Harriet Dyer – Keeping The Faith

By Dan Hutton on July 30, 2015 in People

Where are you originally from?
I’m from Townsville in Far North Queensland and I moved to Sydney in 2007 when I had just turned 18.

Where are you living these days?
I’m living on Clovelly Road in Randwick.

What do you love about the Eastern Suburbs?
It reminds me of home because I grew up next to the water. We lived in the same house my whole life and it was right on the water in Townsville. I feel a bit claustrophobic away from water.

Is there anything that gets your goat about the Eastern Suburbs?
Yeah, the women in their big SUVs who honk their horn when you cross the road in front of them, even when they’re slowing down to get the red light. Also, sometimes I think people can close off a little.

How old were you when you first became interested in acting?
I did plays and musicals from the age of seven. I’ve been doing tap dancing since I was five and I did my first musical in Townsville in a huge theatre when I was seven. It was ‘Annie’; my sister was playing Annie and I was playing her little sidekick.

When did you decide to pursue acting as a career?
When I was about 16. I thought if pursuing a career was doing what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing, then this was what I had to do. It’s what I seem to do best. I didn’t ever have a plan B.

After you finished school, did you get straight into NIDA?
I didn’t. I auditioned twice and they didn’t want me. I did a NIDA course, which was a one year music theatre course; that’s what I moved to Sydney for.

Have you ever think about following a pop career?
There was actually a moment when I did look at a plan B. I was going to enrol in vocal jazz performance at Griffith University. I auditioned for that at the same time that I auditioned for the NIDA course, and I almost did a bachelor of music in jazz singing, but then I went to the Actors Centre a did a full time course for two and a half years from 2009 to 2011.

Do you think you would be where you are today if you hadn’t done those acting courses?
No, definitely not. I never thought that acting would be something that you could just get into. I didn’t want to be like Isabel Lucas and be discovered at the markets. I wanted to have a craft that I knew I could fall back on when talent was not cutting it. I think you’ve got to be talented, but you’ve also got to have technique.

What was your first big break in the acting industry?
I got a little role at the Sydney Theatre Company in ‘Pygmalion’ in their massive theatre, and that was a couple of months after I graduated. That was amazing because opening night was huge; I mean, Cate Blanchett’s your boss. It was just a big deal for me having only been out of drama school a little while, and it’s very hard to get into the fold there. I’ve come to be part of the family there now I like to think. I find that it’s one of the places I feel comfortable in Sydney. I’ve done three plays with them now and hopefully there’ll be some more in the future. I’m just waiting to see if they will fit in with my schedule.

You actually beat Cate Blanchett for best actor in a leading role last year in the Sydney Theatre Awards, didn’t you?
I did, and that was unreal. It was really silly. I was on stage at the Sydney Theatre Company doing a play with Bryan Brown. I was really glad that I was unavailable to be there that night because I didn’t want to sit there and inevitably hear: “And the winner is, Cate Blanchett.” I was really stoked that I couldn’t be there.

How did you get your role as Patricia in Channel Nine’s popular drama ‘Love Child’?
There was an audition first. I actually auditioned for ‘Annie’, which is Gracie Gilbert’s role. I did an audition and then a recall for Annie, and then there was a bit of a wait. I got a phone call saying, “Bad news you didn’t get Annie,” but then they said, “Good news, you got Patricia.” We signed on for three seasons, but I don’t think anyone assumed that it would actually go the distance. I never thought I’d be part of a hit TV show.

How would you describe your character, Patricia?
Oh, bless her. She’s very sweet and quite naive. She’s learning lessons, so she’s a great character to play. To have someone discovering things about themselves on screen is really good, I think. It’s much more interesting than someone who just knows themselves. She hit some pretty hard times in the second season and in the third season she’s making a few more mistakes, but she’s growing into a woman and I’m going to be really proud of her trajectory, because she started in the first season as a fragile, daggy, naïve little girl, and now she really kind of knows herself and she’s turned into a woman over the three seasons. I really enjoy playing her because she’s so open and so positive.

