those you know, far from the madding crowd,
Speaker 2: doctor Shafargobush, Cassidy and the Sun. You know, there's deeply
Speaker 2: romantic films where the women were sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: so romantic thunder and cross deserts on apoll and they
Speaker 2: were strong and decent. And I got to Hollywood and
Speaker 2: it was suddenly about sex. It was all about getting
Speaker 2: you in the red bathing suit and getting as much
Speaker 2: breast out as possible, full endless talk about in contracts
Speaker 2: about full frontal nudity or not, you know, and suddenly
Speaker 2: everything became sexualized, did you rather than romanticized?
Speaker 1: Did you?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't, And I had the first thing I ever
Speaker 2: did I did. I was it did have a shower
Speaker 2: scene and I had drawn pen all around my breath
Speaker 2: because so they couldn't shoot it. But I remember they
Speaker 2: enlarged the print so that, you know, because it was
Speaker 2: obviously it was in a format that cut out my breast,
Speaker 2: but in the actual film it was wider. So Playboy,
Speaker 2: I think, took the wider print. And I remember being
Speaker 2: at well Beach one day and there was a knock
Speaker 2: on the door and there was a photographer and a
Speaker 2: journalist saying how do you feel about having having nudity?
Speaker 2: And Playboy And that was the first time I knew
Speaker 2: about it or anything, and they'd obviously taken the things
Speaker 2: that I'd drawn across, run my breast off, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're all deep humiliating those moments, and you know, in.
Speaker 1: Retrospect, are they still No?
Speaker 2: No, now I wish I'd been less precious about it.
Speaker 1: Take it off. Yeah, you've got a moment in the sun. Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, you know, you're so sensitive at that age.
Speaker 2: You become a tough old boot, you know, by the
Speaker 2: time you get to my age, and those things don't matter.
Speaker 2: But you just go why didn't I just you know,
Speaker 2: rip it up and just you know, take advantage of
Speaker 2: that moment.
Speaker 1: But you don't have that perspective. No, And there is
Speaker 1: something about wisdom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's no one there to say, well, actually,
Speaker 2: funny enough, my mother was there to say, don't take
Speaker 2: it all so seriously, darling, you know, but of course
Speaker 2: that was just rude.
Speaker 1: Coming up.
Speaker 3: Rachel discovers the impact her move to Australia head on
Speaker 3: her mother. Was she enjoying your success and when you
Speaker 3: move to Australia, was she?
Speaker 1: How did that play with her?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: She, you know, I think it's awful when your children
Speaker 2: moved to the other side of the world. No, she was.
Speaker 1: Devastated by it. Did she come here, Yeah, she did
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: She did a lot, and she was a great mum
Speaker 2: later on, and I think she realized what she'd missed,
Speaker 2: and she and she didn't have a close relationship with
Speaker 2: her other two at all, and she did with me,
Speaker 2: but and then I was the one that moved to
Speaker 2: the other side of the world. So yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: horrible for her. But did she know she was sort
Speaker 2: of a little bit. I remember not not long before
Speaker 2: she died, she said there was we were at a
Speaker 2: dinner or something and a man was playing paying me
Speaker 2: more attention than her, and I remember her saying, rather
Speaker 2: loudly to him, we can't all be movie stars. So
Speaker 2: she was definitely sort of irritated by it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess she She wasn't. She wasn't someone who put
Speaker 2: herself out that particularly, so she didn't and she thought
Speaker 2: it was slightly vulgar. I think the whole thing again,
Speaker 2: you know, the talking about yourself doing this sort of thing,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: But also enjoyed it. Did she enjoy being, you know,
Speaker 1: slightly disgusted by it.
Speaker 2: No, she was called La bruta Mamma Da Maggie in Italy,
Speaker 2: which was the brute of the mother of Meggie, because
Speaker 2: you know, I, you know, people.
Speaker 1: Asked me about my upbringing very early, and it was.
Speaker 3: It was a strange one when you neglect, when you
Speaker 3: spoke so frankly about your upbringing. How did that resonate
Speaker 3: with her or did she brush it off? Or do
Speaker 3: you think that she self reflected?
Speaker 2: Do I think she's self reflected. I think she thought
Speaker 2: I was making a lot out of nothing, right, yes,
Speaker 2: which is that she never she never moved outside her class.
Speaker 2: She never had. She stayed very very close in that world.
Speaker 2: So she never was aware of the sort of the
Speaker 2: sort of disdain, the ridicule. She never felt embarrassed by
Speaker 2: being an elite. She never felt self conscious about being elite.
