all eyes on pia miller
Earth-shatteringly beautiful. Incredibly strong-minded. Meg Mason meets the real Pia Miller as she steps into the spotlight
Beautiful, strong-minded and supremely talented, the actress has quickly reached star status – but it hasn’t been without its challenges.
The last time I watched Home And Away, Shane and Angel were getting married after a tumultuous multi-season courtship. Angel surprised him by walking down the aisle, even though she’d been recently paralysed after Alf “Get out of my shop you flaming galah” Stewart accidentally ran her over. That was in 1995. I was 17, and the show was my main diversion from HSC prep. All of us, if we’re over 30 and raised in Australia, can chart our growing up by the Home And Away storylines we invested in; locate ourselves by whether ours was Bobby turning out to be the illegitimate daughter of irascible school principal Donald Fisher or Tasha getting brainwashed by a cult, then falling pregnant after being roofied.
Yet it’s hard to imagine a teenager, now, sitting down to watch a serial every night at 7pm, which may be why Summer Bay has become increasingly populated with an unfeasibly attractive cast of actors, many of whom have significant social media followings, brand ambassadorships and the sort of private lives that provide gossip writers with a steady stream of material. And either way, it remains the most renowned incubator, proving ground and finishing school for Australian actors who go on to successful international careers. Naomi Watts and Chris Hemsworth, Isabel Lucas and Isla Fisher and, notoriously, Melissa George, who famously had a meltdown when she thought a TV news program put too much focus on her former soap career.
Now it’s Pia Miller’s turn. Hers is the kind of beauty that takes a moment to get used to. You have to try to not stare or demand to know why one person has been blessed with nut-brown skin, perfect features and a mane of glossy brunette hair. The Chilean-born model-turned-actress joined the show in 2014, and has since gained more than 560K followers on Instagram alone, plus a contract with ghd. “Pia is one of our original adopters,” says ghd Australia and New Zealand managing director, Ludovic Dellazzeri. “She has grown up and evolved with ghd and embodies today’s ghd image, which is feisty, playful and glamorous.”
But with it all has come a sometimes-complicated public profile. Last year, three separate Daily Mail headlines had Miller showcasing, flaunting and showing off her cleavage. At one point, apparently the actress put on a “busty display” while filming in Sydney’s Palm Beach. The headline that grabbed the most attention: “Home And Away’s Pia Miller Shows Off Her Ample Assets And Flawless Figure In Skimpy Bikini
“WITH THIS LIFE AS AN ACTRESS NOW, I FEEL I HAVE SO MUCH LIFE EXPERIENCE TO DRAW ON”
After Saying She Felt Insecure In Swimwear” because, as the article implied and critics (read: haters) were quick to point out, Miller regularly posts bikini pictures on her Instagram account.
“Yes, I put up a few selfies,” Miller says with a combination of irritation and weariness. We’re at a cafe in Darlinghurst, Miller in a short silk one-piece, sandals and a big floppy hat. With her are two assistants and her well-behaved 10-year-old son, Lennox, sitting patiently at a table nearby. “Those sort of headlines piss me off a bit,” she says, stirring two sugars into a Macamilk latte. “I’m in a bikini, I’m at the beach. I’m not flaunting. I don’t understand why that angle has to be taken – most of the time, I’m there with my children, and I feel it takes the purity out of that. It really upsets me on a human level, how dehumanising it feels.”
Her fierce protectiveness of her privacy and her family goes some way towards explaining why it was never a sure thing that Miller would appear in these pages. The shoot concept and this accompanying interview were more difficult to agree on than most international cover stars in this magazine’s history. From the earliest planning stages, she displayed a zealous level of control – one that extends across her career and the way she’s publicly perceived. Posing with her family was out of the question, as was a male model, although she eventually agreed to work with fellow actor and former Home And Away star Luke Pegler (for more on Miller’s charming co-star in this shoot, head to Elle.com.au).
At 33, it’s been a long and winding journey to reach a point where she is happy and secure, so it’s understandable Miller is leaving nothing up to chance. Like successful models Miranda Kerr and Jess Hart, Miller won the Dolly Model Search when she was just 14. She was entered by the manager of a shoe store on Melbourne’s Chapel Street, near her childhood home in Prahran, who every day watched her walk past on the way to school and saw potential beneath the backpack, school hat and – according to Miller – the monobrow and features then too big for her face. “I never thought of myself as ‘the pretty one’ and my friends definitely didn’t, but my mum did,” she says. “She’d say, ‘You’ll come right. You’ll be beautiful,’ or actually, ‘You are beautiful.’”
Miller managed to avoid the exploitation and early burnout that can shadow professional models, especially younger girls, primarily, she believes, because “Mum never let me get ahead of myself. All the big decisions would be made in a family meeting, which kept me really anchored and I’ll always be grateful for that.”
Then, at age 19, Miller became pregnant with her first child Isaiah, now almost 14. Becoming a young mum is never without challenges and although Miller was supported by her own mother, two siblings and a tribe of extended family – her village – she’s happy to admit it hasn’t all been rosy. “It was scary and there was fear of the unknown and what my future would be like, but once I decided that was the path I was going to take, it all just happened from there and became almost seamless.” For a short time, Miller’s career was put on hold, being too young to model maternity. But at a time when girls her age would be starting university, travelling and going out, Miller felt able to “just roll with it. You can do that when you’re younger. And with this life as an actress now, I feel like I have so much life experience to draw on.”
