Curtains Open on Heath’s Hometown Honor
While excitable critics are abuzz about a possible posthumous Oscar nomination for Heath Ledger’s Joker, there’s a more immediate honor for the late star.
Ledger’s hometown of Perth, Australia, has named an $88 million playhouse after the actor.
West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter, accompanied by Ledger’s father Kim, this morning announced plans for the 575-seat Heath Ledger Theatre.
“Heath Ledger was an extremely talented actor, totally dedicated to his craft and internationally respected,” Carpenter said. “Honoring his memory in this way will ensure his acting achievements will continue to inspire young [Australian] artists.”
Kim Ledger was on hand for the tribute announcement, and said the Ledger family not only supported the naming decision but was quite touched by it:
“We feel so honored and intensely proud to know the government and people of West Australia are prepared to attach Heath’s name to this new theater project, which will provide Perth with an outstanding venue for years to come.
“Heath was deeply committed to his personal life within the arts environment the world over and an extraordinary giver of his time, kindness and money to aspiring or struggling artists from Australia and overseas. I have no doubt he would be pleased we are accepting the attachment of his name to such a worthy theater project.”
Frances O’Connor: In the Limelight
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If you’ve caught any of the first few episodes of Cashmere Mafia, you probably know that the main reason to tune in each week is this actress in the above picture. I thought my reason for watching would be Lucy Liu (who I love and who is ever so gorgeous) but she’s been less-than-impressive and her storyline is bland and annoying. Instead I have fallen in love all over again with Frances O’Connor who plays the quirky, intelligent Zoe Burden on the show.
After the jump, I have some information about her life, some filmography and some excerpts from interviews.
While Frances O’Connor was born in England, she spent most of her life in Australia (living there from the age of 2). She was raised in a Roman Catholic family and attended a convent school in Perth, Australia. In this interview, O’Connor talks about the strong foundation Catholicism gave her: “I am really glad I was raised Catholic. I like the fundamental aspects of that religion. I think they give you great grounding in terms of having a moral code. But I do not subscribe to any religion specifically now.”
O’Connor attended Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts and has a B.A. in Literature from the Curtin University of Technology (also in Western Australia). She achieved screen success in Australia with her breakthrough role in the crime thriller Kiss or Kill (1997). This film earned her one of her two Australian Film Institute nominations for “Best Actress.” The other film for which O’Connor was nominated for an AFI award was Thank God He Met Lizzie, a romantic comedy.
In addition to these AFI nods, O’Connor has received a Golden Globe nomination in 2000 for Best Actress in a Series / Miniseries / TV Movie for Madame Bovary. I’ve not seen Madame Bovary yet, but I think I might resurrect my Netflix list and add it. She also received critical acclaim for her role in Iron Jawed Angels, an HBO movie about the womens’ suffrage movement that also starred Hillary Swank. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival that year and got a standing ovation from the audience.
Also after the success of Kiss or Kill, Frances O’Connor landed the roll of Fanny in Mansfield Park in 1999. This was the first time I fell in love with her. Admittedly, I am mildly obsessed with all things Jane Austen but I was captivated by O’Connor’s portrayal of the reserved and full of conviction Fanny. I highly recommend it to not only Austen geeks but also to anyone who enjoys a good period romance. Here Frances O’Connor explains why she likes period dramas: “Well I have only done three in about nine films. But what they all share are fantastically complex and interesting characters. That is the important thing to me rather than the period the piece is set in.”
And Mansfield Park is not the only period drama O’Connor has appeared in. In 2002, she played Gwendolyn Fairfax in Oliver’s Parker’s screen adaptation of the comedy of manners The Importance of Being Ernest. Despite it’s all-star cast which included Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, and Judy Dench, the film didn’t go over well, only grossing about 8.3 million dollars. Here O’Connor talks about the reaction in America to her appearance in what seemed like so many period films: “In Australia I was seen as somebody who did only very modern, contemporary stuff. Then as soon as I went overseas I did two period pieces so it was like, “When are you going to get out of the corsets?” And I was thinking I just got into them!”
