Psychologies (2007)

A maverick and critically acclaimed actor who has turned her hand to a myriad of roles, Toni Collette has come a long way since playing the ugly duckling in Muriel’s Wedding. She talks to Sarah Maber about finding love, life and lyrics, and why she’s glad to have left her twenties behind.

There is a incongruity about Toni Collette. She is undoubtedly a star, but curiously unaffected by fame. When she talks, it is with an Australian frankness and without frills (‘I hated making that movie’; ‘life is bloody weird’), but she expresses a profound emotional connection to her work and her relationship. Unlike most other actors of her calibre and fame, she isn’t fodder for the columnists – a handy by-product, she says, of her choice of roles – the bewildered mother in The Sixth Sense; the nuptially obsessed Muriel Heslop in Muriel’s Wedding; the tragi-comic hippy mum in About a Boy, the sane voice in a family of misfits in Little Miss Sunshine. She becomes subsumed by her roles, and in doing so has remained idiosyncratic, achieving fame resolutely her way. It hasn’t been easy, however. In the past, she has talked of the tumultuous early years of stardom; of feeling isolated and uprooted in the wake of Muriel’s Wedding; of suffering from panic attacks and bulimia. Her twenties were a journey, she says, and she arrived at her destination when she met her husband, musician Dave Galafassi, whom she married in 2003. Today, at 34, she talks proudly about her band, Toni Collette & The Finish; of her grounded, private, ordinary life, of being fully loved – but at the same time, being braced for change.

You’ve just released your first album, Beautiful Awkward Pictures, and your lyrics reflect a wide arc of feelings and moods. Do they reflect your Journey so far?
I’ve been writing for years, so it’s a relief to not only get it out of me, but get it out to the world. There are certainty autobiographical elements. I think the songs represent where I’m at and what I’m thinking about. But Cm still on the journey. I don’t think you ever land in a place of ‘this Is it I have realised it all’.

What experiences have been most formative for you?
I had a happy childhood, but I think the bursting of the bubble was probably when I was about 13 and my grandmother died I had to face up to mortality. when you’re a teenager, you begin to question things and start to expand a little bit, and hopefully that journey continues throughout your whole life.

You’re constantly expanding and learning.
Yes – but with that expansion comes change. is that something you embrace or does it scare you? i think both. In the past, I was reluctant to go with the flow of change and think I’ve learned over the years it’s completely inevitable, and it’s much easier to embrace it and explore it. The loveliest change I’ve gone through is entering into a very healthy, intimate relationship with my husband. I think It’s given me such feeling of safety. That’s been pretty big for me.

Do you feel that being loved has enabled you to explore more fully who you are?
I forced myself to do that. I wouldn’t want to hang it all on my husband David’s head. I’ve done a lot of work on myself. I had to try and understand what life is. because it can be bloody weird! it sounds obvious, but one of the big things I’ve understood is that life does not last forever. You have to enjoy things for what they are and not try to force things. In my twenties, I think that life was happening and I was trying to put the brakes on. I’m happy to let it fly now.

Your twenties can be an incredibly difficult decade, as you try to find out who you are and where the future will take you.
Your twenties are for bouncing off the walls; they’re incredibly explorative and exciting, When I did Muriers Wedding, I was 22 and I didn’t even contemplate the fact that there was going to be an audience. I was just like, ‘Woohool I’ve got a job!’ Then, suddenbi, I found myself having to do interviews, and articulate what I thought and how I felt about absolutely everything. That made me very aware. I started acting when I was a teenager, and if I’d have waited much longer and the world had crept into me, I probably wouldn’t have been as bold or as brave. lust being from the suburbs, unaffected and kind of unaware of how things worked, meant nothing got in my way. I didn’t really think about what could go wrong.

Your unaffectedness Is something think people are drawn to in you. As your career’s progressed, have you had to fight to hold onto that?
I have a very normal existence, you know? I live in Sydney, and I’m able to walk around the block with my dog or go to the shop and I don’t get chased by guys with cameras. I don’t know how I’ve managed it. If I chose to do massive movies where I just played different versions of myself rather than characters, then I think people would be more interested in me rather than the stories I’m trying to tell.

When you read the script of Little Miss Sunshine, you said that the part “connected straight to some other part of me. it was as if It chose me.” Would you say you would trust your heart over your head? Do you listen to your instincts?
The mind is constantly rattling on and I think it’s sometimes better to just ignore it. I trust my heart. When it comes to choosing a role, that’s what it feels like. That’s what makes a movie special – when you can’t actually define what’s affecting you, yet you’re experiencing authentic feelings.

You seem to fully disappear Into the parts you play… Is there a particular role that has had lasting resonance for you?
I did this film called Japanese Story. Oddly, I actually had a bad experience making it. I hated it, and I have to say I felt very alone. But the character I played in the movie had to face death, and playing her helped me understand myself. She experienced the thing that she feared the most, which was this incredible loss, and she forced herself to remain open. I used to worry a lot more about death, and it’s such a natural Part of life. I think it’s so easy for all of us to shut down, but events – good or bad – are part of your journey, and it’s much healthier to embrace it rather than deny it, because it’s not going to go away.

You’ve talked about your twenties as a time of success mixed with isolation. Did you have a sense of being on some kind of search?
Oh God. Absolutely! I think I did feel quite lost. I think the Saturn Return really does exist because once I hit 28 it all kind of landed.

What were you looking for?
Some kind of fulfilment something solid. Everything felt like it was in flux, and it didn’t help that I was catching a plane – every five minutes. But then I bought a house, and met my husband…

Do you feel you’ve been given what you needed?
That your life Is at a place you want it to be? Yes. And I kncAv that will change, too, so I don’t kncAv how long that will last. But at the moment I feel very lucky to feel so stable. There’s a plateau of goodness happening.

“Beautiful awkward Pictures” by Toni Collette & The Finish is available now from witnuTunes.com.