Toni's sitting pretty
Toni Collette shot to fame as an obese Abba fan in Muriel’s Wedding. Refusing to be typecast, she has played Hollywood on her own terms. Now, as she stars in a new BBC drama, Frances Hardy meets the down-to-earth Aussie
Toni Collette is that happy anomaly, the accessible Hollywood star. Talking to her you forget just how dizzyingly A-list she ‘Sweetie.’ she calls me, and says how much she hopes well meet up next time she’s in London. All of which. of course. isjust amiable chit-chat. But all the same. I can’t visualise any other stellar peers other generation being quite as approachable. But Co!kat does not conform to a Tinsehown stereotype. She’d rather be called an actor than a movie star. She dislikes the vacuity of cekbrity, glories in the normality of her happy marriage, remains close to her working-class roots in suburban Sydney, Australia. and appears endearingly ego-free. She has co-starred with such big-screen luminaries as Cameron Diaz. Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Bruce Willis. but in so many wildly diverse guises that it is hard, at first. to summon up the face that goes with the name. She was frumpy, cerebral Rose, sister to Diaz’s gorgeous, reckless blonde Maggie in In Her Shoes. In The Sixth Sense. for which Collette was Oscar-nominated as best supporting actress, she played the terrified mum of a child (Haley Joel Osment) who saw dead people. She co-starred with Hugh Grant in About A Boy. playing kooky, suicidal single mum Fiona – a figure of consummate sadness in an otherwise buoyant romantic comedy. But then, she has often oscillated between tragic and comic; the glamorous and the plain; she’s been cast as a spike-haired blonde and reincarnated as a lustrous brunette. She was a skinny rock chick wife in Velvet Goldmine – and gloriously obese – as the Abba-obsessed singleton who yearned to be married, in Muriel’s Wedding, the Australian film that catapulted her, aged 21, to worldwide fame when it captivated an enthralled international audience.
“There are certain actors who play themselves,” she says. ‘When you go to see their movies, you just see them. I prefer people to align themselves with my character rather than with me. That way I have the freedom not to become typecast. I like to play as many and as varied roles as possible.’ In her latest role, Tsunami: The Aftermath. a BBC TV drama, she plays an aid worker dealing with the calamitous effects of thetidal wave that devastated swathes of the Asian coast on Boxing Day 2004. She plays Kathy Graham, the tough, practical, straight-talking foil to Hugh Bonneville’s Tony Whittaker, a civil servant from the British Embassy in Bangkok who – bereft of guidance from Whitehall – swanks to cope with the humanitarian crisis enveloping him. Collette recalls her profound shock at watching TV news footage of the giant wave as it engulfed the coast. ‘I was sitting in the living room with my family; she says. ‘Seeing the devastation was incredibly shocking. It moved me terribly. I cried. I cry at the drop of a hat. I’m a very emotional person, which helps with the work I do. So many people think it is scary or confounding to betray vulnerability. I believe we are all vulnerable.”
She seems to be both assailable and tough; a tender heart shot through with steel. Does she miss her husband – drummer David Galafassi – when she’s away filming? took. we wouldn’t have got married if we wanted to spend a lot of time apart.’ she replies. Then she laughs. flashing that dazzling smik with its curiously urillollywood, out-of-kilter teeth. They have been seeing more of each other recently as Toni is midway through a mini tour with her band, Toni Collette and the Finish – she has sung and written songs since high school – and Dave is with her, playing the drums. She met Dave at a pub gig in Sydney live years ago. A couple of weeks later their paths crossed again at a mutual friend’s barbecue. Thereafter, they were inseparable. Was it love at first sight? ‘Let’s just say it was very pleasinh. Although he was a complete stranger, I felt I trusted him immediately. From that second meeting we spent every moment together.’ Is it still as good as ever? ‘No. it gets better. It’s incredibly rewarding having such an intimate relationship: having someone to share your life and experiences. I find it very satisfying. And fun. I have a huge lust for life. A huge lust for life,” she laughs. In the five years they have been together, her life has settled into the closest approximation of everyday domesticity that a top-league movie career permits. “We have a very regular existence,” she says. “We live in a suburb of Sydney, we have dinner at home, we hang out with friends, we do the washing. I don’t go to award ceremonies. I value my family and friends. I live within an hour’s drive of my parents. Life is very grounded, private and ordinary. It took a while to get there, but I have a very real sense of normality.”
