Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows part of an interview with Australian actress Judy Davis conducted by Andrea Stretton, arts journalist and television presenter. Davis talks of her first experience of film acting, in the film My Brilliant Career, which is based on the book of the same name by Miles Franklin published in 1901. The women sit opposite one another in a studio and are filmed mainly in close-up against an unadorned set. A short scene from My Brilliant Career is shown to illustrate a point Davis is making.

Educational value points

• Judy Davis (1955–) provides an interesting insight into 'behind the scenes’ dynamics in the making of a feature film revealing how an actor can separate themselves from their role. Despite her resistance to being over managed as an actor and despite her lack of sympathy with the central dilemma of her character, the film’s heroine Sybilla, Davis delivered a performance that brought her to prominence and launched her career.

• Davis discusses her lack of sympathy at the time with the central dilemma of My Brilliant Career, yet many critics claim that it is the film’s exposition of the choice between marriage and career that led to its success. Its release coincided with the revival of feminism in the 1970s and dramatised the concerns of many women at the time. Sybylla wants to pursue a career despite pressures from the society of the time to choose marriage, the more conventional path.

• The clip illustrates some of the difficulties an inexperienced actor may face when appearing in their first feature film in a lead role. Davis was unprepared for the experience of being an actor in a film, where 'you get treated as your character’ by everyone associated with the film, compared with that of being a theatre actor, which she was more familiar with. Davis also acknowledges her negative response to her perceived lack of control in the filmmaking process.

• Davis’s youth and inexperience at the time of her first film role affected both her response to the film and as she says 'the depth of the problem being discussed’. Davis was just 23 years old, a recent graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art and had not yet joined the workforce when she was selected for the part of Sybylla. She admits that her character’s dilemma over career or marriage seemed simplistic to her at that stage of her life.

• The clip indicates Davis’s forceful intelligence and independent spirit, qualities often portrayed in the film and television roles she has chosen in a career spanning nearly 30 years. She has been nominated twice for an Oscar as well as acting in four films for director Woody Allen. In 2001 she received her ninth Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Judy Garland for television. She is one of Australia’s most successful and highly regarded actresses.

• Andrea Stretton (1952–2007) demonstrates in this interview with Davis some of the qualities that made her such a successful interviewer. Davis is known for her dislike and avoidance of interviews but here she responds well to Stretton’s sympathetic and probing questioning. Stretton consolidated her interviewing skills during her years as producer and presenter of television arts programs on SBS and the ABC from 1987 to 2001.