The Secret Life of Us: articles


Karvan's baby a secret hit

CLAUDIA Karvan is used to the spotlight, but she happily took a supporting role when her daughter arrived on set.

The Secret Life Of Us star has kept eight-month-old Audrey under wraps since giving birth last October. She is Karvan's first child with longtime partner, Jeremy Sparks.

When the baby girl arrived with her nanny while Karvan was doing a phot shoot for HQ magazine, the doting mum couldn't resist sweeping Audrey into her arms.

Karvan, who plays doctor Alex in the Ten network's hit drama, has been singing the praises of motherhood despite having to juggle demanding production schedules.

Audrey is a big hit on the Melbourne set of The Secret Life Of Us. "Audrey loves it. She seems very adaptable," Karvan said recently.

"She's a very good baby, it's going really well, (but) the sleeplessness is pretty full-on. I think there's a lot of hormones running around to help."

The new photos were a bonus for HQ magazine, which had originally just expected to photograph Karvan. But when Audrey and her nanny arrived at the studio towards the end of the shoot, the proud mum could not resist grabbing her eight-month old daughter and showing her off to the camera. Since Audrey's arrival in October, Karvan has resisted all offers to be photographed with her daughter, recently turning down a hefty five-figure offer from a national women's magazine. She was not paid for the HQ feature.

The success of The Secret Life Of Us has given Karvan's profile such a boost that it's easy to forget that it has been 20 years since she first made her mark on Australian screens.

She was just nine years old when she appeared alongside Garry McDonald in Molly.

Karvan was still finishing Year 12 at SCEGGS when she won one of seven AFI nominations for her role in The Big Steal, with Ben Mendelsohn. She studied philosophy at Sydney University but after a stint of work soon fell back into acting.

It was probably inevitable that she'd make her career in film. As a girl, she lived among the film glitterati who flocked to Arthur's, in Kings Cross, the '80s nightclub run by her mother and stepfather. She's since appeared in over 30 films, including Dating the Enemy, Broken Highway and the Nostradamus Kid.

June 16, 2002
News Interactive