FROM SELLING SHOES TO THE TOP OF THE ACTING TREE - THAT'S MAGGIE KIRKPATRICK
 
The disarming smile and rich, easy laugh seem odd, out of place. So, too, the mischievous twinkle in the eyes and the mane of greying hair.
 
Maggie Kirkpatrick has the appearance of someone who least deserves an awful nickname like The Freak.
 
Yet the 42-year-old actress is more than happy - proud, in fact - of the name given to the character she plays in Network Ten's Prisoner, Wentworth Detention Centre officer Joan Ferguson.
 
"I'm very happy people hate her as much as they do. It means I've succeeded in what the creator of the character intended," Maggie says over coffee and cigarettes at Ten's Melbourne studios.
 
"And I like to be able to seperate myself from the characters I play."
 
When Maggie does remove the uniform and make-up she retreats to her rented home in a quiet Melbourne suburb where she lives with her 17-year-old daughter Caitlin and a wild young dog she rescued from the RSPCA kennels.
 
Cait quit school in Sydney last year to be reunited with Maggie in Melbourne.
 
"She may have struggled through her HSC - but at what price? It's not worth all the pressure... achieve, achieve, achieve, just because that's the system.
 
"I did dreadfully at school. I left when I was 15.
 
"If only they'd known in those days how to foster or channel the talents of students."
 
One channel Maggie found for her frustrations at school was on stage in student productions and at voice and drama lessons.
 
"I think my mother sent me off to the lessons just to keep me out of mischief." Maggie says.
 
"I had a very secure, very ordinary suburban existence. I don't come from a theatrical family and I had a very good home life - a lot of fun and a lot of laughs.
 
"But I was the black sheep. I've always been the one with the trials and tribulations, the upheavels, the irregularities.
 
"And I don't know that I was even that dedicated about being an actress. I never had a driving ambition to do it."
 
In fact, at the age of 19, Maggie had her first professional job - playing in a Shakespeare production - then promptly quit acting.
 
A variety of jobs followed - everything from selling shoes, dresses, working in hotels, cinemas and as a doctor's receptionist.
 
Marrige wasn't much better for Maggie, lasting only a couple of years. The one obvious benefit of the experience was that it produced Caitlin.
 
The pair moved in the late Sixties from Newcastle to Sydney where Maggie renewed her acquaintance with the theatre.
 
"I don't know why I went back to acting rather than selling shoes or working in a pub. When I say I didn't have any drive or ambition, maybe it was stronger in me than I realised."
 
Maggie admits she took a somewhat selfish course, considering she had the added responsibilty of raising a daughter single-handed.
 
"I've probably been fairly selfish over the years in that I've tended to organise my professional side, then hoped that the domestic side would just fall into place. Sometimes it has, sometimes it hasn't.
 
"I still harbor all the guilts of being a working mother - all the things that went wrong over the years. That's for me to live with and, in a way, regret. But I don't know if things would have turned out any better if I'd been less selfish. Maybe different, but not necessarily better.
 
Landing a long-running role in Prisoner has changed a lot of things for Maggie after her years of struggle.
 
"It's the regular pay packet coming in that enables me to do things financially that the past 20 years haven't allowed me to do.
 
"I always wanted to do a series because over the years I felt I missed out on the training ground. I felt like a complete novice every time I walked into a TV studio. I did so little of it and my performance was coloured with that nervousness, simply because I didn't really know the technique.
 
"I don't know why I missed out before. Maybe I was too tall! I did all the required things, the auditions, but I guess everything happens in a pattern and my time finally came.
 
"I can say that quite comfortably now in retrospect because I don't have the same fears I had, although I guess the next job will present a new set of fears."
 
The next job seems a long way off. After 18 months in Prisoner, Maggie is signed to the end of this year and indications are she could continue beyond then.
 
She admits concern about becoming too comfortable, about developing what was once referred to as the "series paunch".
 
"I wish you hadn't said paunch because I've put on so much weight!" Maggie says with a laugh.
 
"But I do worry about complacency.
 
"In the theatre everyone starts worrying after opening night - or even during rehearsals!"
 
Should it all end tomorrow Maggie has few concerns.
 
"If the work wasn't there I've gone out and worked in the past in pubs, or selling shoes, and I see no reason why I can't do that again.
 
"I certainly have no high falutin' ideas about myself in terms of the workforce. I can scrub floors, make sandwiches and pull beers with the best of them."
 
I suggest that most actors must be masochists, considering the ups and downs they endure in pursuit of their careers.
 
"Yes, we must be," Maggie concurs. "It's so cruel - a ridiculous way to live. But maybe it keeps us young."
 
ALLAN WEBSTER
 

SHOWDOWN
 
The long-awaited showdown between Bea Smith (Val Lehman) and Joan "The Freak" Ferguson (Maggie Kirkpatrick) in Prisoner comes in the 400th episode of the series, which will be screened in several states this week and other areas soon afterwards.
 
The clash between the series' two strongest characters has been building up for months and their coming to blows is one of the most gripping sequences of local TV drama to screen this year - made all the more powerful by the sudden fury of it.
 
The progression of feeling between the two characters, one a vicious scheming warder and the other Queen Bea of the prisoners, has built to such a point that the actresses did the whole scenes themselves and did not have the use of stuntpersons.
 
Later, Maggie Kirkpatrick said the scenes were probably the most involving in her television career.
 
Working with Val Lehman in such intense scenes had been a great experience. She said: "That lady is just so powerful. It was great."

'TV Week' Magazine - 24th September 1983
Thanks to Declan