Her 20s were. in contrast, a tumult. Global fame arrived suddenly, when the success of Muriel’s Wedding pitched her into a starry world remote from her everyday upbringing. In order to play Muriel, she had to gain four dress sizes in a couple of months, ballooning from a size ten to an 18. The pressure to shed excess weight quickly set up a cycle of bulimia. Meanwhile, the plaudits were accruing, offers of work were coming in. Toni was travelling the world, isolated, uprooted. The bulimia stopped – only to be succeeded by panic attacks. “They felt just awful. My vision went and I thought I was dying,” she once said, explaining, “I had achieved a dream, but didn’t know how to enjoy it. I don’t come from a world that actually believes you can be in movies.” Today, however, she is keen to diminish the trauma. “Lonely, strange and awful as some of the times were, it was still heady and exciting,” she says now. “I’m sick of people saying it was difficult. I didn’t have a boring job where I got the same train each day. It was very colourful, full of variety. I hadn’t really contemplated having an audience when I made Muriel’s Wedding. I just enjoyed the experience. I had no idea how much my life was going to be changed by it. For many years afterwards I lived out of a suitcase. It was challenging. Just maturing, growing and getting used to this new life was weird and testing. You’re confrontational. You bounce off walls. You’re trying to figure out who you are. Psychology books tell us we’re all confronted by similar issues at this age. There are huge changes and, when you add fame into the mix, it gets weird. Your 20s are messy years for everyone. I had a great time. but I thank God they’re over.”
During that ‘messy’ decade she drifted between homes, buying properties in London. Dublin and Los Angeles, but failing to settle. She lived in London while filming Emma alongside Gwyneth Paltrow. “I lived on my own in a flat in Brixton. My neighbours were burgled while they were asleep. It was the ultimate nightmare,” she says. But every negative statement is redressed by a positive: “I had such an affinity with London. There are lots of people there I’d like to see again and squeeze in person.” People such as Hugh Grant? “Oh, Hugh is so witty and incredibly smart: someone I admire greatly – and such a hard worker,” she eulogises. “I was surprised at how very conscientious he is.” And Hugh Bonneville? “Such a character!” she exclaims. “He’s incredibly funny and engaging. Right from the get-go we had such a laugh.” When Toni was in her mid-20s and working on Velvet Goldmine, she fell in love with her co-star Jonathan Rhys Meyers. She looks back fondly on the relationship. “We had a wonderful time together. He is a very interesting. charming, soulful person. It was just one of those relationships you have to have,” she adds mysteriously. But it wasn’t forever? “Clearly not,” she says bluntly. “But it was everything while it lasted.” Then, of course, along came a fortunate confluence – she reached her late 20s, met Dave. whom she married to the chanting of Tibetan Buddhist monks, in a secret ceremony at her ranch in New South Wales, and discovered peace of mind Now. at 34, she says she is more than ready to have children. “I do want children now, to be frank,” she says. “Unfortunately, one is not on the way, but I don’t doubt it will happen soon. It feels normal and right. I’ve thought about motherhood extensively. Having a child is a huge responsibility and I’m ready for it. I imagine that, until they start school, you don’t have to be too tied. Your love is their stability and they can travel with you.” She stops herself short and laughs. “Listen to me. And I haven’t even got a baby yet!”
You cannot help but like Collette. for her conspicuous lack of a PR spiel to her sharp candour off-set by sudden gusts of laughter. She has no truck with falsity, superficiality or the herd mentality. “We are living in an age of sheep,” she declares at one point. “People assume that they have to be like everyone else. Hollywood’s current obsession with thinness really worries me. It tells me that these people are terribly unsure of themselves. The pressure to conform is huge. It is hard for people to be individuals these days.” But Collette has remained resolutely idiosyncratic. The cult of celebrity has passed her by. “I think it takes a certain type of person to get swept up in all that,” she contends. “And I’m not that type. It’s the way I was raised. Her father. Bob, is a retired lorry driver. Her mum, Judy, worked for a courier company. She has two younger brothers, Chris, 30, and Ben, 26. “We lived in a fairly rough suburb of Sydney. Gran lived with us for a while, and an aunt and cousin were there until I was six. Other relatives lived over the road. We jumped the fence to see them. I remember it all very romantically. I still live near my family. I’m incredibly close to my brothers. They do normal jobs: they work to put dinner on the table. They wouldn’t let me get too big for my boots.” Right from the off, she was resolutely single-minded. Although she enrolled on a three-year course, aged 16, at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, she left after 18 months to make her film debut in Spotswood with Anthony Hopkins and fellow Australian Russell Crowe. Since then, she says, she has always relished. “the challenge of being someone else”. Part of her is settled, part is constantly metamorphosing. Even her image is in constant flux. Today she sports a tousled red bob. Tomorrow, she might be blonde again. “I’m the same underneath”, she says. “Aside from that, it doesn’t matter who or what I am.”
Part two of Tsunami: The Aftermath is on BBC2 on Tuesday al 9pm.
