It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed since Indiana Evans first appeared on our screens as girl-next-door Matilda Hunter in Home And Away, but the actress remembers the time with great fondness.
“It feels a long time ago, but in some ways completely doesn’t,” she tells TV WEEK. “And it kind of feels like a different person [experienced it] now, but it was such a big deal to me.”
Just 14 at the time, Indiana – along with the likes of Rhys Wakefield, Sharni Vinson and Mark Furze – helped usher the long-running drama into a new era. Many fans still regard that period as among the show’s glory years.
“It was kind of everything,” she says of the impact the show had on her then. “I was doing home-school and they [her young H&A co-stars] were my peers and friends. So it really holds a big place in my heart. [Acting] jobs come and go, but I think about it all the time; everything I learned from that show I still use today.”
Indiana says she keeps in contact with many in the cast, such as Jessica Tovey (who played Belle Taylor) and even worked with Chris Hemsworth (who played Kim Hyde) again in 2022 Hollywood superhero film Thor: Love And Thunder.
“It was great, because Chris was exactly the same,” she says.
While some of her former co-stars may have left Summer Bay to chase the bright lights of Hollywood, Indiana chose to stick close to home, landing meaty roles in Australian dramas such as 2011 legal drama Crownies and its spin-off, Janet King.
Her latest role is as Maja, the former best friend of detective Anais Mallory (Chelsie Preston Crayford) in the Nine Network crime drama A Remarkable Place To Die, filmed in and around scenic Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island, which she enthuses is “so beautiful – full of snowcapped mountains and really gorgeous”.
But being “home” still means the world to the 34-year-old.
“I love being here [in Australia], near my family and working with Australian crews,” she says. “For shows like A Remarkable Place, it’s so important that everyone around you is kind and respectful and reads the room. The show was a dream to work on, because everyone was just a giant family.”
Indiana calls working with Rebecca Gibney, who plays her steely mother-in-law to-be Veronica in the show, “a real joy”.
“I’ve always heard great things about working with Rebecca and you can see why. She’s such a professional – she gets to where the scene needs to be instantly.”
While Indiana says she loves acting, she confesses there’ve been times she’d contemplated giving it all up.
“Because I started doing it [acting] as a kid, you do have moments where you think about switching careers or doing something else, as the auditioning over and over can get you down,” she says.
“It’s a kind of constant rejection. You have to check in with yourself and ask, ‘Is this really what I want to do?’”
Also making Indiana question her career choice are the scam artists masquerading as her online.
“I don’t have social media, and have people pretending to be me online and stuff like that, so I constantly ask myself if it’s worth it or not,” she says. “It’s weighing up the pluses and the minuses of it all. But that goes for any job.”
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