Speaker 2: She sort of neither did my sister. I remember being
Speaker 2: in the chauffeur's car following the school bus home, and
Speaker 2: my friend was on the school bus and they were
Speaker 2: all with a gang of kids at the back of
Speaker 2: the bus or jeering and laughing, and because we were
Speaker 2: in and in fact her father was driving the car,
Speaker 2: and I remember being so mortified by the idea, and
Speaker 2: I remember hiding under the front seats so that, you know,
Speaker 2: I couldn't be seen. I was very self conscious about
Speaker 2: being different. And my sister had no problem with it
Speaker 2: at all. She was just sitting up with the back
Speaker 2: and I don't know why I was sensitive to it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's unusual as well, because that's exactly how establishment works,
Speaker 3: is that people are very happy to buy into establishment
Speaker 3: because that's how the structure works.
Speaker 1: But you had this, I don't know this.
Speaker 2: I had a sort of inverted synobism. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to you know, it's like I mean to this very day.
Speaker 2: Brian is very proud of being a working class hero.
Speaker 2: You know, he will drop out a hat the fact
Speaker 2: that his mother made dedarning for a living. You know,
Speaker 2: there is something very gallant and heroic about coming up
Speaker 2: from you know, nowhere and making something of yourself.
Speaker 1: If you come if you make.
Speaker 2: A success for yourself and you've come from a privileged background,
Speaker 2: it's really considered, Well, you didn't have to do much,
Speaker 2: did you, Not much of a journey for.
Speaker 5: You, Yeah, silverspoon, silver spoon, And also a sort of
Speaker 5: sense that you were a bit soulless, that not really
Speaker 5: suffering gave you any kind of soul.
Speaker 1: And I don't know where I get these ideas from,
Speaker 1: but you know.
Speaker 2: I think it was what you read, and it was
Speaker 2: just really subconscious, weird stuff and I just did not
Speaker 2: like being an elite. And I still feel uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm much more able to talk about it
Speaker 2: because I think it's kind of a fascinating place to
Speaker 2: come from, and because I think you can throw a
Speaker 2: light on what that hose, how those elites are made,
Speaker 2: why we've got into this Epstein situation, you know, what
Speaker 2: makes people like that? I mean, I remember my father
Speaker 2: had He was a conservative voter, and he had no
Speaker 2: care about really how society functioned. He wanted to make
Speaker 2: sure that his money was looked after, and that he
Speaker 2: maintained his privileges, and that he hung with his privileged cohouts.
Speaker 1: And that his poached eggs already when he wanted never
Speaker 1: considered it, you know, never.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was snobby, and it was for me very clearly.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it was a lot to do
Speaker 2: with my friend who was the chauffeur's daughter, who would
Speaker 2: make fun of me as being posh.
Speaker 1: What was her name? She was called Sarah hooper Ah.
Speaker 1: Do you still see Sarah Hooper. She died, did she.
Speaker 2: Yes, But she was such an influence and she was
Speaker 2: a bit older than me, and she we had great
Speaker 2: riding adventures, and she would, you know, come riding with me.
Speaker 2: And she was a forceful, a force of nature, and
Speaker 2: she was a very dear friend. But only for those
Speaker 2: very formative years, you know. And then I went to
Speaker 2: boarding school and she went to the local grammar school
Speaker 2: and we went our different ways.
Speaker 3: So when you were in Australia, and it's funny that
Speaker 3: you talk about elite, because then through the dint of
Speaker 3: your husband's work and your work, you became part of
Speaker 3: kind of a cultural elite, which is different, more of
Speaker 3: a meritocracy, I guess.
Speaker 1: And then so.
Speaker 3: You also could have had just this kind of charmed,
Speaker 3: easy life life in Sydney with all its beauties and
Speaker 3: whatever and doors opening and.
Speaker 2: Then and I did, Yes, you did, yeah, And it
Speaker 2: was you know, fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 1: But you still had a yearning in you. Yes, I
Speaker 1: did have a yearning in me.
Speaker 2: I've always been kind of unsettled and looking for purpose
Speaker 2: and something. I'm the kind of person who loves to
Speaker 2: climb very high precipices, and I get a lot of
Speaker 2: satisfaction out of the you know, the challenge and the
Speaker 2: conquest and getting there. So I was very you know,
Speaker 2: I was recognized that my acting career was done once
Speaker 2: I came here, and I recognized there really wasn't a
Speaker 2: place for me really here, and I knew I had
Speaker 2: to change careers. So I went back to university and
Speaker 2: I did a communications degree, and I thought, well, I
Speaker 2: would start writing, and I really found my love of writing.
Speaker 2: And then in the end then I had small children,
Speaker 2: so that was very hard for me to sort of
Speaker 2: take that seriously. And then I started, you know, I'd
Speaker 2: read a lot of scripts, and so I started writing scripts.
