IT'S
A PARADOX with its own dinkum appeal. He's one of the country's most
successful actors, a star of stage and screen married to a hot-property
Hollywood star, yet he's among the least "revealed" of Australia's
personalities. In an industry that feasts on inflated egos, relentless
self-promotion and networking air-kissers, Colin Friels is an anomaly. He
courts privacy, eschews personal publicity, is a reluctant interviewee, admits
to a lack of ambition, pursues an "ordinary, boring" lifestyle with
no-nonsense dedication. It's a theme repeated in sporadic interviews over the
years, not many admittedly and usually given (as is this) to coincide with the
release of a film or stage play. A cynic might be tempted to label it a
winning act, the hesitant openness and ah shucks self-deprecation having the
ease of practise. Not so - what you see is what you get, a genuine bloke
genuinely uneasy with public exposure.
(...)
*****************
AS I
ENTER the boardroom for our rehearsal-break interview, the wind is keening
through the restored wharf HQ of the Sydney Theatre Company. There's snow in
the air and we hand-rub over hot cuppas as Friels is served lunch, a slump of
mashed potato drowning in indeterminate stew. He stares at it suspiciously,
prodding in disbelief before resigning himself with an ironic laugh. He missed
breakfast, he explains, and he's starving after the morning's exertion. I
watch a ferry plug through white caps as he refuels. He needs it. Beneath a
scatter of colour on his cheeks, he's parchment pale; the hair, too, is more
noticeably peppery. But the spirit, that's as undimmed as ever. He's almost as
excited about the play as he is keen to talk about his beloved Swans, which we
do, at length, as he mops up his meal. A footie fanatic, he converted to the
new team from Day One of its Sydney invasion and his state-of-play analysis is
astute.
Then
it's down to (show) business. There's symmetry in his latest project, a return
after three years to his main-love, the stage, and the first sustained
production he's undertaken since his illness. He's Macbeth in the STC
production that opens on Thursday, which means the Scotland-born Friels who
migrated in his 11th year to become the archetypal Aussie larrikin is starring
some 35 years later in a home-grown version of "the Scottish play".
Do we need another MacBeth, I ask, after the recent Sydney Arts Theatre
production. "I don't think you can ever have too many, can you?" he
ripostes. "It's an extraordinary piece of writing, virtually a two-hour
poem. And this production is just fantastic - he's so unbelievably human,
Shakespeare. I guess I'm old-fashioned but I love all that humanity he
reveals. If you do it well, people go out feeling like richer human beings. As
Scott Fitzgerald said, the great thing about literature is that 'it makes us
feel not alone in the world'."
In
Shakespeare, he enthuses, "there are so many human resonances that it
inevitably affects us ... makes us more compassionate, perhaps. That's the
true strength of theatre, it should be a public service."
This
is his first MacBeth, although he has twice been MacDuff, the latest to John
Bell's MacBeth in a Richard Wherrett STC production. How, I lead, will he
interpret his lead? "I don't interpret with Shakespeare; as you digest
the role, all the sweat and pulling apart in rehearsal comes out. But
Shakespeare is given to you any way - he's so incredibly articulate that he
creates character in the words alone. It doesn't require labouring or
naturalism, it just evolves through his script. Some things I am saying in
Macbeth you just can't analyze clinically. You can say 'well this is what he
means', but when you string it together in a particular emotional state, it
takes on another power.
"MacBeth
is the most incredibly inhuman person in the latter half of the play, and yet
Shakespeare gives him the most extraordinary poetry he's given to any
character so that the audience will realise 'ah, it's in us all'. It's not a
cautionary tale but there is a great moral order in it. I love that - it
sounds altruistic but there's that intangible thing about it that's so deeply
valuable as well."
*********************
A
SELF-CONFESSED FAILURE at school, Friels left early to work in factories and
as a brickies' labourer. "I was 20 before I first thought, yeah I
wouldn't mind doing that (acting). I didn't want to do TV or film either - I'd
never seen a bloody play but I thought 'I'll act in a theatre'. So I did, I
auditioned for NIDA, was accepted and I loved it." Sounds simple, until
you realise that his NIDA generation included contemporaries like Mel Gibson.
