He may have wanted to be a footballer, but a knack for impressions and a gift for storytelling set actor David Wenham on a very different path, writes Trent Dalton
The foyer of Sydney's W Hotel echoes to a two-man chorus of Happy Birthday as David Wenham enters nursing a creamy white coffee. The song comes from actor Sam Worthington and director Jonathan Teplitzky - here today, like David, to promote
Gettin' Square, the Queensland gangster film shot on the Gold Coast.
David's been 38 for 1½ days and he appears officially over it. "Thank you, thank you," the actor says, deadpan, before quickly shifting conversation to his beloved Sydney Swans and their weekend loss to the Brisbane Lions.
In Adam Cullen's 2000 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of David Wenham, the actor's ears and eyes stood out. But it's his scruffy ginger hair that stands out most today.
He's shorter and thinner than the silver screen suggests. Not as stout as warrior ranger Faramir, whom he plays in Peter Jackson's
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Definitely not as monstrous as psychopath Brett Sprague in
The Boys, the character that took him from the theatre to films, and bagged him an AFI Best Actor award.
"The expectation is often different to the reality," says David. "I've ended up in movies, but it's not something I thought would happen. I became an actor to work in theatre. This is a very bizarre bi-product."
David wanted to be an Australian rules footballer - the greatest sportsman ever from Marrickville, in Sydney's inner west; greater than the Marrickville Mauler, Jeff Fenech. But his classroom impressions of Gough Whitlam and bushman Harry Butler were too good to ignore. He was an actor. And as his parents always said, he was a storyteller.
"I was the youngest of seven children. I had very understanding, supportive parents who allowed me to become a storyteller."
David says his acting ability as a youth had a magic that adults with emotional baggage can never match.
"I love films with kids as protagonists," he says, citing E.T.,
Cinema Paradiso and
My Life as a Dog, which, he says, are up there with his all-time favourite film,
Don't Look Now.
"I think children are the best actors. They have the ability to believe utterly in what they do. It becomes harder to do that as you get older because your confidence gets battered around a bit."
Knocked back by NIDA, David studied theatre at the University of Western Sydney and soon after found work on the local theatre circuit and in television. (He played a motorcycle cop in
A Country Practice in 1981.)
Playing the lethal Brett Sprague on stage to riveting effect in
The Boys, David was first choice for the filmed version. He considers his work in that film, six years ago, the best he's done and perhaps the best he can do. "It's the one film that I look at and I can say I actually can't improve on that," he says.
It was a testament to his acting skill that a year later he had transformed himself from the vicious Sprague to the charismatic and popular Diver Dan on the ABC's
SeaChange. At the show's peak, David was introduced on aNew Zealand talk show as one of Australia's sexiest men. He was horrified.
Film roles kept coming -
Dark City, Better Than Sex, Russian Doll, The Bank, Moulin Rouge (playing the cross-dressing writer Audrey).
In 1999, director Paul Cox asked him to move temporarily to the island leper colony of Molokai to film
Molokai: The Story of Father Damien, leaving partner, actor and yoga teacher Kate Agnew, at home in Sydney.
A story about real-life Belgian priest Father Damien de Veuster, who cared for 140 banished sufferers of leprosy on Molokai Island - one of the Hawaiian islands - before catching the disease himself and dying there in 1889, the film cut straight to David's Catholic core.
"That was probably the best thing in the world I've ever done," says David, who lived and worked in the tight leper community for four months.
"I defy anybody to go to that place and not be affected or moved or changed. These are people who have suffered through the most incredibly disturbing lives and yet are so full of joy and full of life. You realise how ridiculous some of the petty things that upset us in our rather privileged lives are. It was a huge life lesson. Those people had a profound effect on me."
A former student of Christian Brothers' High School, Lewisham, with parents still involved in the church, David acknowledges his Catholic faith, but is reticent to discuss it. When asked how he balances faith and the film industry - known for its sometimes-dubious morality - David pauses, resting his head on his fist, thinking.
"It's not something that's at the front of my head," he says. "I try to be a good person. It's as simple as that. A lot of the time, I don't succeed at all. I'm as messed up as the next person.
"It is a strange business ... It's easy to be consumed by the madness that is Hollywood."
One could say David leapt head-first into the mouth of madness when he signed on for director Peter Jackson's
The Lord of the Rings saga, the trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic . David's character, Faramir, has an important role in the saga's upcoming conclusion,
The Return of the King.
"It was a very different experience to anything else. I hadn't read the book before I was given the baton to come on board," he says. "Then I had an opportunity to read the book, and that was like putting many layers of icing on the cake. And it was an enormous cake. I can say, unreservedly, that Peter Jackson is at the top of the tree. There's Peter Jackson and then everybody else. Undoubtedly. And history will show that."
Which brings us to David here today, as he stirs high-profile Gold Coast lawyer-cum-author-cum-scriptwriter Chris Nyst, who has flown to Sydney to talk about his script for
Gettin' Square.
"I've just been talking about you," says David, as Chris shuffles quickly past our table.
"Don't believe a word," the savvy lawyer advises.
David is describing Chris's script - which borrows heavily from the Gold Coast stories and characters Chris has come across in his day job - as one of the most original, quick and clever scripts to come out of Australia. And, sorry Chris, having seen the film, it's easy to believe every word.
The film follows two criminals, Wirth (
Dirty Deeds' Sam Worthington) and Johnny "Spit" Spitieri (David), who are released from prison and endeavour to go straight - to get square. It's not long, however, before the friends find themselves in the grip of the Gold Coast underworld and are forced into a suicide mission to save their necks.
David's hapless junkie Spit is a fidgety, distrusting, mullet-haired, thong-wearing marvel. It's hard to recall a character so repulsive, yet somehow so endearing.
"It's a strange dichotomy because these are people that society wants to shun, but at the same time you can't help but feel compassion towards them and a certain amount of empathy and a great deal of understanding."
David's empathy goes back to his school days when he'd write letters to prisoners in Sydney's Long Bay Jail. As an adult, he has helped prisoners in literacy programmes.
His empathy has led him to be a vocal commentator on the environment, immigration and reconciliation.
"I'm extremely patriotic, but I'm not proud of many issues in this country," he says. "I travel often and the reaction from virtually everywhere I go overseas is rather different to what this current government would have you believe. And I'm telling you, we don't look too good."
As David talks, those big eyes that Adam Cullen focused on are becoming more intense.
"I never wanted to become a public figure," he says. "All I wanted to do was become an actor, work in theatre, come out and have a beer and be anonymous."
But expectation is, after all, often different from reality.
Gettin' Square opens Thursday (9 October).
From here.