Speaker 1: And then I you know, write Palm Beach.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, and I wrote Beautiful Kate, and I wrote
Speaker 2: all my short films that I did before that. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I you know, that was a big mountain to climb,
Speaker 2: to change those, to change careers, to know when it's over.
Speaker 1: I was quite good at knowing.
Speaker 2: This one is done, my use by date is over here,
Speaker 2: I've got to move.
Speaker 1: Get off the part. Yeah, I was quite good at that.
Speaker 1: I reckoned. I was always slightly ahead of my cohorts.
Speaker 1: In like having.
Speaker 2: Moved first sniffed the bree I sniffed the breeze.
Speaker 1: That was a good one, Yeah, sniffed the breeze. And
Speaker 1: so I then so.
Speaker 2: I certainly did that as a model, and I certainly
Speaker 2: did that. When I came here. My you know, acting
Speaker 2: career was done. I went back to America quite a
Speaker 2: bit and did still did work over there, so but
Speaker 2: I didn't really work here at all. So I still
Speaker 2: had a few years when the kids were young, when
Speaker 2: I was going over to America and doing you know,
Speaker 2: television HBO, and I did against all odds.
Speaker 1: I did against all arts actually before I came here.
Speaker 2: And then the minute you the minute you leave Hollywood,
Speaker 2: someone takes your place very quickly. So I lost any
Speaker 2: kind of cashet I had by coming here and marrying
Speaker 2: Brian and being here and having kids and all that.
Speaker 2: That went very quickly. And then I sort of found myself.
Speaker 2: You know, Brian was working a lot. I was here,
Speaker 2: I was alone, not didn't have any I didn't know
Speaker 2: anybody here, and we were living up in the Northern Beaches,
Speaker 2: which was beautiful but lonely, and Brian was working a
Speaker 2: lot and away a lot, so that was a hard time.
Speaker 2: And then I went to uts and I loved that,
Speaker 2: and I started writing. And then I did a Tropfest
Speaker 2: film and I loved it. I did it with the
Speaker 2: kids at school. I did it because my kids school
Speaker 2: wanted to do it in years five six they wanted
Speaker 2: to do a trop fast, so I did it with them,
Speaker 2: and of course they got absolutely bored of it in
Speaker 2: about five seconds, and I was sort of alad you didn't.
Speaker 1: And I didn't.
Speaker 2: I saw the pres this is great and yeah, So
Speaker 2: then I became obsessed about doing that.
Speaker 3: So that was another extension of your creative self. And
Speaker 3: then there's a massive pivot born about by the twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen fires, the catastrophic fires, because you, through your family life.
Speaker 1: Had had this farm. Yep, that was like an escape
Speaker 1: for the family. It feels very unnatural.
Speaker 2: Suddenly this conversation I want to know about your life.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's yeah, it's very It's funny doing interviews
Speaker 2: because it is very one sided.
Speaker 1: You suddenly feel like this is ridiculous. Now what is
Speaker 1: he doing?
Speaker 3: You? Like this would be a ten parter. This really
Speaker 3: is like every every byway and culder Sack is filled
Speaker 3: with riches.
Speaker 2: I think yeah, there's had certainly been some big U
Speaker 2: turns or yeaes. Yeah, so the and you know then
Speaker 2: I got into the directing or do you want to
Speaker 2: talk about the farm?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to talk about the farm, okay, because
Speaker 3: then I also want to talk about your immersion in
Speaker 3: this new world and sustainability of farming and regenerative farming,
Speaker 3: which I think, once again you were ahead of the
Speaker 3: curve on I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope, so, I hope. So anyway, yes, well
Speaker 2: I had a farm. Very quickly we got a farm.
Speaker 2: We were filming something something called The Good Wife up
Speaker 2: in the mid North Coast and Brian and I very
Speaker 2: much fell in love with everything about it, and we
Speaker 2: just did one of those things. We were young and
Speaker 2: had enough money to buy a little farm and we
Speaker 2: just didn't think about it. And it was way too
Speaker 2: far away from Sydney and took six bloody hours to
Speaker 2: get there.
Speaker 1: So it was stupid, right, it was sort of stupid.
Speaker 2: But for me, the country was very evocative of my
Speaker 2: childhood country. So it was sort of roaring, rolling hills,
Speaker 2: quite quite a small little valley, right, It was a
Speaker 2: sort of didn't have that wild quite the wildness and
Speaker 2: the scale of most Australian stuff that parched. No, it
Speaker 2: wasn't parched, it was green. It was and for me
Speaker 2: it definitely spoke to my heart somehow. Anyway, we got
Speaker 2: that and we just had it as a we didn't
Speaker 2: you know, it was you know, going back to England.