While O’Connor has appeared in some flops (Windtalkers in 2002 with Nicholas Cage and Timeline in 2003 with Paul Walker), she also co-starred in one of my favorite guilty-pleasure films, Bedazzled with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. I know, I know. I shouldn’t love Bedazzled but I do. I love how Brendan Fraser has to play all these different characters (the drug dealer is great, that nose!). Frances O’Connor follows suit appearing with Fraser in all the fantasies that the devil constructs for him after he makes a wish (or perhaps, I should say nightmares).
You may also recognize O’Connor from 2001’s AI: Artificial Intelligence. Remember that movie with Jude Law and the little kid who sees dead people? It was Stanley Kubrick’s last project that Steven Spielberg finished after Kubrick’s death. O’Connor played Monica Swinton the mother whose child is suffering from an incurable disease and “frozen,” so she adopts David (Haley Joel Osment). The film got mixed reviews, even from the actress herself: “I think it is flawed. But at the same time I think it was a very brave experiment.”
Nowadays, you can see Frances O’Connor every week on ABC’s new show Cashmere Mafia. The show is produced by Darren Star Productions, the same company responsible for Sex and the City. Another SATC alum who joined the crew of Cashmere Mafia is Patricia Field, famed costume designer. On Cashmere Mafia, O’Connor plays Zoe Burden, a successful woman who works in Mergers and Acquisitions by day and tries to be the best mommy she can at night and on the weekends. Not only is O’Connor’s comedic timing the best on the show, but her American accent is surprisingly natural. How did she learn to “speak American”? She watched Sesame Street and learned from Grover.
You can catch Frances O’Connor in Cashmere Mafia, Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
Pendulum - Granite Video and Lyrics
Granite by Pendulum, Music Video and Lyrics
Pendulum are a drum and bass group originally hailing from Perth, Australia. In 2003, they relocated to the United Kingdom. The group comprises Rob Swire, Gareth McGrillen, Ben Mount (MC Verse) and Paul Harding.
“Granite” is their biggest original hit to date, peaking at #29 in the UK Singles Chart after receiving substantial airplay from BBC Radio 1.
Pendulum - Granite Lyrics
You can hide your eyes, you can dim the lights, but they are watching!
This is a new time, with a different kind, they are the future
The only one!
This is the final call for the setting song as they get closer.
And with full blown grace, thy will be done the show is over.
Its a new dawn!
Just leave this place behind,
Ill grill your place, don’t mind.
And you’re the only one, ‘cos you’re up on defense.
This is a new way!
We are standing by, no time to hide, no meeting half way.
You were sucking life through the needles eye, this is a new day.
They have won!
We would have reckon now, what we have done, left in the open.
The cool we know will rise under, they are the future.
Future!
When all your fears combined, the Memphis was refined.
And I know you tried to understand.
This is a new age!
Judy Davis Biography
If a woman with an opinion in Hollywood is considered hazardous then Australian Judy Davis could easily qualify as one dangerous female. The petite, pale redhead, whose slash of red or brown lipstick has almost become her trademark, is considered one of the finest actresses of contemporary cinema and has garnered a reputation for her passion, high artistic standards and frank speech. Not unlike Bette Davis in the 1930s and 40s, Judy Davis was not one to suffer fools and had no trouble expressing her feelings. To her, the work was paramount and she consistently has delivered superb performances whether acting on stage, screen or TV.
The youngest of three, Davis has admitted to suffering a repressed childhood, in part due to her family’s staunch Catholicism but also tempered by the remoteness of Perth, Australia, where she was raised. After dropping out of convent school, she joined a rock and blues band and toured Asia. Returning home, Davis eventually enrolled at Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA), where she appeared as Juliet to Mel Gibson’s Romeo. With stage experience and a one-line role in 1977’s “High Rolling”, she auditioned for and won the star-making role of Sybylla Melvyn, the headstrong anti-heroine, of “My Brilliant Career” (1978). Davis later admitted she had difficulties with the neurotic character and occasionally clashed with director Gillian Armstrong, but her performance was undeniably forceful and earned her numerous accolades including Best Actress citations from the British Film Academy and the Australian Film Institute.
