So how did your career in acting begin?

I was married to a career army officer five weeks after I turned 19.  During this time I started working in amateur theatre.  I didn't go to the traditional colleges of art to learn my trade.  Whilst I was involved in the local army amateur dramatic society, acting was socially acceptable to my husband.  But when I expressed a desire to become a professional actor, I was told that there was room for only one career in the family.  I said, 'that's cool...bye, bye,' and that was the end of that marriage.  Well, actually, it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The other thing that occurred was that my husband saw the theatre as a rival.  If it was a man, he would have punched him on the nose, but he couldn't hit the theatre.  In the ten years we were married he had never hit me, but all of a sudden he hit me.  The first time that happened I threatened him, and when he hit me the second time, I left him.  I had three small children and I can see in this situation how women would think, 'I can't leave, I have to stay and put up with this because I have children'.  My attitude was, 'I cannot make the children responsible for my putting up with this.  I cannot make them the reason why I stay'.  So I left.  I got an agent, went to auditions and found employment.  My husband decided he didn't wish to divorce me immediately.  He tried to starve me out by not sending me any maintenance, because he felt that paying me was supporting me to stay away from him.  So I was really struggling.  I worked for five years in theatre and education because it allowed me to work during school hours, and I could still be a mother.

In 1978 I rang my agent and said, 'I want out'.  When she asked me what I wanted to do, I said, 'how about a long-running television series?  Ho, ho, ho!  Wouldn't we all love that!'  Meanwhile I was having loads of fun doing my first musical when my agent rang again and said, 'they're doing this series about women in prison.  They haven't got a name for it yet, but I looked at the cast breakdown, and you would be ideal for the gestapo-type prison officer'.  So I went along to see the casting director about the role of Vera 'Vinegar Tits'.  I spent three minutes with her and she said, 'no, I think you're Bea Smith material'.  They screen tested me, and a week later I got a 16-month contract.  Four and a half years later I left the show as the highest paid television actor in Australia.  And then my husband divorced me!  He knew I wasn't coming home.

So what brings you to this neck of the woods?

I was brought over to this country initially by the fan club to do personal appearances.  At first I was only staying for three months, and that was two and a half years ago.  Whilst I've been here, apart from doing hundreds of PAs, I have worked in the theatre.  I haven't done any screen work because unfortunately the casting directors here are exactly the same as they are in Australia, they will not give me the opportunity to exercise my talents on screen.  Apparently, as I'm already on screen twice a week in the role of a very identifiable and strong character, they won't let me try anything else.  They say at this moment it won't work, the public won't accept me, I'm too high profile.  But I say how the bloody hell will they know unless they try?  It's up to me to create another strong character but I have to be given the opportunity to do so.

At the moment I'm in rehearsals at the Key Theatre in Peterborough in the play Steel Magnolias.  I'm playing the part that Shirley McLean played in the film, the woman with the loud dog.  Except the play takes place minus the dog, and minus any men because it's an all women show.  I do like the play because I think it is saying something about women of a certain class.  Also I enjoy working in the theatre because you can be much more versatile, in fact you are expected to be.

So what about the request for the whole Prisoner series to be shown again from the very beginning?

Well it seems that Central TV is ignoring the petition of 16,000 signatures from women wanting to see the programme in its entirety.  They also want it screened at a reasonable time instead of the midnight slot.  But Central are too busy preparing to show an American creation from the same person who created Prisoner, Crossroads and Neighbours.  It's called Dangerous Women and has been described as Prisoner with Shoulder Pads.  It's made in America, with five of the same characters from the original show sporting different names, with identical plots and the identical in-house feel that Prisoner had.

Have you been approached to play the part of Bea again?

Certainly not!  It's totally American, all blondy, lipsticky American - 6 inches of makeup - a mockery of the show that I was in.  That show had nothing to do with glamour and makeup.  Although at one stage, when two new directors of drama came into the network, they wanted to re-shoot the credits with the character of Meg Morris opening the back of the paddy wagon and all these glamorous prisoners getting out.  We screamed so loudly that it was never used in the end.  Because that's not what the show's about.  Early on in the show we were able to establish some integrity, giving us the opportunity to deal with a few pertinent issues because we didn't have to pussy foot around.  We didn't have to be polite.  We weren't nice young ladies from government house or a Buckingham Palace tea party, so we could swear and discuss things in a very down to earth manner.

In a recent issue of City X they mentioned that you visited Holloway Prison  in London.

I certainly did and what a show case that is!  That is why we were allowed to see it.  We were given the spiel by a very nice woman who trains prospective prison officers.  Her answers were pat and would have been acceptable to anybody naive enough to believe them, but I didn't.  I think she got very ticked off at various questions I asked.  One question was about the actual number of inmates there were in Holloway and whether they interacted.  'Oh they all get together', she said, which was a blatant lie!  I saw one of the association rooms and you could not possibly fit more than 7 people into that room at any one time.  One of the constant criticisms I hear about Prisoner: Cell Block H is that it only focuses on a small group of women.  But that's the point, it is just one section - it's Cell Block H.  Which is pretty much how prisons are run, small groups of people who are kept pigeonholed from each other, partitioned.

While I was doing research for Prisoner I visited some prisons, and the thing I found incredibly terrifying was the mentality of the prison officers.  The biggest tragedy is that prison officers don't fully realize that removal from society is the punishment, that's where it starts and ends.  They have no right to inflict any punishment other than that.  This is when I get very angry at what they do, how they humiliate, and how they make the prisoner less than human.  They have no right to abuse their position as guards, for example to inflict drugs or any kind of medication onto prisoners, and we know this is happening all the time.

The power games they play, even with visitors, are just awful.  Under those circumstances I think you have to play those games right back at them, which is exactly what Bea does in the show.  I think that Bea's intelligence is actually superior to most of the prison officers in the show.  But that's as much realism as we got on the show because we had no input where scripts and plots were concerned.  For example, because of racism in Australian society, Aboriginal people are constantly targeted.  There is a high proportion of Aboriginal prisoners, not so much in Victoria but certainly to the north of that and South Australia - but this was not represented at all.  A very good friend of mine, an Aboriginal actor named Justine Saunders, tried for years to get into the show.  When they did include an Aboriginal character, the woman who played her was not Aboriginal at all.  She was a white woman.  That was outrageous!  Particularly when there is a pool of excellent Aboriginal actors to call on.  When they did put someone in, it was token.  We have a very big Italian and Greek population in Australia and they were ignored as well.

So do you involve yourself in any projects around prisons?

I became far more involved with drug abuse than I did with prisons, although I'm not a crusader.  My involvement with drug abuse started because Bea was anti-drugs, and when a journalist asked me how I felt about the issue, I told him that I agreed with Bea.  After that I decided to put my money where my mouth was and actually do something about it!  I find that I can use my skills as an actress in drug rehabilitation and alcohol abuse work because I'm a communicator, and an actor has the same skill as a teacher or social worker where communication is concerned.  I am not actively involved in producing or performing productions on drug abuse, but I do go out talking to drug abuse survivors.  Actually, it's almost like a personal appearance, except that I'm not acting.

I had a lot of mail from young people who claimed that they were either trying to give up hard drugs or had done so because of Bea's stand on the issue.  If that was true with just one kid, then four and a half years in the show was worthwhile.  No I'm not a crusader, well maybe by default...

[Taken from Spare Rib magazine - March 1992]
 

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