Wentworth Miller talks to Woman’s Day about his family life, his recent Christmas down under, and how playing a jailbird on Prison Break has changed his opinion of criminals.
We hear you spent Christmas in Australia …
I have a younger sister, Leigh, who’s down here in Melbourne for a year. Her boyfriend has a scholarship. As a result, the whole family came here for the holidays.
Did your Aussie co-star on Prison Break, Dominic Purcell, give you any tips?
Dominic is a surf fiend, so everything he says about Australia comes down to the surfing. That’s useless to me because I grew up in Brooklyn [New York] and it wasn’t part of our culture — and I’m terrified of sharks!
What do you do when you’re away from the set in Texas?
I like to go to the movies; I like to hang out with my friends from the cast. We’re really close-knit. We’re lucky in that we don’t have the drama or alleged drama that seems to go on in other TV shows. We tend not to go to bars or clubs en masse, because it’s like having a blinking neon sign over your head.
Has playing an inmate changed your opinion of jail?
My appreciation of who the men and women are behind bars has changed significantly. People would like to believe there’s a world of difference between us and them and that the line is thick and distinct and clear. But the truth is, it’s not … you could wind up in prison, I could wind up in prison. I see signs driving down the highway in the States and you pass a construction zone and see a sign that says if you hit a construction worker on the highway, it’s 10 years in prison. So if you sneeze the wrong time, suddenly, you’re behind bars.
If you had to choose your last meal, what would it be and who would you share it with? It would have to be of course with my family — my two sisters, my mother, my father. They’re the core of who I am and what I am. They’re the backbone of my support system, which has been invaluable as my life has transformed in the past year and a half. As far as what we’d all be eating, my mum makes a great shepherd’s pie. Our version is a layer of mashed potatoes, then meat in between, then green beans and like, a tomato sauce. Then I’d wash it down with a little mint chocolate-chip ice cream, the green kind.
Your lawyer father, Wentworth, and teacher mother, Roxann, initially weren’t supportive of you being an actor. Has that changed now you’re famous?
All they knew is that I was off in California, I didn’t have a job, I wasn’t getting out of bed in the morning at a respectful hour and I didn’t have a steady pay. So they were fearful on my behalf. We do talk about the show, usually in the context of me calling up Mom and telling her it’s okay for her to watch tonight’s episode because I won’t be losing any more toes. She gets very upset about these things.
For more of this interview, see this week’s issue of Woman’s Day — Wentworth reveals: ‘My childhood hell’
The Prison Break marathon screens from 7am on Friday, January 26 on Foxtel’s Fox8 channel.
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