Sybylla Melvyn may not have been an appealing personage to portray but she represented what became a typical Judy Davis role–a strong, plain-speaking woman who shatters social mores. The actress was nothing short of astonishing as a desperate prostitute seeking a way out of her life in “The Winter of Our Dreams” and as an anarchist in “Heatwave” (both 1981) and proved stunning as the young incarnation of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in an Emmy-nominated turn in the syndicated 1982 miniseries “A Woman Called Golda”. Davis resisted Hollywood but did accept the leading role of the genteel cultural adventuress Adela Quested in “A Passage to India” (1984). Again, there were reports of conflict with aged director David Lean, but the ultimate onscreen result was a rich performance of grace and skill that earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination.
Although her career was on the ascent and she undoubtedly could have taken on American parts, Davis returned to Australia to co-star with her husband, actor Colin Friels, in “Kangaroo” (1987), based on the semi-autobiographical novel by D H Lawrence. She then delivered what is arguably her best leading performance as a footloose singer who reconnects with the daughter she abandoned years earlier in “High Tide” (1987), directed by Gillian Armstrong.
Beginning in the 90s, Davis did begin to work more in projects outside of her homeland. At the start of the decade, she inaugurated a relationship with Woody Allen with a small role in “Alice” (1990). Since that less than auspicious collaboration, Allen has provided her with rich characters to play. Davis received a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination playing a cynical, neurotic woman who sabotages her relationships in “Husbands and Wives” (1992) until she discovers true love. “Deconstructing Harry” (1997) posited her as the high-strung sister-in-law of Allen’s title character while “Celebrity” (1998) cast her as the schoolteacher wife of a journalist who blossoms into a TV star after their divorce.
In 1991 alone, Davis lent her careworn but attractive presence and edgy performance style to a series of intriguingly uptight but sympathetic characters. The Coen brothers tapped her to play the lover of a William Faulkner-like author in their study of Hollywood “Barton Fink” while David Cronenberg cast her as the bug-spray addicted wife of William Burroughs in the film adaptation of “Naked Lunch”. On the small screen, Davis reunited with “Brilliant Career” co-star Sam Neill for “One Against the Wind” (CBS), a based-on-fact drama about a British woman active in the French Resistance movement during WWII.
Davis demonstrated her formidable comic capabilities with a deft turn as Kevin Spacey’s embittered, shrewish wife perpetually engaging in battles with her spouse in the black comedy “The Ref” (1994). That same year, she essayed a similar role, paired with Peter Weller as a feuding, jobless L.A. couple who open an upscale boutique to finance their divorce in “The New Age”. Shifting gears, Davis won an Emmy as the patient, loyal and supportive lesbian lover of a US Army colonel who discloses her sexual orientation in the fact-based “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” (NBC, 1995).
The actress returned to Australia to star as a Stalinist with more than a passing acquaintance with the Russian leader in the farcical comedy “Children of the Revolution” (1996). Davis played a presidential chief of staff in the Clint Eastwood vehicle “Absolute Power” and portrayed Jack Nicholson’s ex-wife in the uneven “Blood & Wine” (both 1997). She then offered a trio of Emmy nominated performances that continued to showcase her extraordinary range. In “The Echo of Thunder” (CBS, 1998), she was cast as a stoic palm tree farmer in the Australian Outback who objects to raising her husband’s child by his first wife. 1999’s “Dash & Lilly” (A&E) paired her with Sam Shepard in a portrait of the dysfunctional, co-dependant relationship between authors Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman. Davis also excelled as a self-centered wealthy woman whose marriage falls apart forcing her to interact more with her new housekeeper (Sally Field) in “A Cooler Climate” (Showtime, 1999). She then bravely tackled a portrayal of a cultural icon — singer-actress Judy Garland — in the 2001 ABC miniseries adapted from Lorna Luft’s memoir “Me and My Shadows”. Her portrayal was so dead-on and letter-perfect, Davis garnered critical praise and a much deserved Emmy Award. She was back on the big screen in the Australian feature “The Man Who Sued God” (2001). Two years later, she co-starred, along with Marcia Gay Harden and Lili Taylor, in the comedy feature “Gaudi Afternoon” (2003).
