By Cara Nash
For anyone serious about quality local television, Marta Dusseldorp is likely to be a familiar face, having landed a trio of plum roles in the past couple of years. She’s proven the graceful centre of the hit period series, A Place To Call Home; a worthy foil to Guy Pearce in the Jack Irish series of crime telemovies; and impressively reprised her role from Crownies as a tenacious Senior Crown Prosecutor for the legal thriller, Janet King, the second series of which is released on DVD and Blu-ray this week. While this list of credits has seen Dusseldorp break out on the small screen in a big way, the actress is also one of our country’s finest stage performers, evidenced by the fact that she was one of just twelve invited to join The Sydney Theatre Company’s prestigious ensemble, The Actors Company. Dusseldorp has continually flitted between the stage and screen (with a resume that also boasts work on Praise, Innocence, Burning Man, and the Blackjack telemovies), and FilmInk catches the busy actress – warm and charismatic – during rare downtime.
It seems to have been a hectic past couple of years for you…
“It was certainly a year when I was barely home! That was pretty intense, especially with two young kids and trying to be present for them too. But it’s a pleasure because momentum is a very important factor in an actor’s life. You actually get to learn something and take a few risks.”
You studied film and theatre at The University Of New South Wales. Were you just interested in that world, or did you know then that you wanted to be an actor?
“I was really interested in that conversation, and I’d been telling stories as a ballet dancer since I was four. When I went to high school, I joined up with a drama society and ended up winning the drama prize and pretty much only doing that. I was also making costumes, and I was involved in productions. So I followed that at uni. I remember one of my lecturers gave me back an essay that I’d written and said, ‘You act much better than you write.’ [Laughs] And I thought, ‘Yep, I should probably try out for drama school, because it doesn’t seem like an academic life is where I’m heading.’ I really appreciated that frankness actually!”
You got into The Victorian College Of The Arts [VCA]. Actors vary in how valuable they find drama school, but how did you find your time there?
“I don’t think it was for me. Having said that, it was great to be able to hide away and experiment with styles and different movement-based work and go right to the foundation of body and voice, and what that is. I really enjoyed the times when we were neutral, and we weren’t trying to come to a final product, but we were just experimenting inside the school. The hard part was exposing myself to audiences, which is a necessary part of training, but I’d prefer to be in a room just finding out who you are because you’re so young. I was nineteen or twenty…it was such a long time ago now!”
After drama school, your first film break came with Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road [which starred Glenn Close, Frances McDormand and Cate Blanchett]. What are your memories shooting that film?
“Oh, my goodness! At the time, I remember thinking, ‘This is all I want to do.’ It was a total highlight of my life, and still is. Some of those women have gone on to become very dear friends of mine, and I’m forever indebted to Bruce Beresford for giving me that opportunity. At first, it was intimidating, but all the women who were well-heeled knew that they needed to take care of us, and they did. Within a week, we were all playing Boggle and knitting, and it was a very nurturing experience. It wasn’t as terrifying as it probably should have been!”
When you graduated from VCA, was theatre your focus? Was that the world that you wanted to step into? “The great female roles tended to be more in the theatre, so I did want that. Then I kept being cast in plays, and they cast quite early on, so you’re unavailable for film and television. I just got lost in that world of being backstage and playing live and being part of a theatre family who nurtured and fed me in such a total way. But when I had kids, I felt the need to step away from it just to see if there were any other possibilities. I dabbled in film and television, and had great roles – Praise and After The Deluge were beautiful productions – so I knew that it was a world that I could possibly step into. So it was nice when these fabulous roles came my way.”
Were you surprised at all when the ABC pitched you the idea for Janet King a couple of years after you’d finished Crownies? “I was delighted. I felt that I was understanding the medium more and more. It was a great opportunity to really see how far I could push the character. There was an overall plot given to me, and I was scared, but I was up for it at that point.”
As part of your preparation for the role, you spent time with an actual Crown Prosecutor. From that research, was there anything that you were able to bring to your performance that you may not have otherwise? “I saw how seriously they take their job, and they understand that they have people’s lives in their hands. But their hands are also tied because of funding and the fact that the defence has the right to lead and the prosecution has the right to respond, so it’s not a place of power. I found that compromise really fascinating. They’re up against it a lot of the time. In some cases, it comes down to legal trickery, and that’s a disappointing outcome. That’s when victims can end up on doorsteps, banging and screaming. Prosecutors absorb a lot of the victim’s pain and panic and need for retribution, and yet they’re unable to fulfil that. They often have to keep moving onto the next case. Also, I was taken by their wry sense of humour and their need to blow it off at the end of the day. The things that they have to deal with are unbelievable.”
I loved that the series chronicles one case that expands and grows more complex, rather than wrapping things up on an episodic basis. Was that overall arch something that pulled you in too? “Absolutely. It wasn’t a procedural, and it was such a departure. I loved that it felt like a film noir; it was dangerous, claustrophobic, epic and messy. I really wanted something where I could play with my character’s faults as much as their strengths. I find that really interesting – when you see people fall over because they’re looking the wrong way or things have startled them.”
You portray another very ambitious woman in Jack Irish…
“Linda’s a journalist, and she’s like Jack – a bloodhound. But she’s a different kind of animal. She uses sex as part of a conversation; it doesn’t concern her, she’s not needy, she doesn’t want a commitment…she wants a story and she wants a Walkley! I learned so much from working so closely with Guy [Pearce] and also the director, Jeffrey Walker. It was a much slower shoot, especially coming off Crownies. I was able to go to a newspaper and spend time there.”
Is immersing yourself in research always your starting point for finding your character? Has that process changed for you at all?
“No, part of why I love being an actor is that I get an introduction to these other worlds out of nowhere. I’m very into research, and I get very single-focused. Hopefully, you have enough lead time with television that you can be prepared. Theatre is all about rehearsal. You might have an idea, but it’s about forming a fuller piece, whereas TV is more instinctual and spontaneous. In TV, we shoot between seven and seventeen minutes a day, whereas film is between two or three minutes. When I did Burning Man, I was like, ‘How many times are we going to do this scene?!’ I was used to having five minutes!”
A Place To Call Home is a different world in the sense that it’s heightened and melodramatic. Is that a tricky line to walk as an actor?
“When I got that script from Bevan Lee, I hadn’t read something that good for a long time, and it was so huge and sweeping. It is melodrama, but it’s based in real issues that we need to explore to find out how far we’ve come, and also what still needs to change. It was very brave, and if we got away with it, we’d be doing alright! It is tricky stuff though – to say so little, and yet say so much. It is a very delicate thing, but we got into a style, and then we all just held hands and took a leap.”
When you’ve got time off, is your husband [actor and theatre director, Ben Winspear] able to work? “That’s our plan, and so far, so good! He’s certainly sacrificed a lot, but when I say that, I just mean work-wise. We understand that our kids are everything, so I’ve been able to go to work guilt-free because I know they’re with him. Now we’ve swapped roles, and I’ve been cooking every night. It’s been a joy. I love both roles.”
Janet King: Series 2 is available on DVD and Blu-ray from May 19.
