Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows former Neighbours star Ashley Paske talking about the difficulties he encountered pursuing an acting career after he left the television soap opera. Paske describes how he went to London and worked in theatre, but he found acting hard work with long stints of unemployment and little money. Paske says he came to the conclusion that being an actor was a great experience but not the career for him.

Educational value points

• Young television serial, or soap opera, stars are promoted as celebrities in order to market the serial. Professor Graeme Turner, co-author of Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia’ (2000), has described celebrity as a 'commodity’ that is manufactured and promoted to sell and market a product, in this case a television program. Once young stars are cast in a television serial they can be rapidly thrust into the celebrity limelight, dominating the covers of mass-market magazines and talk show guest lists and making live appearances at shopping centres.

• Long-running television serials such as Neighbours and Home and Away, which are screened in the early evening in Australia, are seen as a means of securing viewers for the prime-time programs that follow. They also attract the young audience sought by advertisers. A support industry of agents, publicists, managers, editors and writers collaborate to make young soap opera stars the most visible group among local television celebrities.

• Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Guy Pearce and Natalie Imbruglia used their roles in television serials to launch international careers as actors and performers; however, most young soap stars do not enjoy such success, and after leaving a soap opera many quit acting or struggle to find further acting work. This may reflect the lack of opportunities for actors in Australia. But Tony Knight, head of acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), feels that young actors are often typecast in television soap operas and that they lack the emotional range, technical skills or versatility to tackle other roles.

• The popularity of Australian television serials such as Home and Away and Neighbours in Britain has led some Australian soap stars such as Paske to pursue a career there. Australia’s relatively small film industry and the limited amount of home-grown television and film drama produced in Australia mean that it can be difficult for actors to find regular work. Serials provide regular work for some actors.

• A television serial, commonly known as a soap opera or 'soap’, is a fictional melodrama presented episodically on television or radio. The description of these programs as ‘soaps’ derives from the fact that these types of programs when originally broadcast on the radio, were sponsored by soap manufacturers. The episodic nature of soaps, with their long story arcs and open episode endings (known as hooks), were designed to ensure that the audience would return and continue to be exposed to the product promotions.

• Filmmaker Lizzy Gardiner has had first-hand experience in the film and television industry through her work as a costume designer. She was principal costume designer on the television serial E Street between 1989 and 1992. Together with Tim Chappel, she won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). Since then she has designed costumes for numerous films including Welcome to Woop Woop (1997), Eye of the Beholder (1999) and Mission: Impossible II (2000). She made her directorial debut in 2000 with the documentary Killing Priscilla, a record of director Stephan Elliot’s struggles to make Eye of the Beholder.

This clip starts approximately 15 minutes into the documentary.

Ashley Paske is being interviewed.
Ashley Paske What it is, is people still recognise you, but you cease to be employable. So I spent a good two and a half years in England doing a lot of nice theatre work and so on and so on, but really not finding that it was leading to anything and really beginning to realise that this is it — this is actually what the reality of being an actor is about. A lot of hard slog, half the year unemployed, ah, no money, um, and having to deal with a lot of people walking around being really arty farty, worrying about the depth of the character and so on, and hey, that might be some people’s gig. It was never really mine. Um, you address it to a certain extent but all that sort of stuff was never really my gig and all of a sudden I found that the ‘wine, women and song’ aspect wasn’t really happening anymore and it wasn’t such a lark, you’re not making so much money and you do, you turn around and look at yourself and you go ‘Well, oh, what’s wrong? You know, I don’t, I don’t understand. Well, I do understand, but I just wish this wasn’t the case.’ So yeah, you kind of just have to turn around and I just turned around and went ‘Well, OK, OK, let’s be honest. It was a great time, I wouldn’t have not done it, but it’s not a career.’