The Ottawa Citizen (1996)

[Note: The same article appeared in the Detroit Free Press, August 09, 1996]

LOS ANGELES – We do our best to approach the subject gingerly talking about the unreal expectations that society imposes, how advertising and the movies create ridiculous expectations, how difficult it s for actors and actresses who don’t fit the conventional definitions of “handsome” or “beautiful” or “sexy” to find work in an industry that thrives on conventionality. But Toni Collette, the Australian actress who played the unattractive, geeky title character in “Muriel’s Wedding” and who plays Emma’s romantic reclamation project in the new adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma” will have none of it. After so much beating around the bush, she just chops it down. “I think I’m a misfit, of course I do.” says Collette. “I mean, I don’t understand how all this is happening to me, really I don’t. Don’t get me wrong. I think I’m good at what I do. But I’m definitely not a normalooking person.”

The Collette posed primly on a couch in her Los Angeles hotel suite is not nearly as heavy or bucktoothed as she looks in “Muriel’s Wedding”, or as awkward and schlumpy as she appears playing hapless Harriet Smith in “Emma.” She looks amazingly normal. What Collette does not look like is a movie star, though that is what she is poised to be. There is so much confidence in her ability to cast a spell on movie audiences that her looks have come to seem rather incidental. “I was having dinner at the Tribeca Grill (in New York’s SoHo) when Harvey Weinstein (the co-chairman of Miramax came in) and said “Darlin’, here’s a script. Pickany part you want – ifs yours’. He does that, I hear, falls in love with actors and wants them to do everything. It was “Emma,” and I was immediately drawn to Harriet, and so I asked for that one. I mean, I had to meet the director, and he had to approve, of course. And I assume if I had said I wanted to play Emma, he would have shown me the door. But it was wonderful knowing I wasn’t being pigeonholed, that I was being recognized for my acting, not my looks.” Collette says there was a time she wasn’t so self-accepting, when she would look in a mirror and be disheartened at what she saw. “I think everybody goes through a period where they’re not pleased with how they look,” she says. “And you either stay that way and let it affect everything you do, or you get over it and get on with life. It’s so ridiculous the importance we place on the body and the exterior self. It’s not what life is about at all. It leaves no room for individuality on a physical level. People are too scared to be themselves, too scared to leave their houses because they think they’re not up to scratch. Whose standards are we trying to please? Were here. Life’s short You have to make the most of it.”

Collette has been making the most of her own life for the last decade, ever since she convinced her parents she had to leave the suburbs for Sydney – which meant quitting school. “I loved singing, and I had been doing musicals and plays, and I just knew from an amazingly early age that was what I wanted to do with my life. So when I was 16, I begged my parents to let me go, and they convinced me of the importance of finishing my education. So I went back for the next term, but it was hopeless. So then I just came home and told them I was going.” Collette found enough work to support herself, apprenticing at play houses and getting the occasional episode of a television series. After she landed a supporting role in a film starring Anthony Hopkins titled “Spottswood” and after winning the Australian equivalent of a best supporting actress Oscar, Collette was encouraged to get formal training and was accepted at Sydney’s prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art. She dropped out after a year and a half. “I’m really glad I went because I learned a hell of a lot That year I had worked. I was just growing and feeling my way and not really knowing how to help myself create a character. I learned a lot about that. but the place proved hypocritical to me. They instilled such fear in their students, and I didn’t want to be in an institution like that”. Collette’s friends warned her that if she left, she would be ruined. Instead, she said, it was the best thing I could have done. The school was doing “Uncle Vanya” that term, and Collette desperately wanted to play Sonya, the shy niece who has sacrificed her life for her family. She not only won the role in a professional production but also won the Sydney Critics Circle Award (for Best Newcomer for her performance. That led to ‘Muriel’s Wedding,” in which she played the ungainly. ABBA obsessed daughter of a lowlife politician in a place called Porpoise Spit. Muriel’s dreams of a being a blushing bride in white come true, in a roundabout way, when she moves to the city. ‘Muriel’s Wedding,” a huge hit in Australia, went on to be an an arthouse hit in Europe and the United States, and brought Collette more attention than “I could have ever imagined.”

Though Collette had a small role in “The Pallbearer” earlier this year, she considers “Emma” her real follow-up, calling Douglas McGrath’s adaptation of the Austen novel “just about everything an actor or an audience could want. I think. I just loved it. Actually, I wasn’t into Austen at all,” Collette admits. “And I was realy surprised. It was so clever, so witty, so knowing in the way it looked at the society and the issue of class. And for an actor, it’s so attractive because the characters talk, they communicate. So many films are ignorant to the fact that people actually like to hear people talk. But it’s so comical, you know? People have this idea of period films being very stuffy and posh, people walking around in corsets. But this movie is (expletive) funny! It’s like the 19th Century of “Seinfield”. All these smart people with so much time and nothing to do. Just play and gossip”. Collette’s own life is anything but that. She’ll next be seen in an Australian comedy called “Cosi” and then is set to make an American movie called “The Clockwatchers”, playing a temp working in a credit union. Then it’s back to England for a drama called “Diana and Me”, produced by David Putnam. She’s the primary character in all those films, but says she doesn’t care as much about the size of a role as she does about the quality of the work itself. “I never thought I could ever be a so-called star anyway, so I don’t think in these terms. I read a script, and it’s either obvious it’s for me or it isn’t. I’m just happy that people think of me at all.”