An Interview with Louise Siversen from 2000.
On the front line.
Thanks to the PCBH Digest for this article.
(By the way, her age is WRONG in this article, Louise was 40 at the time).
Louise Siversen was never going to be cast as an ingénue, she tells James Chessell.
Actor Louise Siversen has been called upon to play many different roles, but if asked to describe a recurring theme in her career the closest thing to an answer is "loonies and bitches".
Siversen, who has been acting on television stage and screen for most of her 42 years, is in the middle of describing the part of a violent babysitter she played on Neighbours almost 10 years ago when she comes to that conclusion.
"She was another vicious bitch", Siversen says. "I always play the loonies and bitches".
In television terms, such characters - inevitably the pivotal part of any Aaron Spelling series - are often the most fun to watch and, from an actor's point of view, look like the most fun to play.
"I have to say that bitches are usually more interesting. They're more complex, they're more layered and they're darker", Siversen says.
"There are girls in the business who who'd love to play the bitches but never get cast. I've cornered the market".
While most of Siversen's characters do not compete for cattiness with Joan Collins' Alexis Carrington (Dynasty) or Heather Locklear's Amanda (Melrose Place), she does bring an imposing presence to her roles. In the cult series Prisoner, for example, Siversen played Lou, a feisty inmate with a devious mind and an acerbic tongue who eventually rose to top-dog status at the Wentworth Detention Centre. Prisoner was Siversen's first high profile role. "There's never been another show like it", she says.
She was 23 and Lou lasted three enjoyable years, "I just laughed myself sick".
Prisoner was also an invaluable experience in her development as an actor. "It was a big break in understanding what acting really was because I got to work with the best actors in the country and got to watch them work every day. It was thrilling", she says.
In her current role as the hard-nosed current affairs anchorwoman onthe ABC comedy BackBerner, the icy edge is still there. She is so impenetrable as she fires off questions that her impressive mane of red hair - one of the best television news-spoof coiffures since Frontline's Mike Moore - seems almost bullet-proof. But Siversen's real strength comes from her voice. Deep, resonant and full, her vocal quality, she says, has shaped a career that includes many of Australia's most celebrated programs - Chances, The Sullivans, The Flying Doctors, Janus, Halifax f.p. and Blue Healers.
"I see why when I was younger I was not going to be cast in certain roles. I was not going to be the ingenue. Who was going to rescue a woman with this voice? It wasn't going to happen", Siversen says.
When she is not acting, writing, or doing voice-over work, Siversen teaches acting at the National Theatre. She says that she is in an unusual position for a woman actor because much of her work has come later in her career. "The kind of women I am is very specific with my voice, and in some ways my time has come in the later part of my career. So my jobs get better as I get older, which goes against most stereotypes".
Out of character, Siversen is warm and relaxed with a perfect posture that probably comes from the yoga she practices four times a week.
Siversen flies from Melbourne to Sydney each week to do BackBerner, which was created by comedian, Peter Berner. The week-to-week process of the show is a change of pace for Siversen, who, as an actor, is more used to longer periods of planning and rehearsal. Now in its third season, BackBerner parodies the week's events as they happen, a process Siversen says is difficult to adjust to. "When it first started it was completely spinning me out because it was different to being a dramatic actor. In this show you have no preparation time but the basic way I enter the work is the same", she says.
During her mock interviews with politicians, business and community leaders and sporting identities, Siversen's role is to play Berner's straight man. "It's like Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. I'm the Dean Martin in a sense. I've got to keep it straight. The overwhelming urge to include myself in what they're doing is very strong but you can't go there or the material wouldn't work", she says. And are there times when the icy exterior cracks? "All the time, I'm shocking. Peter is better at holding it in than me although there's been occasions where he's gone, too. But he loves it, he encourages it. He finds it wonderful if I completely lose it".
BackBerner screens on Thursdays on the ABC at 9pm.