WHEN David Wenham first read the script of his new film,
Oranges And Sunshine, he immediately came up against a stumbling block: the character of Len, the figure he was being asked to portray. "I couldn't get a handle on him, I nearly thought he was unplayable. I didn't really understand his motivations, or how and why he responded in ways that he did."
But he was interested enough to have a meeting with director and co-writer Jim Loach to talk it over.
Oranges and Sunshine is based on an account by British social worker Margaret Humphreys of how she uncovered the scandal of forced child migration from Britain.
The enigmatic Len was one of those children. In the film, he is a confident, breezy figure, a self-made man who frequently challenges Margaret (Emily Watson), then becomes a crucial part of her quest to discover the truth and help people find the families that in some cases they did not know they had.
When he met Loach — son of veteran director Ken Loach — Wenham recalls, "he told me how he had worked on the film for three years to get it to this particular stage, and he spoke in great detail about the character and others that he'd met. It was intriguing and appealing to me. And I realised he knew exactly how to tell the story."
Wenham later travelled to Perth to meet the man on whom the character of Len was loosely based. He shared his memories with Wenham, and took him to Clontarf and Bindoon, the two isolated Christian Brothers "boys' towns", and to the Perth house belonging to the Child Migrants' Trust, founded by Margaret Humphreys.
There, the actor could pore over documents, photographs and letters, and immerse himself even further in decades of the children's experiences and their stories of deprivation, loss and longing. Children between the ages of three and 14 were brought to Australia, told lies about their families and their origins, "and then used as slave labour once they arrived here. It's relatively recent history," Wenham says, "and it's jaw-dropping — the extent of it, and the horrors that occurred."
One of the conundrums, for him, was the sense of obligation that Len felt to the Christian Brothers, and a kind of pride that he took in his story. "The very first time the audience meets Len he's very confident, some might say overconfident, he's abrasive, he's not particularly appealing. He's seemingly unaffected by his past.
"And I embraced that, I embraced the surprises in his character, the fact that he didn't respond in ways one would expect people to."
Wenham viewed the man's idiosyncrasies as "extraordinary", but he resisted using them in the film. "He just wouldn't have fitted into the landscape. He had unique turn of phrase" — both evocative and provocative — "I've never met anyone who speaks the way he does." After talking to him, Wenham got a sense of how his character would physically act and react in certain situations.
Body language was very important."Depending on who was in the room, it was very clear where this man would be in a pecking order in any given situation. How he would deal with basically anybody."
The actor is happy to discuss, carefully and precisely, particular scenes in the film — how he approached them and what they meant to him. He also appreciates, he says, what the film doesn't show, and the extent to which it allows audience members to perceive things for themselves.
That sense of "knowing" his character beyond the borders of the script is something he also experienced in
Gettin' Square (2003), for which he won an AFI Award. Johnny Spit, hapless junkie and would-be criminal, is a comic figure Wenham creates from head to toe, mullet to thongs. "I was so comfortable with that character, I could have put him in any situation, and I would have known how he would have existed and reacted and responded."
He is quick to give credit to writer Chris Nyst, for a screenplay that gave him much to work on. "I'd lived near Kings Cross, and I've spent a lot of time over many years walking along Darlinghurst Road and since that film came out I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said, 'mate you absolutely nailed that character'. They felt proud that I was one of them."
Before Johnny Spit — and before Diver Dan in
SeaChange — came a breakthrough role in
The Boys, the 1998 film directed by Rowan Woods. It was based on a play by Gordon Graham that drew on the circumstances of a horrific Sydney murder. Wenham had created the role of Brett Sprague in the stage production: writer Stephen Sewell, who adapted the work for the screen, brought new dimensions to the part, he says.
Brett, who returns to the family home after a year in jail for assault, is clever, manipulative and violent, and the film shows him calculatedly setting in train events that will culminate in a brutal killing. The emphasis is not on the crime, however, but on what led up to it.
Is it disconcerting to take on this kind of role? "More and more so now," Wenham says. "I didn't think about it as much when I was younger." Playing Brett Sprague, "I was consumed by that character for a long period of time. And I've got to be honest, I don't think I'd like to enter that territory again, to that extent. Because it's ugly. You can feel it."
He recently worked on
Killing Time, a 10-part TV series written by Katherine Thomson and
Snowtown writer Shaun Grant, that is based on the story of lawyer Andrew Fraser and his deepening involvement in the world of the criminals he represented. "It was fascinating playing him, there was something Shakespearean in the breadth of this character's downfall, but he was also involved in some pretty hideous stuff. Creatively it was a wonderful challenge, but entering that world and immersing myself in it . . ."
He recalls speaking to an expert in criminal psychiatry "who was fascinated by the acting process" and by his performance in
The Boys "and wanted to know how it was achieved". This man, Wenham says, had theories about brain chemistry, and the way that actors might be able to experience the emotions of the characters they were portraying. "I'd never thought about it," he notes. Although he puts plenty of thought into his preparation, it is important that "you're not objectively observing what you're doing, because you'd be too self-conscious".
For an actor, being self-conscious is the last thing you want. He wonders if he is almost too aware, now, about the power of the camera. "I know so much about that machine, and what that machine can do, and what a simple lens change can achieve. Sometimes I alter a performance depending what lens is thrown on the camera. And I feel sometimes maybe I should completely forget about that."
In the theatre, he says, "the machine is the audience, and it's palpable and every performance is different — and you do subtly alter a performance according to the audience that night".
Soon, he says, he hopes to be able to go behind the camera, and direct. His first opportunity might well be
The Turning, a collection of intersecting short stories by Tim Winton that is to be made into a film. Those set to direct, apart from Wenham, include actors such as Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska and dancers and choreographers Gideon Obarzanek and Stephen Page, alongside filmmakers Jonathan auf der Heide and Robert Connolly.
Going from performing to directing is a move he has considered for some time. ("It's not something that's come up in the past 12 months.") He has had approaches from producers to direct specific projects and he has a couple of his own. They're still at an early stage, and he is reluctant to go into detail.
Such projects, he is quick to add, do not have $100 million budgets: "They are rather small and contained, and once they get to a certain point, if they don't get funding through the normal channels, then I'm prepared to mortgage the place or throw the credit card down and just get them made."
Wenham is not a stranger, of course, to the world of the $100 million movie: he has appeared in big-budget Hollywood films —
Lord of the Rings, Moulin Rouge, 300 and
Public Enemies. "I've worked on many a project where I just see waste, money haemorrhaging, and I think, I could have made six films for the price of this one. And that hurts."
But an interest in directing doesn't mean that he plans to quit acting: it's still far too satisfying. "When I am physically working and creating, I am so happy, I am really, really happy" enjoying "the challenge of creating, of fully forming, a believable character who exists in that space".
Right now, he is keenly anticipating a theatre role, beginning next month: Trigorin in Chekhov's
The Seagull at Belvoir Street Theatre, with a cast that includes Judy Davis, Maeve Dermody, Emily Barclay and John Gaden. Buoyed by director Benedict Andrews's vision, "and a wonderful cast", he says he can't wait to be part of it all.
"I'm so looking forward to just getting into the rehearsal room and working with these actors. I still love it, it drives me and I thrive on it."
From here.
