From Sunday Life- May 11^th, 2003

A Career path that would have kept Georgie Parker on her toes ended in a lucky twist of fate...

DANCING QUEEN

Coming from a well to do family wasn’t much help for Georgie Parker when she needed spending money for the school holidays. “My dad made me work at Grace Bro’s so I’d have my own money. I went and sold men’s underwear,” laughs the star of TV’s All Saints.

Growing up on Sydney’s north shore in the family behind the Parker Furniture brand, the ethos was “you work for everything you get; you are never given in”

The 15 year old appreciated the life lesson, if not the job, but found a more appealing job the next year. Signing on to teach ballet to 4 yr olds, she was in more familiar territory.

“I’d started doing ballet at 4, and I did it until I was 22,” says the 7-time Logie winner, who’s nominated for the TV Week Gold Logie at tonight’s awards, as well as the Silver Logie for most popular actress.

Teaching at the ballet school twice a week from age 16-18 Parker recalls the job as ‘fun babysitting for a few hours”.

Her own future as a dancer suffered a setback when at 13; she was diagnosed with scoliosis, or curvature of the spine.

“You can’t be a professional dancer with scoliosis,” says Parker. “A lot of people were quite disappointed for me, but I said, ‘I never wanted to be a ballet dancer anyway, I want to be an actor.’”

Confined in a back brace for 23 hours each day for the next 2 years, Parker was allowed one hour of freedom a day, in which she had to be active. “I did ballet,” she says. She relished the physical challenged and ‘I got a buzz out of the exams…I was never an academic child.”

In fact, Parker reveals, her mother told her headmistress, “I’m worried about my daughter; she doesn’t remember the day of her birthday.” The headmistress advised that Parker would succeed at something she was interested in. “Six months later they were casting a school play and I learnt the whole thing in about 5 mins. I got the acting bug then.”

But the little girl who’d adored stars of Australian Dance, Marilyn Rowe, Kelvin Coe and Garth Welch didn’t put her years of training to waster. Studying for her acting career later, she prided herself on being a ‘triple treat’- an actor who would sing and dance as well, which she’s done on stage many times since, memorably in the musical ‘Crazy for You’ That said, in acting, ‘you’re constantly putting yourself on the line, and if something you present is knocked back, they’re knocking you back.”

Married to screenwriter Steve Worland with whom she has a daughter, Holly, 2, Parker says, “It’s hard not to be neurotic in this industry, and it’s vital you are not.”

And she knows her parents had it right on one thing. “It’s so important you understand the value of everything you have and everything you gain.

  Story: Janne Apelgren

Photo: Georgie en pointe in the 1970'a