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Kerry Armstrong finds that life's not a bed of roses

STAR of the new ABC series, Bed of Roses, Kerry Armstrong explains why she has always put creative satisfaction before a pay cheque, but a new project may bring both.

As a star of films including Lantana and acclaimed TV dramas SeaChange and MDA, you'd expect Kerry Armstrong to be at the peak of her creative and financial powers.

Artistically, Armstrong has integrity and accomplishment, but her commitment to her craft has come at a cost.

She has never been one to make decisions based on the size of a pay cheque, preferring not to work than to sign for a role she knows is incapable of arousing her artistic passions.

In industry circles, Armstrong is considered to have more balls than a beanbag -- a single mother of three who has the courage to knock back well-paid gigs.

Her finances were once so strained she was forced to sell her car to cover the mortgage.

"I've said no to so many things when I needed the money," the star of new ABC mini-series Bed of Roses says.

"When you have three children (Sam, Callum and Jai) and you need to be responsible and pay school fees and a mortgage, it's tough.

"But I just can't take work for the sake of working. It's so important to be fulfilled in your work.

"I have had to turn things down that could have brought me great financial freedom because I knew the audience would not appreciate them.

"What I love about being an ABC stalwart and working with great people is that there's a standard set that is not dropped or compromised. I don't want anyone to be watching something where they're not being entertained or moved.

"I was offered this series in Rome and because of my boys and being a mum I just couldn't do it. But there is something that has come from my heart and soul -- a flowering that just might make things easier for me (financially)."

Armstrong, never afraid to follow life's less conventional path, is referring to the anticipated international success of the self-help book she has penned, The Circles.

She drew on experience and spiritual teachings to create the book, a guide to gaining insight into feelings and relationships.

The book's US release is being handled by publisher Beyond Words.

"They have already said they've had a call from one of the largest book clubs in the US and that the club wants 21,000 copies," she says.

"They want me to go to the US in September and talk about the book on shows like Oprah.

"This is like having a toddler who is running down a hill chasing ducks towards a pond. You know the toddler will probably catch a couple and get wet in the process, but it's exciting to watch.

"I feel I can be so much more useful if I'm not so busy struggling to create funds for my own life. I'd be much happier being in a position to help create funds for other people's lives. I've always wondered if there would ever come a time where I had the freedom to be more philanthropic.

"I've known, absolutely, that I'd never have a racy car or fur coat. For me (financial stability) would be about causes and people I'd really want to support. That, to me, would be sheer joy."

As far as acting is concerned, Armstrong continues her search for roles of artistic merit.

She's proud of Bed of Roses, in which she plays a woman and mother who must come to terms with the sudden death of her husband. She must also cope with revelations that she has been left with massive debt and that her husband had been having an affair.

Armstrong's own private life has had its ups and downs.

She had a relationship with Australian Crawl guitarist Brad Robinson in 1981, but faced separation when she won a place to study at the prestigious Herbert Berghof acting studio in New York.

Her career took off and she played the lead in Tom Stoppard's Dalliance and Isabella in the US Shakespeare Company's Measure for Measure.

But she hit a snag: she didn't have a green card.

She had taken a bite of the celebrity cherry by accepting a $15,000-a-week role on Dynasty, but the experience left her unfulfilled.

Robinson -- supporting his partner's career endeavours -- agreed with Armstrong's American agent that she should marry a US citizen (it turned out to be friend Alexander Bernstein) to resolve her work-permit difficulties.

The marriage to Bernstein was for professional purposes only, but Armstrong and Robinson struggled with the separation and their relationship disintegrated.

Then she met Tim Robbins, ditched Dynasty and found creative solace with artist group The Actors Gang.

Armstrong and Robbins became romantically attached, though Armstrong says Robbins, who later married Susan Sarandon, was "gorgeous, but way too bossy".

