Toni awards
Toni Collette is all talk. Speaking to IN STYLE in 2000, the no-mess, no-fuss actress threatened to chop off her already cropped locks. “I can’t stand having this hair on my head!” she said. Fast-fonvard four years, seven films, and, oh yeah, a very private wedding ceremony, and the 31-year-old is sitting in a Sydney photo studio, flicking her hair—thick and lustrous—back from her shoulders. “I think I’ve become a lot more girlie in these last few years,” she admits. But pry, ask why and she’s quick to admonish, “There’s an obvious answer, but not going to say it.” And with that, Collette flashes her fabulous smile, the one that first demanded our atten-tion in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding, and which today, she just can’t contain. Life is abba-solutely fabulous for the Sydney-bred and based actress. She’s “feeling more comfortable in my own skin”, and revelling in her role as wife to local drummer David Galafassi, who turns z6 this year. “It’s fantastic,” she says of the married life she’s enjoyed since the January zoos Buddhist ceremony held at their property on the NSW south coast. This month, she stars opposite My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Var-dalos in the comedy-caper Connie and Carla. Written by Vardalos, it’s a girls-are-boys-arc-girls storyline with a few spectacular show tunes thrown in. That’s right, Collette’s follow-up to the wrenching performance in 2003’s Japanese Story has her going undercover as a drag queen on the cabaret circuit. “I’d done so many intensely dramatic and emotional roles … I actually find it physically and emotion-ally exhausting,” she says.
Connie and Carla “was an opportunity to laugh and be light and enjoy myself.” For Collette, choosing roles is not based on a strategy. “It’s not premeditated,” she says. “Things tend to come up and resonate.” It makes sense then that we’re about to sec good times rolling onscreen for the actress. After Carla comes The Last Shot, a comedy co-starring Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin in which Collette plays a fresh-out-of-rehab actress—”the most manipulative, narcissistic, highly-sexed pain in the arse. It was so much fun to poke fun at my own vocation!” And due in January is a dra-medy, In Her Shoes, co-starring Cameron Din and Shirley MacLainc. But hey, if this acting thing doesn’t work out … Carla allowed Collette to unleash a dazzling, betcha-didn’t-think-I-had-it-in-me singing voice. In fact, music has long been a love of Collette’s: “I started in musical theatre,” she says, and she’s been writing her own music since her early zos. An al-bum, possibly in collaboration with Galafassi, may soon be in the offing. No doubt she’ll hit all the right notes.
Growing up the eldest of three children to Robert, a truck driver, and Judith, a customer service rep-resentative, in Sydney’s Blacktown (“I used to be really embarrassed about being called a ‘westie’,” she says. “Now I’m quite proud of it”), Collette left school at 16 to act. “How the hell did I do that?” she says now of the decision. But then, “I found (acting] to be a great release, really challenging and exciting … I was determined to explore it.” She has followed through, with heart, soul and body, though it irri-tates her that the physical transfor-mations—beginning with a t9kg weight gain for Muriel’s Wedding—have attracted so much attention. “When I’m playing a character, it’s not the most important part.” Her own sense of style seems now to flow on from her newly luxurious tresses: “I don’t mind dressing up. I used to feel really uncomfortable, but now I enjoy getting my hair done, putting on a gorgeous frock, getting the heels on, even though they hurt … I love being feminine!” And while her favourite labels include Collette Dinnigan, Stella McCartney and Dries Van Noten, Collette’s plans for the future may nor require too many designer frocks. Asked where she’d like to see herself in to years, she laughs, “Taking my kids to sport … I’d like to be a mother, to be able to cook better, to spend more time in the garden, and … it’s so weird, I’m about to say, I’d like to be able to make my own clothes’. I sound like a 1950s Doris Day nightmare!”