Speaker 2: We did go back to England quite a bit, but
Speaker 2: it's a big schleap when you've got small children, yes,
Speaker 2: And we didn't want to do that, and we didn't
Speaker 2: really want to go to Bali or whatever around here.
Speaker 2: So we got a place so that we could go
Speaker 2: every holidays. We didn't go overseas every holidays. We went
Speaker 2: to the farm. And it was a small farm at
Speaker 2: that stage, and so the kids grew up really going
Speaker 2: every holidays to the farm. And because I'd grown up
Speaker 2: in the country and I was pretty good with horses
Speaker 2: and things like that, we got horses and just had.
Speaker 1: A wonderful, wonderful holiday. But load of is not a
Speaker 1: farmer not do.
Speaker 3: There is beautiful Docco called Rachel's Farm. Yes, very beautiful
Speaker 3: and beautiful because I think if you think about the quest,
Speaker 3: you know what our purpose as humans always to find
Speaker 3: another aspect of ourselves to roll into.
Speaker 2: And they're hard, those things because you know when changes.
Speaker 2: You know, I knew when my film career was over.
Speaker 2: I knew when my directing career was over, and it
Speaker 2: was heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Transitions are hard, Oh god, they're hard, Yes, really hard.
Speaker 3: And I know when you say union was a job
Speaker 3: you had missed out on, specifically.
Speaker 2: Job seven years of not being able to get work
Speaker 2: right weirdly after, I mean, you know, of see one feels.
Speaker 2: I mean, I felt I had a lot to offer
Speaker 2: and I was pretty good at it and I made
Speaker 2: some you know, terrific stuff. But I think everybody probably
Speaker 2: feels like that, and I think I probably wasn't as
Speaker 2: good as I probably felt that I was. But you know,
Speaker 2: and at the end, you have just a lot of
Speaker 2: drawers full of scripts and they haven't gone anywhere, and
Speaker 2: you've you know, there's so much work goes into trying
Speaker 2: to get a project up, you know, because they're expensive,
Speaker 2: and there's it's very competitive and there's always somebody new
Speaker 2: coming up. And I did get into the directing kind
Speaker 2: of late, and I was known as an actor, so
Speaker 2: to change that mantle was hard, and it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: taken as seriously as it could have been as if
Speaker 2: I'd started as a director and gone to film.
Speaker 1: School and yes, had that pedigree or that had that degree.
Speaker 2: People always a little bit skeptical, Oh well, she'll have
Speaker 2: a little play and then she does it.
Speaker 1: Also, because you were married to Brian Brown, do you
Speaker 1: think or not so much. I think she's always to blame.
Speaker 1: Let's blame him.
Speaker 2: No, he was always absolutely fantastic because he produced a
Speaker 2: lot of them too.
Speaker 1: But I'm in externally.
Speaker 3: Do you think there was always a thing of that
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily need the job or.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I did? You know?
Speaker 2: It's so fickle, it's so who's in favor and who's not,
Speaker 2: and who you want, who people want to work with,
Speaker 2: And it's very copycat. You know, suddenly somebody becomes hot
Speaker 2: and everybody wants to work with them, and literally a
Speaker 2: week later they're out of fashion or they've done their
Speaker 2: dash and it's somebody new. And you spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time and a lot of energy getting to a
Speaker 2: place where you can be responsible for a budget and
Speaker 2: to tell a story, and suddenly it's gone and it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter what you do, it's just gone.
Speaker 1: And also the industry is very small.
Speaker 2: So if you make a bit of a mistake on something,
Speaker 2: or you don't do as well as you thought you should,
Speaker 2: you know it's over.
Speaker 1: It is over.
Speaker 3: And so you you obviously have no trouble as you
Speaker 3: said you like to to, you know, scale a pinnacle
Speaker 3: time and energy. You were like, I know what I'm
Speaker 3: going to do. I'm going to become a farmer.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was that was pretty recently.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was pretty recently then that I had basically
Speaker 2: a big breakdown.
Speaker 1: I've always had a bit of mental health issue. Really. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's funny because you seem, I mean externally when I
Speaker 3: see you really do, and maybe it's because you're very
Speaker 3: poised and you have beautiful posture, but it's.
Speaker 1: Hard to imagine you crumbled. Yeah, and you were crumbled.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've been crumbled a few times. A few times.
Speaker 2: I've had crumbles, and I've been on antipressants for a
Speaker 2: long time, right, And I am.
Speaker 1: Deeply grateful to them because it was I was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm someone who's undone unravels quite easily. Wow, quite
Speaker 2: a lot. And it comes from you know, I think
Speaker 2: in the end this what does it come from?