Several times in the 1980s, Armstrong was on the cusp of major fame. Robbins, Cusack and Armstrong auditioned for the legendary TV show Saturday Night Live, but Armstrong was the only one the producers wanted. She also was offered a three-film deal.

She declined all offers to focus on The Actors Gang.

She had also fallen at the final hurdle in auditions for Fatal Attraction (Glenn Close scored the role) and was testing for Everybody's All-American in 1987 when her grandmother died and Armstrong came home.

Back in Melbourne, she met writer-producer Mac Gudgeon. They married in 1990 when their son, Sam, was three months old, but the relationship foundered.

Later she met builder Mark Croft, with whom she had twins Callum and Jai. The couple separated in 2001.

Armstrong was later to say she felt empowered by a decision to become celibate.

"I'm happy sitting on my small mountain of self-imposed celibacy!" she said.

Armstrong, a master at the art of self-deprecation, is asked if she has any pearls to add about the male population.

"It's thrilling to be accepting how unpredictable life is," Armstrong says.

"Whenever people's lives are a bit tragic they can open a magazine and see mine has gone slightly off the rails and comfort themselves!"

Armstrong, who lives in the Yarra Valley with her boys, adds: "The pleasure I have gained from being a mum of three boys is amazing. The tenderness and unpredictability of men is highlighted on a daily basis.

"Mine are wonderful boys. Sam is as gruff as they (twins) are sweet. They show me the way."

By Darren Devlyn
May 07, 2008
Herald Sun

Coming up roses

There are distinct echoes of SeaChange in a new ABC drama, writes Debi Enker.

EARLY on in the ABC's new drama, Bed of Roses, the citizens of Rainbow's End assemble in a local park for a ceremony. The occasion is the opening of a footbridge that officially recognises the contribution of the Chinese community to the region. The atmosphere is festive, red lanterns bobbing in the breeze as the townsfolk gather to honour their heritage.

Running late for the event, Louisa Atherton (Kerry Armstrong), who has recently and reluctantly returned to her home town, comes rushing down the hill in her high heels. Dressed in her customary city gear, she's having trouble negotiating the terrain, aware that her overdue arrival has — yet again — displeased her disapproving mother, community activist Minna (Julia Blake). Louisa is late because she's been struggling to sort out some housing problems. But for those closest to her, including her teenage daughter Holly (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence), this is just par for the course, further evidence of Louisa's preoccupation with herself.

The assembled crowd includes most of the series' major characters. Deb (Kaarin Fairfax), a dedicated saviour of stray animals; Marg (Caroline Gillmer) and her unfaithful businessman husband (Andrew S. Gilbert); Nick (Jay Laga'aia), the dependable local mechanic; and Sean Smithwick (Tim Phillipps), a local footy team talent who's shyly checking Holly out.

There's comedy and conflict as the community unites to celebrate its history, and carefully sewn into the fabric of the scene is much of the stuff of a series that's taken six years to develop and been through numerous incarnations in its passage to the small screen.

But the seed of the story has remained from the start: a middle-aged woman trying to pick up the pieces of a life that's abruptly fallen apart. Other elements emerged along the way: a semi-rural town in a "growth corridor" looking to the past as it grapples with a direction for its future. Teenage yearnings. A disparate group of women who come together in surprising ways to support each other.

Louisa has returned to Rainbow's End following the sudden death of her husband. Her grief at unexpected widowhood has been compounded by the news that his business dealings have left her ostensibly well-off family in debt. As well, there's the discovery of his infidelity. After the family home is auctioned, Louisa heads back, broke and heartbroken, to a place she never planned to live in again. She doesn't intend to stay long; just long enough to sell the shack her father left her and use the proceeds to help finance a new life.

"Louisa's lost her knight in shining armour," says Armstrong. "Not only has she lost him, but as he fell off the horse, he cut her off at the legs. So she's like a princess who's limping her way through and hoping no one will notice. It's really beautiful to play and very poignant."

