australian television information archive

Sweet return

JUST in case you hadn't noticed, Gary Sweet is back. There's his starring role in Nine's Stingers on TV; playing a racist you love to hate in the big-screen movie The Tracker; and he's enjoying a run in a hit play The Recruit in Melbourne.

Sweet it is, after things turned sour with the much publicised break-up of his marriage to Johanna Griggs.

The star of Police Rescue, Cody and Bodyline vanished from the national gaze in 1999, and put his acting career on hold for a stint as a disc jockey on commercial radio in his home city of Adelaide.

"Radio is a bit two-dimensional. I had time to think about myself, and realised I had been avoiding doing the hard work," Sweet says.

He's had only two hours sleep after celebrating the Melbourne Film Festival premiere of Rolf de Heer's The Tracker, in which he plays a bullying policeman who taunts a black tracker (David Gulpilil) during a search for a wanted man in the rugged outback in 1922.

Sweet is a new face in Stingers as Detective Senior Sergeant Luke Harris, who runs the undercover unit (taking over from Anita Hegh, who has left the series).

Stingers, being filmed at Nine's studios at Richmond, has also added Rebecca Gibney to the cast to win back viewers.

Sweet says after 22 years as an actor, he's actually enjoying his varied work, possibly for the first time.

"I had burnt out, and I was forced to re-evaluate my career. I'd taken too much for granted," he says.

• Stingers, Nine, Tuesday 9.30pm; The Tracker opens today.

By Des Partridge
August 08, 2002
The Courier Mail