Love Child is about real life forced adoption in the 1960s. Has playing Patricia, who loses her baby, been an emotional experience for you?
Yeah it has. It’s something I didn’t know much about before I got the job, but then I did a bit of research and I realised that it is quite incredible. It’s something that just would not happen now, half a century later. It’s unbelievable. There were nurses who forged documents to take children away. There were mothers whose names weren’t even spelled correctly on the forged adoption forms. Love Child is a fictional show but it’s based on real events. Giving away babies was really prevalent and there’s a lot of pain attached to these stories. The government apologised about this a few years ago, which was really important, I think, for those people affected. It’s been a really important show to be a part of, and particularly for my character who had a stillborn this season. I know that affected a lot of women because that’s a story that’s just not told. There’s no mass media on stillbirths. It’s a very quiet, silent subject. It was a real honour to be able to film that scene. It felt like I had a duty of care to those families, mums and dads who lost babies.

Why do you think Love Child is such a popular television show?
I think it is quality. The producers don’t pump out 20 episodes of okay TV; they pump out eight really good ones. The writing is quality and there’s nothing left to the imagination.

You’re one of the lead actresses in the hotly anticipated Aussie feature film ‘Ruben Guthrie’; can you tell us a bit about the film?
Originally it was a very successful play. It was on at the Belvoir St Theatre and all sorts of places have done it since. It’s a very well-known play in Australia. It’s basically a story about a man whose girlfriend tells him he’s got 12 months to get off the booze. He’s a very successful, rich, white guy and he loves to get on it. It’s a very ‘Sydney’ story. There are so many mid 20s and 30s dudes who are earning good money and they just get wasted every weekend. It’s a story that hasn’t been told yet and I think it’s going to do well.

Why should the Australian public go and see it?
Because it’s an Australian story and it’s a story about the middle class. So many Australian films are about the battler, but most of Australia is getting around like Ruben. A lot of Australia is doing quite well and so this is a story about middle class people and middle class problems, but it’s also very funny.

Why doesn’t the Australian public watch more Australian movies?
It’s got to do with publicity and marketing. Our producers seem to put all the money into the film, but then we don’t have the money to promote it all over the sides of the buses or all through the bus shelters. You will see ‘X Men 12’ advertised everywhere, but it’s not going to be a better film than Ruben Guthrie. It’s just everywhere. Advertising is all it comes down to. It’s one thing to make a film, but if you haven’t got the budget for advertising you’re screwed, unless there is some sort of viral online campaign. It’s a lot easier now with things like Instagram. I’ve seen a really good 15 second ad for Ruben on Instagram and that’s awesome.

Can you tell us about your character in Ruben Guthrie?
Her name is Virginia; she’s a recovering addict. Heroin’s her thing, but she has to stay off booze as well because otherwise she will slip. She goes to all sorts of meetings and she’s one of those people who is a professional addict; her whole life is the meetings. She just wants to be loved and she’s deeply broken. She is definitely fragile, but also incredibly strong, especially to be addicted to heroin and still be alive to say it. If you can survive a heroin addiction, you’re made of strong stuff; you’ve got nine lives.

Do you prefer stage, television, film or unemployment?
Definitely not unemployment. They’ve all got their merits. They’ve all got their specific joys. I love them all. It would be my dream to strike a balance between all three, and, knock on wood, that’s what I’ve be able to do for the last year or so. At first my whole world was professional theatre, then I got a bit of telly, and now the films have started. I’m praying to the scheduling gods that I can keep striking that balance, because they’ve all got such great merits and great challenges. Theatre is probably where my heart is, though, because there’s something so immediate and wonderful. It’s a conversation between you and an audience that will never happen again in the same way.

Do you want to head overseas and pursue the Hollywood dream or are you happy here in Australia?
My goal is just to strike that balance between the three mediums and that doesn’t include LA yet. There are some parts of Hollywood that are very attractive, but not so much the cheerleading films or the series television with a live audience that just goes on and on and on. I think there’s a part of me that would die being in that sort of show. I’d die in a very comfortable mansion, but I’d still die a little bit. There’s a niche over there that you can crack in the real quality films, the films that Geoffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett do over there. If I could dream big, it would want to be in those kinds of films. It is tough. I try not to think about it too much but I should. I don’t have an agent or a manager, so that would be the first step, and I deliberately didn’t want to get one too early. I think you only get one shot at going over there and displaying your body of work from Australia, and if I did it a year ago it wouldn’t have been as good as it is now. I was waiting until a good time and that might be now or it might be in a couple of months. I’ll see how Ruben goes and what jobs are coming up in Australia soon, and if I can find a window maybe I will just go across. There are so many Aussies over there trying to make it, and joining a rat race like that isn’t that attractive to me. I’d like to go over if there was some interest generated around me.