Louisa's impractical high heels suggest her awkwardness in an unfamiliar environment: "When (costume designer) Kitty Stuckey and I were designing Louisa's character, we realised that she'd been on very solid ground with her husband since she was 16," Armstrong says. "She's been sheltered, but now she's on shaky ground. Part of that comes into what she wears and her denial of her situation. We figured that when she lost her home, one thing that they couldn't take was her shoes. So we started from the ground up."

More than six years ago, writers Jutta Goetze and Elizabeth Coleman began building their series around the idea of a woman on shaky ground. "The ABC wanted a story about a woman on the bones of her arse. That's the basic premise," recalls Goetze, who has been a TV writer and script editor for many years, and is also a novelist.

"A woman who's been spoilt, who has had everything she wants, who has never had to work or really strive, has kind of survived on her charm, who suddenly loses everything and has to start all over again," adds Coleman, who is also an experienced TV writer and a playwright.

There are distinct echoes of SeaChange in the premise. The popular ABC series ended just before this project was first mooted and it began with a lawyer, wife and mother finding her world collapsing around her. That Aunty might be in the market for another weekend warmer, a good-natured and reassuring series that could attract a range of viewers but appeal to women in particular, comes as no surprise.

Yet there was no quick or easy path from Pearl Bay to Rainbow's End. Goetze and Coleman, who first met in 1991 on The Young Doctors, took the drama through a number of transformations under several ABC drama chiefs. At one stage, it was a 13-part series about a woman who starts an odd-jobs business after her builder husband leaves her.

What they've ended up with is Louisa. As the six-part series begins, she's a comfortable Brighton wife who dabbles in pottery while looking after her home and children, 16-year-old Holly and footballer Shannon (Dave Thornton). Then events force her back to the scene of her childhood, to face the prickly mother she doesn't get along with and the town she doesn't want to stay in.

"Louisa's relationships with her family are quite fractured to start with, so we needed an actor who has an innate warmth," explains Coleman. "She's been an inattentive mother, not maliciously inattentive, but she's a self-absorbed woman who should be taking more notice of her children. And because a mother who isn't that attentive isn't an appealing thing, the ABC was anxious to have a central character that viewers would like."

The writers and Stephen Luby, who produced the series with Mark Ruse, agree that Armstrong (Lantana, SeaChange, MDA) has been able to portray Louisa sympathetically and in all her colours. "Kerry has an incredible ability to communicate a range of emotions in a look," says Luby. "She can carry three or four elements of Louisa's crisis at once and convey her vulnerability. There's a lot of light and shade in the character. At times she's quite girlish, and that requires a lightness; at other times she has great grief over the loss of her husband, and Kerry is able to get to the depth of that as well. So her range, as well as the fact that she is in most scenes, is something to behold. Kerry's got a lot of stamina and her ability to do the emotional nuances is quite phenomenal."

Julia Blake describes Louisa as "the spine of the show", and Armstrong needed stamina to get through the nine-week production, which spent most of its time in south Gippsland. The $5 million series required cast and crew to shoot an average of 7 1/2 minutes a day of screen time.

"When I started in the business, it was commonly understood that the best you'd get out of a location day was five minutes, and that was pushing it," recalls Luby (Fast Forward, Crackerjack, Stiff). "But somehow, with the ways that things are funded and increasing costs, that equation is now up to 7 1/2 minutes, so people have to work harder and under higher pressure."

Schedule demands aside, Armstrong welcomed the opportunity to display her range. "Louisa is really testing me, she's incredibly complex. But I'm able to do some of the physical comedy that I love — Buster Keaton is a hero of mine, and Lucille Ball. I had to do a scene at the golf club, where Louisa's taken a job as a cleaner, and she gets tangled up in the vacuum cleaner. I thought it was just perfect: she's like someone in a web who's just getting more and more tangled."

