“I know! It’s amazing, isn’t it?” says Jacki Weaver, shaking her head over her soup spoon, as if such a thing could never happen – which it can, and did, to her.
“And the strangest thing is, it wasn’t something I courted,” she tells The Weekly. “I can tell you honestly, when it came to my life and career in Australia, there was nothing at all I would have changed. I was perfectly content.”
No doubt Jacki is sincere when she says this, and yet there is still something thrilling about watching a woman in her late sixties having such success, after such a hard slog.
At the same time, don’t we Australians need to have a good, hard look at ourselves?
Jacki Weaver has been working as an actor for more than 50 years. She started out on the ABC in the early 1960s, which is to say, she’s been there since pretty much the first decade of television. She went into movies in the seventies, with a small role in Picnic at Hanging Rock, and she received an AFI for her role in Caddie; but then came a period during which she couldn’t seem to win a trick: not once was Jacki offered one of what might be called the big parts, such as the one played by Tina Turner in Mad Max; or even a small-but-important role in a great Australian film, like Priscilla, or Moulin Rouge or Muriel’s Wedding. Also, Jacki may well be alone amongst Australian actors in never – not once – being offered a part in a long-running Australian series, like Prisoner or Neighbours, or even Home and Away.
Many times, she almost went broke.
Then, after Jacki’s extraordinary performance as the crime matriarch, Smurf, in Animal Kingdom, Hollywood came calling – and suddenly, she’s everyone’s hero: Jacki has appeared in 10 American films in the past three years; there have been two Academy Award nominations; she’s worked with Woody Allen; she can count Barack Obama as an ardent fan.
It could be argued that we Australians didn’t know what we had until somebody pointed out, but then, other factors are always at play. Jacki literally missed out on what might have been her big Hollywood screen break, back in the sixties, when she tried out for the role as the bare-breasted beauty in Age of Consent, which ultimately went to Helen Mirren.
“I got down to the final two,” she says, “and it went to Helen. And they said it was because I looked too young. But I think every actor has a story like that: the role they missed out on, that went to somebody else, who went on to have huge success. You can’t dwell on it.”
Also possible is that Jacki’s love life – she been married five times, to four different men – detracted from her career. None of her relationships has been conventional. She has been married five times to four different men.
“I wonder if I was looking for the perfect marriage? Maybe that’s why I kept bolting?” she says. Either way, she eventually ended up with her current husband, the warm and funny South African actor, Sean Taylor, who popped in to have a stickybeak at The Weekly’s exclusive photo shoot with Jacki.
“Why did she marry you?” I say. “Because I’m hung like a donkey,” he replies.
“It’s true – they call him the human tripod,” says Jacki’s manager, Alex Cole, who has also come along for a peek.
Jacki says: “Will you two just stop?” But she’s grinning – and so sets the fun tone for the afternoon.
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