As an introspective, philosophical thinker, Miller still wonders how she emerged from that experience without feeling as though she missed out on a rite of passage. “I think about that a lot,” she says, in her slow, thoughtful way of speaking. “I was in my late teens caring for a baby, working, bringing him to shoots and worrying that maybe I was damaging him in some way while everyone else was out finding themselves or whatever. But somehow I don’t feel like I missed out because as soon as the boys were older, I got a presenting job with Qantas and was able to
“I NEVER THOUGHT OF MYSELF AS ‘THE PRETTY ONE’.BUT MY MUM DID. SHE’D SAY, ‘YOU’LL COME RIGHT. YOU’LL BE BEAUTIFUL’”
see the world that way. Then I landed my Home And Away role so it’s all worked out, just in a different order. I always think things follow a bigger plan.”
A significant source of strength throughout her life has been the Christian faith she’s held since her early teens. “I was always curious and I’ve always thought broadly and widely about who we are, where we come from, what this means, and when I stumbled across Christianity, I fell in love with that aspect of it. Not the institution, not religion or what can seem like dogma, but the relational aspect between human and God, that exchange, and the principles of how we ought to treat each other.”
Her mother, who raised Miller and her siblings, emigrating from Chile to Australia when Miller was five, has been another source of ballast and shaped who she is as a woman and mum. “Definitely being raised by a single mother has influenced who I am and how I love. It’s given me a really strong sense of what womanhood is and our ability as women. I draw on that when I feel overwhelmed and like I can’t do something – I’ll think, ‘Your mother did this. Your grandmother did this. Come on girl, pull yourself together.’”
On the other hand, the experience of an absent father, Miller says, has had little impact on her life, early or present. Ever since her parents divorced when Miller was two, his presence was minimal and after the family emigrated, they fell out of contact completely. “But I don’t know any different. There’s been no sense of loss. There were moments – when it was Father’s Day and kids at school would ask about my dad – but it’s just the way I was raised, and instead I had a beautiful foundation of strong women.” Recently it was reported that, in 2011, Miller flew to Chile to track down her father but it didn’t go well and she chose not to pursue a relationship.
When it comes to her own children, Miller has forged an approach that is her own. The priority: making sure her sons “feel loved and secure and safe”. “I’ve definitely had the working-mother guilt and thought, ‘Gosh, is this the right way of doing it?’” she says. “I think all mothers carry those burdens, and when I look at my boys now, they’re so resilient and open and the kind of humans that lean into adventure rather than shying away from it.”
Miller’s own resilience was tested most significantly after the break-up of her marriage to AFL player (and Lennox’s dad) Brad Miller in 2015, after 10 years together. As well as the sadness at separation and the often-daunting prospect of single parenthood, Miller’s experience was complicated by intense media scrutiny. “That knocked the wind out of me – it was so unexpected,” she says. “No-one warns you. No-one says, ‘This is what it’s going to be like.’ Everywhere I went with the kids, when I was at the airport or driving,
“BEING RAISED BY A SINGLE MOTHER HAS INFLUENCED WHO I AM. IT’S GIVEN ME A STRONG SENSE OF OUR ABILITY AS WOMEN”
“MODELLING JUST CAME INTO MY LIFE. ACTING IS SOMETHING I HAVE TO WORK AT. BUT I LOVE THAT” I’d have people almost ramming into the car from behind. I’ve learned to navigate through it, but I’ll never get used to it.”
Making the transition from model to actress is notoriously difficult anyway, but it’s a shift Miller is intent on making and, it seems, managing on her own terms. “Modelling just came into my life,” she says. “It was an awesome experience, but that path was kind of set for me. Acting is something I love and have to work at. It’s a challenge but I love that. And people will always have a perception of anything you do, so you can’t worry about that.” (But, I joke, it’s unlikely someone with her looks would be cast as, say, a suburban mum... “Why not!” she says sharply. “That’s such an interesting point to me, because I’m an actor. That’s the craft and I know the struggles of being a mum. It shouldn’t be about an aesthetic.”)
Still, Miller says, “I’ve always taken a philosophical approach to life. I’ve gone through some great highs and some really sad times as well. Life has presented me with a lot, but I’ve always found myself equipped for it somehow.”
Now in a relationship with entrepreneur Tyson Mullane and on close terms with her ex-husband, who moved to Sydney to co-parent, the actress feels settled and at ease. But like every Home And Away alumnus, at some point she’ll have to decide whether to seek out professional opportunities in the US – something she would consider, she says, but not plan in some strategic way. “I don’t get fixated on one ambition because I’ve seen how life can change dramatically, scarily sometimes and wonderfully at others. I won’t let myself get stuck on things that can be changed by circumstances. I love to think about where I’ll be in a few years. If an opportunity came up, in the States or wherever, and the fundamentals of life were strong, the boys feeling loved and looked after, I could lean into that. But we would make that decision as a family.”
And besides, well-trodden paths have never really been Miller’s thing: “I would say that my life is this beautiful sort of chaos. It’s always been a little outside the box. Or actually, maybe there’s just no box.”