Balancing the comedy with the pathos was critical for the writers, too, and they reckon they have different attributes in that regard. "We have complementary skills," says Coleman. "Jutta is wonderful at evoking a sense of place and she's very good at the deeply emotional, heartfelt stuff and the hard-hitting stuff. My inclination is to go for the comedy: I like to pinpoint people's foibles."

Goetze adds: "Elizabeth has a wonderful sense of pacing and humour."

Coleman: "So Jutta will say to me 'Dig a bit deeper, what's really going on?' And I'll say to her, 'We need to lighten this up here.' It works out great because we can acknowledge our strengths and weaknesses."

Those working with the writers point out that their collaboration, and a process that demanded years of writing and re-writing, has resulted in well-honed scripts that are economical yet full of nuance. "The scripts are a bit of a Sara Lee cake, layer upon layer upon layer, and the detail is fairly extensive," says Paul Moloney, who directed the first three episodes.

Blake (Bellbird, Eden's Lost, Travelling North, Innocence), a stage and screen actor whose career spans 50 years and is no slouch at script assessment, describes what all hope will be the first of several series as "stunningly written. I just loved the script to bits. I couldn't believe my good fortune when I read it.

"There's some very funny stuff and there's some very poignant stuff. The writers have written rounded characters who are highly individual. There's great detailing in each of the female characters, they're idiosyncratic and the dialogue reflects that. It's very rare. They really know people."

Moloney also notes that the women who gather around Louisa each reflect different aspects of her. "To some degree, they represent a facet of her character that's gone missing. Deb is into animal welfare; she's the mother earth who isn't scared to get her hands dirty, which Louisa hasn't done for some years. Minna is all-loving, all-consuming and passionate; Louisa has become a bit selfish and self-centred. With Holly, there's almost a role-reversal where the daughter is more capable and motherly. Marg is in a similar circumstance to Louisa because her husband's no longer with her."

For her part, Gillmer (Hotel Sorrento, Underbelly) is hoping Marg will become "a pin-up girl for all the aggrieved wives out there". The jilted wife of the town's most prominent businessman, Marg is the classic woman scorned: fuming, hurting and vigorously seeking revenge.

Gillmer, who has spent time in the past few years touring the country with the stage production of Menopause the Musical, says that Bed of Roses goes some way towards filling a gap for a largely ignored but significant section of the audience.

"Menopause the Musical is a simple little show with these middle-aged chicks on stage. The reason that it's been so successful is that word on it spread like a bushfire: women find out that there's something for us, something talking to us. That audience is there and wanting someone to write for their tribe," says Gillmer, pointing out that the women here are front and centre, not doing dishes in the background or appearing only to wave the kids off to school.

But beyond its representation of a range of women and of a supportive community, Blake believes that Bed of Roses is a drama for its time. Her character is a tireless heritage activist, a woman committed to honouring and preserving the town's history, as well as safeguarding its future. "Minna's not a woman who relaxes," says Blake with affection. "She's always doing things: meetings with her heritage group, poring through council minutes. She feels under threat, she feels the threat of modern life, of so-called progress, especially living on a growth corridor. A lot of people nowadays feel that way. I think that we live in an anxious age."

With its themes of coming home to find yourself, of respecting the past while moving to the future, of nurturing and rebuilding, Bed of Roses touches on many of these issues and creates a community in Rainbow's End that offers some reassurance. Not exactly a pot of gold, but something of value.

"All of the women are empowered, they do change, they do have a journey," says Blake. "But it's all been done in an entertaining way. The series has laughter and comedy, as well as quite serious issues; issues of old age and family relationships are right at the heart of it. This type of drama really is the heart's blood of ABC television."

Bed of Roses premieres Saturday at 7.30pm on ABC1.

By Debi Enker
May 8, 2008
The Age

Julia Blake's career blossoms in ABC's Bed of Roses

AFTER a career lasting more than half a century, Julia Blake's resume is formidable. In ABC drama Bed of Roses, she leans back on her original drama school education.