Speaker 1: I think it's self esteem.
Speaker 2: I think it's not liking yourself enough. I don't know
Speaker 2: what it is, but it's it's in there and it
Speaker 2: will never really go.
Speaker 1: I just did. I did the Adelaide Fringe.
Speaker 2: Festival the day before the night before last, and I
Speaker 2: had to host it and I was the MC and
Speaker 2: stuff and I'm so anxious, and so the chatter in
Speaker 2: my head was just screaming, You're going to screw this up.
Speaker 2: You're going to You're not going to know your lines,
Speaker 2: You're going to bugger it all up, you know. And
Speaker 2: there were lots of young I was on the sort
Speaker 2: of it was a it was a farming stories, a
Speaker 2: love story, and it was basically other farmers talking about
Speaker 2: their experiences.
Speaker 1: And this and that.
Speaker 2: And they were younger than me, and they were farmers.
Speaker 2: They weren't performing, and they were fine. They were really
Speaker 2: excited about it, and they felt really proud of what
Speaker 2: they'd done. And I was sort of still, you know,
Speaker 2: deeply insecure about being able to pull it off, and
Speaker 2: you know, and I just I find I find this
Speaker 2: quite easy because I do feel like we're having a chat.
Speaker 2: But I find anything where there are expectations and it's
Speaker 2: not it's not feeling like I'm going to make a
Speaker 2: fool of myself in front of other people.
Speaker 1: It's a fool for me. It's me not living up
Speaker 1: to the standards that I have.
Speaker 2: And that's that which is the critical voice that was
Speaker 2: from my beginning of like, oh she's a bore, she's stupid,
Speaker 2: she's got a big bum.
Speaker 1: You know, it was those those things very early on.
Speaker 1: Never leave you.
Speaker 3: And yet it doesn't matter how many times you get
Speaker 3: the external affirmation that what you're doing is great because
Speaker 3: the internal I know.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, I've had such lovely feeds
Speaker 2: back from all of that thing. When I was pit
Speaker 2: by the trolls about looking at what is.
Speaker 1: Actually paining me now?
Speaker 3: To think when you have said that you have this,
Speaker 3: you know, this internal struggle with yourself, my thought was,
Speaker 3: oh fuck.
Speaker 1: When people said those.
Speaker 2: Did not minds, did not mind at all, because no,
Speaker 2: didn't care.
Speaker 1: Now why didn't come Number one?
Speaker 2: I I don't have expectations about my appearance now, so
Speaker 2: what so I looked like, you know, like I've been
Speaker 2: like a farm or I come out of you know,
Speaker 2: like I haven't looked in the mirror for a what.
Speaker 1: I don't care if people have put a post about
Speaker 1: the farm, so it's about it was. It was related
Speaker 1: to the thanking.
Speaker 2: With people thanking my neighbors that Christmas, who's been so great,
Speaker 2: and how I couldn't do it all without them, you know,
Speaker 2: because they always jump in and you have this wonderful
Speaker 2: community of people who you're all connected to, and they
Speaker 2: communities and I was just thanking them and I didn't
Speaker 2: think really, I just and also I never have my camera,
Speaker 2: you know, I just do it myself and I don't
Speaker 2: really put touch thing into it. And I was basically
Speaker 2: just thanking them anyway. Yeah, must be quite a shock
Speaker 2: for people.
Speaker 1: Who know me. I've done lots of them. I don't
Speaker 1: know what. Oh, I know because I went gray, that's right. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's right. I let the gray go right. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I was the first time.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I've done you know, yes, and I probably
Speaker 2: and then the film that you know, I had lighting
Speaker 2: and it was nice sliding and I didn't look too wretched,
Speaker 2: I suppose in Rachel's Farm, which was only four years ago.
Speaker 1: When did you realize.
Speaker 3: That that you'd.
Speaker 1: Had quite an impact?
Speaker 3: Like did you see the comments? You don't strike me
Speaker 3: as someone who's on your.
Speaker 1: Phone a lot.
Speaker 2: No, I mean I might have to be on my
Speaker 2: phone a bit because I've got this new business. So
Speaker 2: I'm trying to you know, selling your Not only I'm
Speaker 2: an advocate, I'm an advocate for regenerative farming now. So
Speaker 2: I need to be on social media and I need
Speaker 2: be talking about the issues about what is going on
Speaker 2: with small family farms, and I need to talk about how,
Speaker 2: you know, the tiny percent of the farmers get for
Speaker 2: their prodi produce, and how we're killing them. And you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes that takes an outsider to see have that perspective
Speaker 2: and I and I do feel that is my path
Speaker 2: for now. And I know I've got to, you know,
Speaker 2: step into my noncomfort zone to do that, but I
Speaker 2: really don't care about how I'm looking in that. That's
Speaker 2: not what I don't think anybody when you put out.
