australian television information archive

Cooking up a storm

Love My Way star Alex Cook is the youngest actor up for nomination in the 2005 TV WEEK Logie Awards

Alex Cook had a fairytale start to her acting career when the car of agent Natasha Harrison and her partner, actor Marshall Napier, broke down outside her house.

"While my dad helped change the tyre, I was talking to them," the eight-year-old explains.

"I wrote away to be in a film, Pobby And Dingan, and I was telling Natasha that I was going for the film. She works at Shanahans, and they passed me on to Mullinars Casting Consultants. They were casting for something else and it was Love My Way, and I got the part."

Her role as Lou Jackson in the FOX8 drama series, where she played opposite highly respected actors such as Claudia Karvan, Dan Wyllie, Brendan Cowell and Sam Worthington, has seen the young actress showered with praise by both critics and her co-stars.

"Sometimes she does something in the scene and you just think, 'Oh, wow!' " Claudia says. "You've got to keep up with her. She's terrific."

But the Sydney schoolgirl takes all the attention ­ and her famous co-stars ­ in her stride.

"Claudia is tops," Alex says. "Around the end of the shoot, me, Claudia, her little daughter, Audrey, and her partner (film construction manager Jeremy Sparks), we went horse riding around Centennial Park (in Sydney)."

Performing is in Alex's blood. Her mother, Elizabeth, studied at NIDA and appeared in Home And Away and A Country Practice, her father, Jeremy, is a drummer, and her older sister, Ella, sings in the Sydney Children's Choir. But she isn't making plans to move to Hollywood just yet.

"I'm not planning on doing too much (acting) this year," she says. "I want to keep up my schoolwork because it kind of pulled me down a bit last year. I'm in year four now."

Alex is up for nomination for a Logie for Most Popular New Talent this year, alongside names such as Blue Heelers' Samantha Tolj and Neighbours' Natalie Blair.

So if she does make it to Australian television's night of nights, who would she most like to meet?

"I'd like to sit with Dan Wyllie. He's cool, I like him," she says.

"And I hope Guy Sebastian is there ­ he is my favourite person in the universe!"

TV Week
January 2005