It wasn't even as if acting was in the family blood. Dad was a builder, Mum a
French polisher, both were cheerful, hardworking Scots who "used to like
singing around the table with their friends. They were outgoing people. I
wasn't but I always liked poetry as a kid - I have the most wonderful memories
of a teacher in Scotland reading aloud on Fridays and there I was, the dunce
of the class, listening to Mrs Wylie tell these stories ... and my mind would
just explode."
That
delight in story - and an inherited aptitude for sheer hard work - sustained
him through early days in Adelaide theatre to what has become a glittering
20-something year career. The professional's professional, he's done
everything from Hamlet to The Cherry Orchard on stage. He even overcame his
aversion to TV, evolving from Playschool regular to his Logie and
audience-winning role as Frank Holloway in the internationally successful
Water Rats.
That
gave him more street recognition than any of his 22 movies and his AFI best
actor award for Malcolm. Probably, he says, because he's "a terrible film
actor. Robert Duval, he's a great film actor ... but I have always had a
certain enormity of lack of talent when it comes to the screen." Hang
about - modesty is becoming but this from a man whose cinematic CV stretches
from Monkey Grip through High Tide and Nostradamus Kid to Dark City in 1996
with Kiefer Sutherland and William Hurt? Who has worked with Gene Hackman,
Liam Neeson and Sean Connery? "I didn't really work with them, you know -
I was just in a few scenes with them." He smiles quietly. "I enjoyed
the rehearsals with them, and learnt a lot from it ... but I quickly realised
Hollywood wasn't for me. It suits Judy - she has a true talent for film - but
I'm just more comfortable on stage. That could be because of the material, the
literary matter that the stage deals with."
Besides,
he confides, "I've always suffered from self-consciousness, and to a
lesser extent lack of confidence." Desire keeps him going, and what
"one wonderful old actor I admired highly once confided to me: 'In 90 per
cent of the plays I did,' he said, 'I was pretty bad in, but they taught me
that it was a test of my character every time I did them.' That's the secret,
it's the effort, the grace, even the faith in the human condition - you can't
be perfect but you always give it your best go."
So
what does acting give him? "Good question," he parries, buying time.
"I really don't know ... sleepless nights, pimples, rashes, anxiety. But
also a deep satisfaction, somehow. It makes you feel more ... human. It's a
way of making a connection, I guess."
***********
"I AM INCREDIBLY
MORTAL now," he laughs when I ask how his cancer has affected his
approach. "I take nothing for granted; 18 months down the track, certain
of my perceptions have changed. Sitting here looking at the wind on that
water, well that's fantastic. It's the now. You realise some things you
previously thought important are no longer so.
"If anything,
it's made me more reflective, more aware of just keeping my feet on the
ground. I'm so lucky. I was 45 when I got crook and my life should have been
over by 46. I missed dying by a whisker. After they excised the tumour, I had
the full course of chemotherapy as insurance. I was never complacent before
about my health but I also didn't take particular care. I used to think, well
you've got a body, abuse it, you know, knock yourself about, get into the
scrum, get into the ruck, get a 'bloody nose and a cracked crown' as
Shakespeare said."
Now it's most
important to see "the smiles on your kids' faces, to deal with the agonies they go through -
they've always been treasured but maybe they're more so now." And to
"not get ahead of yourself or look back - after my operation, I did a
special course of Qi Gong which required no drinking, no smoking, no sex, no
tea, no coffee for four months. And I had a couple of lapses," he drawls,
"and I went pleading excommunication to the master ... and he said, 'Ah
you're human, forget it, get on with it.' That's such a good approach, it's no
use beating yourself up because you don't reach standards - you just get on
with it."
As for
the future, "I'm hopeless at planning, worse now than ever. My hope is to
keep working as an actor on good things like this Macbeth - no matter how full
everything else is in my life, I'll always have that desire to be part of the
story, that need perhaps to be singing around the table..."