Speaker 3: That post, what was the first comment that you saw
Speaker 3: where you went, oh, can you remember?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: I think I first saw people coming to my defense first,
Speaker 2: and I went on, what are they talking about? And
Speaker 2: then I saw some of the other ones, and no,
Speaker 2: I really just went, oh, you poor thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you are really afraid of aging.
Speaker 2: I'm not afraid of aging, and I feel better now
Speaker 2: than you know, as an older person than I did. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the expectations of so many things, your sexuality, your physicality,
Speaker 2: everything has gone of that.
Speaker 1: It's such a relief. You put up a really lovely
Speaker 1: post actually where you.
Speaker 3: Said, where you spoke about the beauty and of aging and.
Speaker 1: The myriad of benefits that came that.
Speaker 3: You said, it's not anything to be frightened off, and
Speaker 3: yet people are obviously frightened of it. Why do you
Speaker 3: think you in particular, why do you think that happened?
Speaker 3: Because it's like you said, You've put up lots of
Speaker 3: posts of yourself. You've never been you know, you're not
Speaker 3: having hair and makeup before you go out in the farm,
Speaker 3: So it's not Why do.
Speaker 1: You think people were so affected? I think I don't
Speaker 1: think it was really about me.
Speaker 2: I think I was a catalyst for a conversation that
Speaker 2: people were wanting to have and they hadn't been antunity
Speaker 2: as clear I suppose. So somebody's suddenly attacking me and
Speaker 2: I'm a farmer, so i'm you know, why should I
Speaker 2: look at a standard? And I think people have a
Speaker 2: fear of getting older because women become very invisible as
Speaker 2: they get older, yes, and if they, you know, aren't
Speaker 2: able to rest on the glory of their youth and
Speaker 2: their beauty and their you know, their sexuality, who are they?
Speaker 1: Where are they? And I think you know, definitely see
Speaker 1: that it's a law.
Speaker 3: Of diminishing returns too, because you cannot and there's you know,
Speaker 3: a thousand kind of you know, wrong way turn back
Speaker 3: examples of people who have tried to hang on to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think women in our own age are
Speaker 2: completely understanding of it, and you don't disappear for them.
Speaker 2: And women should never a fear that, you know, a
Speaker 2: huge cohort of your peers are never going to go
Speaker 2: because they're always interested in your path like I am
Speaker 2: in other women of my age. You know, I'm riveted
Speaker 2: to know how they're navigating it, how they're how they're
Speaker 2: doing it, you know what they're doing, and I mean,
Speaker 2: the only thing is doing it silently. But you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of us don't need to be shouting about it.
Speaker 2: You know, we're looking for peace, and we're looking for connections,
Speaker 2: and we're looking for our family, and we're looking out
Speaker 2: for our family. We don't need to be shouting for
Speaker 2: the rooftops I think men still go on beating their
Speaker 2: chests until the cows come home. But I think, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of women are just doing their stuff, being
Speaker 2: very productive, but without shouting about it.
Speaker 1: And I wonder, I think we lose a bit of.
Speaker 2: Power from that, because we all know that, you know,
Speaker 2: media attention is power, and I think that it is
Speaker 2: harder for them to get traction when they want to
Speaker 2: promote something or they want to say something, and they
Speaker 2: want to do something because they just don't have the
Speaker 2: the well, they don't have the media space, and they
Speaker 2: don't really four they don't really have a psychic space
Speaker 2: out there. Yes, but I think a lot of them
Speaker 2: don't care. I mean I often used to think why
Speaker 2: do women do it? Because when I was younger, and
Speaker 2: I was thinking, well, I'm still going to be, you know,
Speaker 2: jumping on tables when I'm ninety, and you go and
Speaker 2: why do they let themselves dispre And I think it's
Speaker 2: because you get to a point where you don't want it.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're happy to release it. You're happy to release
Speaker 1: such this is a thing, so you were not affected.
Speaker 3: But in my experience, also you know, working in the
Speaker 3: public eye, often people who love you are more affected
Speaker 3: on your behalf.
Speaker 1: So how was your husband?
Speaker 3: How was I saw your daughter came, yes, yeah, how
Speaker 3: was that for them?
Speaker 2: You know, Brian doesn't take anything very seriously, so he
Speaker 2: was probably just laughing and he knew I wouldn't take
Speaker 2: it seriously too.
Speaker 1: I mean it was I was hardly.