What is good acting? If anyone knows the answer, it should be Julia Blake.

In a stage-and-screen career spanning 50 years, Blake's dramatic range has been remarkable.

Her TV resume alone runs to Eden's Lost, The Magistrate, The Dunera Boys and The Society Murders.

Add formidable theatre roles, critically acclaimed appearances in films such as Travelling North and Father and you have an actor of rare grace and authority.

And yet, over pots of tea at her home in Melbourne's southeast, Blake struggles to explain the secret to her success.

"If I told you, everybody would know how to do it," she laughs, her voice brittle and light.

"But truly, I don't know… the older I get, the more I realise how little I understand."

Last seen on our screens in City Homicide, Blake is playing Kerry Armstrong's curmudgeonly mother in the ABC's Bed of Roses.

Her character, Minna Franklyn, is in her 80s -- a no-nonsense, Left-leaning environmentalist whose spirited agitation puts her at loggerheads with daughter Louisa.

"Not the most tactful person," Blake says drily. "Minna thinks everybody should think the way she does."

But Bed of Roses, a tale of grief and renewal, creates thorny dilemmas that reveal Minna's vulnerable side.

Blake says: "I can normally give or take a role… but I was so thrilled when I got this one. It seemed to me there were so many ways you could go with it."

How did she get to the heart of Minna?

"I still follow the technique I learnt at drama school and that is: try to find something about the rhythm of the character or something that can be your anchor."

In Bed of Roses, Blake has a tremor in her voice that suggests both defiance and delicacy.

"There was a time," she says, "when I would even take on the rhythms in my own life. If she was serene, I was serene; if she was an untidy person, I would look untidy. I hope I've got to an age where I don't do that now."

British-born Blake learnt her craft in English repertory theatre. Inspecting dog-eared press clippings from the time, she says with a laugh: "The lovely thing about the passage of time is, you look at these things and it's like seeing somebody else."

Blake married husband and fellow actor Terry Norris between a matinee and evening performance in York. But in the early '60s, they decided to build their respective acting careers in Australian television.

Bellbird, Division 4, Twenty Good Years -- Blake brought a touch of class to every home-grown drama there was, all the while raising three children.

She even did duty on Prisoner, playing a herbalist with poisonous intentions, but an award-winning performance in the Neil Armfield-directed mini-series Eden's Lost in 1988 secured her reputation as one of our finest actors.

Her aristocratic character, Eve, was described in the script as "sometimes breathtakingly beautiful, other times thin and haggard".

"Well, that was me to a tee," she recalls. "Shoot me one way and I really could look very good. Shoot me another way and I looked quite awful."

Blake, 71, still looks striking, her cheekbones finely chiselled, her eyes wide and alert. But she remains "absolutely paranoid" about watching herself in rushes.

"I always think, 'Oh, I wish I could do that again'," she says.

What about viewing the final cut?

"I remember with Travelling North (which earned her an AFI Best Actress nomination), I'd done so much work on becoming someone else but all I could see up on the screen were bits of myself that I didn't think were there in the character.

"You just have to accept the fact that when you've done it, it's there forever. So, be responsible in the way you do it, I say."

A debilitating eye condition took Blake away from the cameras in the early '90s. As she told director Paul Cox: "If I'm going to be worried about this eye all the time, how can I be unselfconscious as an actor?"

But Cox coaxed her back to the big screen in 2000 with Innocence, an affecting romance about two ageing lovers.

"Paul left the script by the front door," she recalls, "and an actor can never resist that."

Blake has not been immune to star power, either. In 2004, she signed on for a Stephen King thriller, Salem's Lot, starring Donald Sutherland.

"A terribly attractive man, I have to say. Very, very charismatic. And great fun. The first thing he said to me was, 'I'm Canadian. Don't blame me for Bush'."

What did she learn from working with him?

