An Aboriginal boy who had never acted before wowed the cast and crew of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia — and stole Nicole Kidman’s heart, writes Jenny Cooney Carrillo.
When you’re 12 years old, even a bustling film set can become dull and exhausting after weeks of endless takes, dust and searing heat. Yet rising star Brandon Walters had an ally on the set of the movie epic, Australia. So smitten was his co-star, Nicole Kidman, that she developed a sign language to communicate secret messages with him during the drawn-out shoot.
“Brandon was like a son to me when we were working together,” Nicole reflects on working with the boy from Broome, Western Australia. “What we shared together on this film was incredibly special, something that will connect us for a lifetime.”
Now a mother of three — with the arrival in July of her daughter, Sunday Rose, with husband Keith Urban — Nicole, 41, admits working with Brandon made her a little broody before she learned she was pregnant late last year. “I was clucky,” she says, “but at the same time, I was so engrossed in the role and playing a woman who can’t have children, so he becomes my child and I fall into this well of love through these male figures, one a child and one a grown man. “Brandon is a magical child — his whole family is magical,” says the Oscar-winning actress. “They have some special thing that orbits around them and we were very lucky to find him because he’s not an actor. So capturing him on screen, you had to grab the moments and what I call the glimpses of his soul.”
Brandon may seem blessed, but he’s overcome remarkable odds, having fought and won a battle against leukaemia at the age of seven. His family has also been touched by the tragic history of indigenous Australians, with his dad a member of the Stolen Generations.
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