Speaker 2: He's seen me on the floor, he's seen me killed up,
Speaker 2: and yeah, well that's what he's seen. But he knows
Speaker 2: that that's not my achilles heel right, he knows that
Speaker 2: that wouldn't undo me. And my daughter was just sort
Speaker 2: of like, well, she's very much on social media and
Speaker 2: she's very you know, she's an influencer, so she does
Speaker 2: and she's brilliant at it. Yes, she does the most
Speaker 2: amazing post for the good farm shops and she just went,
Speaker 2: I think she just knows such a different part of me,
Speaker 2: you know, such a thing that again I think as
Speaker 2: a younger woman, she went, how dare you attack someone
Speaker 2: who's doing so much, who's so vibrant, who's so connected,
Speaker 2: and did a how dare you diminish them just because
Speaker 2: they haven't done their hair and makeup?
Speaker 3: And I think, very interesting thing that you have given
Speaker 3: your daughters and your son, isn't it as opposed to
Speaker 3: what you had.
Speaker 1: So your daughter's not in the feetal position. No, you've
Speaker 1: done that as a mother. Yes, perhaps amazing, I hope.
Speaker 2: So. No, they're not in fetal positions now yet. Now
Speaker 2: my daughters certainly aren't. Actually none of them are. They're
Speaker 2: very confident, very very comfortable in their own skin. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they've got Brian's confidence, nearly all of them. My oldest
Speaker 2: daughter is slightly more sensitive. I mean they're all sensitive,
Speaker 2: but I.
Speaker 1: Mean she's more.
Speaker 2: She's not someone who wants to draw attention to herself
Speaker 2: and she's not going to be in the live life no,
Speaker 2: so she's more, she's shyer.
Speaker 3: I have a theory about the impact that you made
Speaker 3: with your just videoing yourself songs, makeup, and it's that
Speaker 3: I think very few people are given, as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: the gift of the gods, which.
Speaker 6: Is this rare beauty, thank you, like rare, and there
Speaker 6: are very few women who willingly step aside from it.
Speaker 1: And most women are like at some.
Speaker 3: Level, maybe not not actively, but it's just exists in you.
Speaker 3: Oh if I had that beauty, that would be like
Speaker 3: the ultimate prize. And to see someone who has that
Speaker 3: beauty and who's opted to not.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you're given that gift that it's
Speaker 2: not worth very much.
Speaker 1: Not everyone who's given that gift knows that.
Speaker 2: It's not yours. It's the gift from the gods. Yes,
Speaker 2: you have not earned it, So it becomes difficult because
Speaker 2: you are always that's supposed to be enough. So it's
Speaker 2: and you don't ever feel like I did nothing for this.
Speaker 2: I just happened to have the lovely mother who you know,
Speaker 2: and I had some good genes. I would rather have
Speaker 2: been given the gift of music, or the gift of
Speaker 2: being good at maths or good at you know. So
Speaker 2: the achievement, achievement gift something that I've worked hard for
Speaker 2: that I've used my guts myself, you know. That's why
Speaker 2: anything that I did for myself I had pride of.
Speaker 2: But anything that was hinged on, that that hung on
Speaker 2: that never gave me very much satisfaction. And the sooner
Speaker 2: I could get rid of it, the better. The sooner
Speaker 2: I could get satisfaction from being a director or being
Speaker 2: a farmer, or anything that had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: being in front of a camera or using your looks
Speaker 2: for advantage.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of a lot of women
Speaker 2: have been given the gift of the gods would feel
Speaker 2: that that is, it feels unearned, the concentration on what
Speaker 2: is superficial, whereas what you've done is is literally and
Speaker 2: metaphorically made a connection with the earth, groundedness, groundedness.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting because you see it in the farm,
Speaker 3: docco in Rangel's farm.
Speaker 1: You seed. It surprised me. You said I used to
Speaker 1: be thin skinned. Do you remember something that. Yes, I've
Speaker 1: always been quite thin skinned.
Speaker 3: And now you said your connection with the land and
Speaker 3: the farm and what you're doing, like changing the life.
Speaker 1: Of the land. Yeah, I can't remember. I did say
Speaker 1: I was thin skin, but I can't remember. If I
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 2: Scars definitely make you tougher going life, you know, going
Speaker 2: through life, you just do get I remember that, and
Speaker 2: I look at my grandkids and I go, their love
Speaker 2: is so fluid, you know, what they're experiencing. Their emotions
Speaker 2: are so fluid. You know, they're so open and vulnerable,
Speaker 2: susceptible to deep passions, to deep loves and lights it's
Speaker 2: always hate love, you know, it's so extreme. I think
Speaker 2: when you get older, it becomes much more in control. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I definitely feel like I'm more robust. I'm more resilient,
Speaker 2: and which is what I'm trying to make my land.
