Muriel's Wedding Brings Bliss to Two Young Actresses
It isn’t often that a woman becomes a star by putting on weight and singing bubble-gum music, but that is exactly what happened to Toni Collette in the comic film “Muriel’s Wedding.”
A hit in Australia and everywhere else it has opened, the film tracks the adventures of the unstoppable Muriel Heslop, a dumpling of an innocent. Muriel is keen on the 1970’s Swedish music group Abba, eating and, most of all, weddings. The kind of woman for whom every day is a bad hair day, she believes that if she could only get married, all her problems would disappear. As it turns out, Muriel’s worries do get resolved — not because of a bridegroom but through a best friend, Rhonda, played by Rachel Griffiths, a newcomer to film.
Both actresses have received considerable critical praise for their work in the movie, which was in the top 10 at the box office last weekend after opening in the United States last month. Writing in The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris called Ms. Collette’s Muriel “a spectacular, subversive heroine” and described Muriel and Rhonda as “mesmerizingly magical” characters. Ms. Collette, acclaimed at last year’s Cannes International Film Festival for her portrayal of Muriel, won Australia’s Academy Award as best actress. Ms. Griffiths won the Australian Academy Award for best supporting actress. Growing up in a Sydney suburb (as a tomboy, she says), Ms. Collette, now 22, began acting at 14 and left high school at 16 to pursue a career on stage. After a year of classes and no paychecks, she started working, mainly in the theater. She was playing Cordelia in “King Lear” before heading to Cannes. Her first film role was in “The Efficiency Expert,” a 1992 Australian comedy directed by Mark Joffe. In it she played a factory worker.
Now, thanks to “Muriel’s Wedding,” celebrityhood has been thrust upon her, with all its attendant anxieties. “It’s as though it’s going to be taken away immediately,” Ms. Collette says. “I can’t put my finger on it, but all this is just a little overwhelming, and I don’t know how to handle it. “It can be almost depressing,” she adds, “because so many people are talking to you, and you know that they wouldn’t be so nice if it wasn’t for one reason: that I was Muriel.” For all Muriel’s excess baggage, Ms. Collette found her role liberating. A large part of it entailed embracing her “truth,” she says. Although Ms. Collette auditioned for the role on the first day of casting, she didn’t win it until three months later. “I was still working out who Muriel was,” explains Paul J. Hogan, who made his directorial debut with “Muriel’s Wedding” and who also wrote the script. Muriel was close to his heart, he says, because she was, in fact, himself. “A lot of things that Muriel went through I went through, except I’m not female,” he says. “I know what it’s like to be the outsider.”
Ms. Griffiths, 27, is more immediately recognizable from her film role than Ms. Collette. But unlike her character, Rhonda, who is often on the verge of excitability, she exudes calm. Raised in Melbourne, where she still lives, she studied art, drama and dance in college before settling on acting. “The first year I came out of college,” she says, “I wrote three plays that were performed in various fringe festivals and alternative spaces. I was working for my friends, and my friends were working for me.” (She is currently writing a play for young people and adapting a screenplay from an Australian novel she won’t name because, she says, “I don’t have the rights.”) Of her acting career, she says: “I just want to do it with grace. I always thought I was a theater actress, and that the pinnacle would be at 65 playing Queen Margaret in ‘Richard III’ for the Royal Shakespeare Company.” Ms. Griffiths is a latecomer to “Muriel” fever. She missed Cannes altogether and was performing on stage as the daughter in “The Sisters Rosensweig” when word came that she had won the Australian Academy Award for her first movie role.
Ms. Collette and Ms. Griffiths have become friends, leaning on each other through their new-found fame. They have recently completed a second film in Australia, titled “Cosi” and directed by Mr. Joffe. It is the story of a young man (Ben Mendelsohn) who puts on the Mozart opera in a mental asylum as a form of therapy. Ms. Collette plays Julie, a patient, and sings, and Ms. Griffiths plays Lucy, a lawyer and the troubled young man’s girlfriend. “Muriel’s Wedding” is distributed in the United States by Miramax, which will also handle “Cosi” when it is released next year. Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of the company, has affection for the two women that goes beyond their ability to pull American audiences into movie theaters. “If I said, ‘Let’s hang out and have a beer,’ he says, “Toni and Rachel would be there. These guys would be dressed in 2 minutes and at Yankee Stadium in 20.”
First, though, he would have to find them. Both actresses are talking with Hollywood producers. But they say they do not want to leave Australian films behind. Ms. Griffiths is about to take off for parts unknown, and her co-star is rootless by choice. “I don’t have a home,” Ms. Collette says, breaking into a wide smile reminiscent of Muriel’s.
“All I have is a phone number,” she says. “I love that.”