- Born:
on 04/23/55 in Perth, Australia - Job Titles:
Actor, Band singer, Orange juice truck driver
Family
- Daughter: Charlotte Friels. born in 1997
- Son: Jack Friels. born c. 1987
Significant Others
- Husband: Colin Friels. married in 1984; co-starred in “Kangaroo” (1986) and “High Tide” (1987); on October 30, 2002, Davis obtained a six-month court order against Friels which said that the Friels may not assault or threaten Davis. This came after Friels allegedly threw Davis to the ground and broke a glass table during an argument at their home. Davis will continue to live with her husband.
Education
- National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, Australia, 1977
Milestones
- 1977 Screen acting debut, “High Rolling”; had one line
- 1979 Breakthrough screen role as Sybylla international and acclaim acclaim as star of “My Brilliant Career”, directed by Gillian Armstrong; co-starred Sam Neill
- 1982 First non-Australian screen credit, the British thriller, “Who Dares Wins/The Final Conflict”
- 1982 Portrayed the young Golda Meir in the syndicated miniseries “A Woman Called Golda”; received first Emmy nomination
- 1984 Received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her most widely seen performance to that date, as Adela Quested in David Lean’s “A Passage to India”
- 1986 First feature pairing with husband Colin Friels, “Kangaroo”
- 1987 Reteamed with Gillian Armstrong for “High Tide”; film co-starred Friels
- 1989 US stage debut in Los Angeles production of Tom Stoppard’s play “Hapgood”
- 1990 First US-produced film, “Alice”, directed by Woody Allen
- 1991 Earned first Emmy nomination as a British woman involved with the French Underground during WWII in “One Against the Wind” (CBS); again paired with Sam Neill; earned Emmy nomination
- 1991 Played George Sand in the period drama “Impromptu”
- 1992 Received Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her memorable performance as a woman undergoing a divorce who finds a new love in Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives”
- 1993 Was set to co-star with Jonathan Pryce and River Phoenix in “Dark Blood”; project terminated after Phoenix’s death
- 1994 Teamed with Denis Leary and Kevin Spacey for the quirky comedy “The Ref”
- 1995 Played the lesbian lover of a US Army nurse in “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” (NBC); received Emmy Award as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
- 1996 Returned to Australian films as star of “Children of the Revolution”; reteamed onscreen with Sam Neill
- 1997 Had featured role as the ex-wife of Jack Nicholson in “Blood & Wine”
- 1997 Third teaming with Woody Allen. “Deconstructing Harry”
- 1998 Had featured role as a teacher whose marriage crumbles in Allen’s “Celebrity”
- 1998 Received Emmy nomination playing a struggling farmer in Australia’s Outback faced with raising her husband’s daughter from his first marriage in “Echo of Thunder” (CBS)
- 1999 Cast as Lillian Hellman opposite Sam Shepard as Dashiell Hammett in the A&E biopic “Dash & Lilly”, directed by Kathy Bates; picked up another Emmy nomination as Best Actress
- 1999 Stage directorial debut with the Australian premiere of the one-man show “Barrymore”
- 1999 Starred opposite Sally Field in “A Cooler Climate” (Showtime); received sixth Emmy nomination
- 2001 Portrayed Judy Garland in the ABC miniseries “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows”, adapted from Lorna Luft’s memoir; won second Emmy
- 2001 Starred in the Australian box office hit “The Man Who Sued God”
- 2003 Cast as an American translator who agress to help a friend locate her missing husband in “Gaudi Afternoon”
- 2003 Portrayed Nancy Reagan in the controversal television movie “The Reagans”; earned a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (2004)
- 2005 Portrayed Dora Fingleton, the long-suffering mother of champion swimmer Tony Fingleton in the true story “Swimming Upstream”
- Appeared on stage with theater companies in Adelaide and Sydney, Australia and with the Royal Court Theatre in London
- Dropped out of convent school to sing in a rock band