Speaker 1: Obviously, there is more robust.
Speaker 2: You feel that it's a lot of land is very
Speaker 2: vulnerable because it's been mistreated. It doesn't have cover on it.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not it's not loved enough, you know.
Speaker 2: In a way, it's it doesn't have the resilience and
Speaker 2: the and the robustness that we need for it to
Speaker 2: function properly. Yes, so in a way, I've got that resilience,
Speaker 2: the resilience and all of.
Speaker 1: That to function properly.
Speaker 3: I have to thank you for your advocacy in this
Speaker 3: area because I've relatively recently as well, started buying our
Speaker 3: meat from a small farmer that I drive past in
Speaker 3: South Gippsland in Victoria, and he had a sign on
Speaker 3: his gate and now he delivers to the city once
Speaker 3: a month.
Speaker 1: Beautiful guy, And that's so good to hear.
Speaker 3: There are so many I was reading a stat the
Speaker 3: other day on the small farms that have disappeared in
Speaker 3: America one hundred and eighty thousand squat farms over the
Speaker 3: last I E is like crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, much more.
Speaker 2: There used to be three hundred and eighty million cattle
Speaker 2: or livestock in America and now there's like thirty eight
Speaker 2: million or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, the.
Speaker 2: Reduction in their farming has been extraordinary, and basically it's
Speaker 2: because they've just ruined their country and so it's it's eroding,
Speaker 2: the top soil has gone. They've poisoned it with so
Speaker 2: much glypher say that you know, they had this thing
Speaker 2: now where they've realized that between Baton Rouge and New
Speaker 2: Orleans it's now called cancer Alley because there's so much
Speaker 2: glypha say it has been sprayed on the fields up
Speaker 2: in you know, like Nebraska, in all that big farming land,
Speaker 2: and it all goes into the river system and it
Speaker 2: all comes down the river system and it's in the rain,
Speaker 2: and it's in the clouds, and it's in our hair.
Speaker 2: It is everywhere, and you know, we need to be
Speaker 2: really addressing this.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think it's a space that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Until I got into the farming thing on a thing
Speaker 2: because yes, I was ramped up with fear about what
Speaker 2: we were doing to the country to climate wise, I
Speaker 2: was definitely very susceptible to that, and I felt very
Speaker 2: impotent to do anything other than doing a bit of recycling.
Speaker 2: And yet I felt, why aren't we doing more? We've
Speaker 2: got to be doing so much more. So I felt,
Speaker 2: you know, not only in the end did I have power.
Speaker 2: In the fact I was filmmaker. I could tell this story.
Speaker 2: I could tell the story a Regen which I wanted
Speaker 2: to do with the region farmers, but then was talked
Speaker 2: in the fact note has to be your story of discovery,
Speaker 2: which was a very good thing, and the producer Tina
Speaker 2: Dalton was the one who pushed me there.
Speaker 1: I was a.
Speaker 2: Farmer, so I could change my farm, you know, I
Speaker 2: could change the way I farmed from just being a
Speaker 2: conventional farmer to really paying attention to looking after my
Speaker 2: soil and my lad.
Speaker 1: And I was a consumer.
Speaker 2: I could really make sure that my values about climate
Speaker 2: and being and being an environmentalist and caring about what
Speaker 2: was going on with the water and our table, our
Speaker 2: water table and our soil, I could change that around
Speaker 2: just my small thing also, and I could understand that
Speaker 2: to put my values those values, I could buy according
Speaker 2: to my values of being an environmentalist.
Speaker 1: Rachel Ward, God, I love you Oh, thanks, thank you.
Speaker 2: I can't believe I spent so much time banging on
Speaker 2: about the early days.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting the journey of how one comes to
Speaker 3: where they are. Sometimes you can only recognize it by
Speaker 3: turning to look back and hopefully not turning into a
Speaker 3: pillar of salt.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being such a great year, and I'll have
Speaker 2: to catch up with your life right now.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: What struck me most about this conversation is how matter
Speaker 3: of fact Rachel is about endings. There is something deeply
Speaker 3: radical about a woman who refuses to cling to the
Speaker 3: glory of youth, who refuses to pretend she isn't aging,
Speaker 3: who refuses to stay where she no longer feels she
Speaker 3: belongs and instead chooses the farm, the dirt, the long view.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to No Filter. The
Speaker 3: executive producer of No Filter is bre Player. The assistant
Speaker 3: producer is Coco Levine. Audio production by Jacob Brown and
Speaker 3: video editing by Josh Green. I am your host, Kate Lanebrook.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to see you next Monday. Mamma Mia
Speaker 3: acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that
Speaker 3: this podcast is recorded on