Do you have any big acting projects in the pipeline?
A film I’ve done called ‘Down Under’ will come out in December. It’s Abe Forsyth’s first feature, an Australian black comedy, which is exciting.

Can you tell us a little bit more about Down Under?
It’s a comedy about the 2005 Cronulla race riots. It’s coming up to the ten year anniversary of that and it’s just about how stupid and ridiculous it was, especially the racism. It really just laughs at the whole thing. The script is very, very brave. There are a lot of things where it’s like, “Whoa, can we really get away with saying that?” But I think the tone is just right.

What do you get up to when you’re not at work?
I read and I go to yoga on Hall Street in Bondi.

Do you have any favourite local haunts?
I love Bus Stop Café on Clovelly Road and Bat Country up at The Spot. Bat Country is my favourite bar in Sydney. I go to the Ritz a lot and watch movies there too. Oh, and the burgers from Out of the Blue in Clovelly are the best.

Do you have a significant other or are you currently living the single life?
Single life, sort of. I have actually just started seeing someone but they shall remain nameless.

Do you think it would be tough dating an actress?
There’s a certain amount of crazy that all actresses and actors have. The work that you do is so weird, so there’s an element of performance, which means you have to be ‘on’ a lot. I think creative people do well together. I think a photographer wouldn’t mind an actress, but I think maybe an accountant and an actress wouldn’t work so well. Some actresses are pretty mental. I think I’ve got the right amount of crazy, though. I like to keep that in check.

What are your rules on dating other actors?
I’m a shocker. All my boyfriends have been actors.

What are the biggest challenges facing the film industry in Australia?
The fact that it’s hard to get films seen based on the budget for advertising. Also, getting work is hard. It’s hard to get work and it’s hard to stay in work. There are always young, beautiful, attractive and talented people coming up through the ranks beneath you. I’m 26 now and that’s not old by any means, but there’s probably a Harriet equivalent graduating from NIDA at the end of this year, four years younger than me. You’ve just got to stay on top of what you are, who you are, what your product is and what you know. You’ve got to constantly be learning and growing.

How do you feel about the fact that in a year or two’s time you could be back in a nanny job or working in a cafe?
I keep very, very real about that stuff because my expectations are low so I’m never really disappointed. There are so many things that are out of your control, such as your height or whether people think you’re too old. I might lose work from being on Love Child. People might think, “Oh, no one wants to see Patricia do that.” You’ve got to be careful where you put your face when you start getting on telly. I don’t do commercials anymore. I did a couple when I first started but I won’t do them anymore.

Do you think Australian film and television has a bright future?
I think it has an amazing future. Viewing habits have changed a lot with Netflix and streaming and Stan and things like that, but it means people are watching more because they can; it’s available. It’s sad that Blockbuster in Clovelly has closed, but there are more ways to watch film and television now than ever before. People are actually getting sick of reality television now, thank God.

Who are your role models in the industry?
I’ve always looked up to Cate Blanchett. I’ve always thought that someone who does a play every year, heaps of amazing films and has a family is living the dream. She’s such a great lady. She’s got time for everyone, she’s incredibly real and she stays out of trouble. She met the man of her dreams and married him 15 or so years ago. I admire the teamwork that she and Andrew (Upton) have. Obviously you don’t know what happens behind closed doors; maybe they’re not all they’re cracked up to be, but I just take my hat off to solid, creative couples like that. She commits herself to being normal as well.

Do you have any advice for youngsters looking to make a career out of acting?
I think you’ve got to train. Go to drama school for longevity, and to give it the respect that it deserves. Be yourself and know yourself. If you’re pretending to be a version of yourself when you’re meeting a director, it’s very obvious and I don’t know how well that really goes down. If you be yourself people will respond to you a lot better.

In an ideal world, what does the future hold for Harriet Dyer?
I’d just like to keep making work that I’m proud of – work that when it comes on telly or gets released or when I walk on stage I say, “Yeah, I’m stoked to be a part of this.” I’d like to do work that I respect and that gains respect, and Australian stories are really important. In the future I’d like to know that I’ve stuck to my guns. I could do with a bit more faith in myself and I feel like that happens with every year that passes. Every year I get older I feel like I’ve gathered a bit more faith in myself. I have a poster on my wall that says ‘Believe In Your F**king Self’ and I love it. I just want to do a good job all the time and be a good person to work with and be a good person in general; that’s it.