bright young thing
Australian actress Lucy Fry is a girl on the rise
Aussie actress Lucy Fry is proving one to watch in Hollywood.
There’s something quietly endearing about knowing that Lucy Fry’s early experiences of acting weren’t as the overzealous drama-teacher favourite. “As a kid, I was so shy that nobody could hear me in the classroom, so my teacher at school told my parents to send me to speech and drama,” she says. While Fry’s first-ever screen appearance was on an after-school teen soap, mermaid series H₂O: Just Add Water (which also starred a baby-faced Phoebe Tonkin), her breakthrough came by way of the 2014 film Vampire
Academy alongside Zoey Deutch. She quickly followed those up with a role as the wife of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the James Franco-led
11.22.63, then with the TV adaptation of Wolf Creek, playing a young girl whose family is killed by a deranged psychopath in the outback.
Amid all that teeth-cutting, Fry has been “coming and going” from Los Angeles for about four years, balancing time back home (she originally hails from Brisbane) with that spent on the hamster wheel familiar to many young actresses trying to make it in Hollywood. “It’s definitely been challenging. There’s been great times, and times when I’m really lonely and miss home a lot,” she says. “It tests your will and your patience because you have to keep auditioning and cracking through bit by bit. When I made my peace with LA – the surf, the yoga, the health foods; all the things that are pretty cliché – I started being happy here.”
Putting herself through the paces has paid off, with Fry now drawing comparisons to fellow local export Margot Robbie, not least for their striking resemblance. She recently finished filming Highway alongside Josh Hartnett and Baby Driver’s Eiza González. “One of my goals for the year was to work with a female director. [The film’s director Alexandra Mcguinness] also wrote the script, so it was really exciting to get to collaborate with her. She was very open to different ideas and building the character together. It was an eye-opening process.” And no, the unfortunate irony that setting such a goal need even be a thing is not lost on her. “It’s so wild that it’s been six years working in the industry and it’s the first time I’ve worked with a woman [director]. At least it does seem to be happening more and more now. People are realising there are really brilliant female filmmakers out there.”
This month, Fry will star in TV movie Bright, with Noomi Rapace, Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, in what she says was a “high intensity” physical role for which she earned her yellow belt in American Kenpo martial arts. “I loved it. Now I go to Echo Park [in Los Angeles] to train four times a week. It’s a lot of people who aren’t in the industry, which is really refreshing.” (As someone who also once cut off all her hair while the camera rolled – for Wolf Creek – the actress is clearly not shy of full role immersion.)
While Fry says fellow Aussie Joel Edgerton “is an incredible character actor”, it’s clear she saves most of her admiration for Rapace. “Noomi was incredible. She brought a lot to the character that wasn’t originally written. She’s so present and fierce and loving – an electric performer,” admires Fry. She also counts “chameleon” Cate Blanchett as an industry hero. “You look at other Australians and think, ‘If they can do it, maybe I can do it, too.’” Bright premieres on Netflix on December 22
“It tests your will and your patience because you have to keep auditioning and cracking through. When I made my peace with LA, I started being happy here”