"Being able to switch off from being sociable and immediately focus on what you were doing next," she says. "Just snap into the mindset.

"As you get older, you must be careful not to let the technique get in the way. Instinct is the thing that feeds the life of a role."

So, good acting comes down to what you feel, I suggest.

"Yes," she says firmly. "And truth. Absolute truth."

By Simon Plant
May 21, 2008
Herald Sun

ABC drama no bed of roses for star

THE THIRD season of Bed of Roses opens not with a bang but with a kiss as Louisa Atherton (Kerry Armstrong) and Nick (Jay Laga'aia) pick up where they left off in the final scene of season two - with lips locked. Bed of Roses isn't a big-bang sort of show; it's a gentle comedy-drama hybrid about a woman who comes undone in her late 40s and reinvents herself in her 50s.

In the first season Louisa, a citified, spoilt trophy wife, returned to the country town of her childhood to live with her mother Minna (Julia Blake) after her philandering husband died in a compromising position. This leaves her clueless as to how to start a new life with her teenage daughter Holly (Hanna Mangan Lawrence).

Two years on and Louisa's life is very different. She's editor of the town's newspaper, The Echo, and has made lasting friendships with smart women. She's fallen in love with a decent bloke and while there's still plenty of the flustered, girlish charisma, Louisa's figured out, at least in part, who she is.

Bed of Roses is comforting, roast-dinner viewing: parochial, predictable, dotted with familiar small-town archetypes struggling to keep life simple and doing battle with outsiders who threaten the town's tranquility.

While other recent ABC dramas have failed to strike a chord, the first season of Bed of Roses attracted a record number of downloads on the network's iView internet player and consistently delivers something a certain demographic finds appealing. Read: women over 50.

Producer Mark Ruse says this "strong and loyal" audience is the reason why the ABC agreed to a third season. "People love watching television because they see parts of their lives reflected back at them, whether it's on a personal level or about the society we live in. The show has evolved. Series one was about Louisa's superficial life and finding something deeper. Series two was about her career and finding what she wants to do with her life.

"Series three is about her relationship with her mother, daughter and Nick but there's a few single episodes that focus mostly on Minna and Holly, so you could say it's more episodic."

In this season, each of the women have reached pivotal points in their lives: Louisa's less emotionally frantic, Holly is more self-assured and Minna continues to suck the marrow out of life, despite the death of her friend Sandy, played by the late Charles "Bud" Tingwell.

But viewers familiar with the program know that Blake's Minna can be as fierce as Louisa can be ditzy and when the three generations find themselves lost in the bush, the tension, isolation and anxiety make for an explosive confrontation. On a recent set visit, Green Guide spoke to Armstrong about the bond the three women share.

"Being flanked by such truthful, instinctive actors like Julia and Hanna gives you a real sense of being at the height of your powers, that you are doing something that demands you don't fall short of your work," Armstrong says. That work means days that can start at 4am and end after 8pm - for 18 weeks."

"You need to be fit," Ruse says. "They can be taxing days but the cast never stops."

Between takes, Blake muffles a cough, the tail-end of a cold she's had for weeks. The show must go on.

There are dark times ahead for Rainbow's End and the smudges on Armstrong's face give part of the story away. Near the end of series three, pandemonium reigns when fires come dangerously close to the town. As locals meet up at the Rose and Thistle, Nick and a crew of firefighters do what they can to save property and lives.

Of the story that is partly inspired by the Black Saturday bushfires, Armstrong says: "This show is set in a small town and I'm deeply aware that this episode will resonate with lots of people. I think the whole cast, crew, the extras and the director of this episode, Ted Emery, all want to honour what people went through."

At one point, Armstrong's own property came under threat, an experience she draws on as Louisa.

"That's what this show is about: community, people supporting each other. We're giving this season and this episode our all."

By Frances Atkinson
December 02, 2010
Sydney Morning Herald