‘My daughter is horrified by me!’
On the cusp of turning 50, Wentworth newcomer Jane Hall talks to Susan Horsburgh about letting go of her only child, staying (fiery) friends with her famous ex and dipping her toes into the dating pool again.
It’s customary these days for celebrities to tout the joys of ageing – to claim that a newfound comfort in one’s skin more than compensates for creeping decrepitude – but Jane Hall isn’t having it. Try posing next to your nubile 17-year-old daughter, she jokes, and you’ll feel every one of your 49 years.
“You’ve never felt worse!” she says. “I just keep hiding my old elbows and trying to keep my chins up. I can’t believe I’m nearly 50. I mean, spewing! How did that happen? It’s awful!”
No wonder she blitzed it for years on breakfast radio. Funny, candid and self-deprecating, Jane is great company and, with 35 years under her showbiz belt, the consummate professional. On an idyllic autumn day in the gardens of Melbourne’s historic Como House, the actress slips into model mode for the camera, smiling into the middle distance and laughing on cue, while her teenage daughter, it seems, would like to be airlifted pretty much anywhere else. As Jane kisses and cuddles her, Lucia manages to smile, but looks like the cartoon cat trying to escape the clutches of Pepe Le Pew.
“She’s been as sick as a dog for a week, but then there’s also the excruciating embarrassment of having to pose for photos with your mother,” explains Jane. “She was a darling to do this.” Jane has had to cajole Lucia into doing the shoot, and finally nudged her across the line with the promise of wearing some cool dresses. “She’s very into fashion,” says Jane. “She’s a girly girl.”
Jane’s all-time favourite motherdaughter photos were taken for
The Weekly in 2008, when Lucia was a dimpled, adorable five-year-old (“If only you could pickle them at that age!”), so there is a certain symmetry, she says, to today’s shoot. Back then, Jane was still reeling from an “appalling” public break-up with Lucia’s father, actor Vince Colosimo, and getting used to single motherhood while juggling her day job on Neighbours.
Twelve years on, Lucia is about to leave high school and Jane has landed the role of her life in the award-winning TV drama, Wentworth – while also realising a lifelong dream and studying midwifery. Not only that, she makes a harmonious blended family seem effortless.
Jane can’t pretend, however, that her daughter’s childhood has flown by. “As joyous as it has been, single parenthood is not an easy path,” she says. “I feel like I’m a completely different person now to what I was when I was pregnant with Lucia, and that seems like a very, very long time ago. I feel like I’ve had many incarnations.” Her latest is as Ann Reynolds, the new hard-line general manager of Wentworth Prison who’s out to rattle some cages after the catastrophic siege that ended season seven. “She’s incredibly right wing and doesn’t have much time for the prisoners,” says Jane. “[She thinks] once someone has broken the social
contract, they don’t have any human rights at all.” She’s an objectionable character and a welcome about-turn for Jane, who is usually cast as the nice, maternal type: “I’m really being stretched and, as terrified as I am, I’m also elated.”
Starring such high-calibre actors as Pamela Rabe and Leah Purcell, Wentworth airs in 158 countries, making it an invaluable springboard. Jane was already a serious fan of the Foxtel show when she went for the part, and apparently beat out some big names. “I auditioned the hell out of this job!” she says. “I’m not one of those actors who just gets given the plum roles, so I couldn’t believe my luck. I mean, I’m aware that I’m not going to be the next Jacki Weaver, but what a platform ... Who knows? Being in Wentworth has made me feel like there’s nothing I couldn’t have a crack at.”
When she and Vince split, Jane chose to join Neighbours from 2007 to 2011 as legal secretary Rebecca Napier, which meant stable work through most of Lucia’s primary school years. With a mortgage to pay and child to support, she is nothing if not pragmatic, which might explain her longevity in the industry. “I’ll make a corporate video, perform in an ad – I don’t say no to anything,” says Jane, who has also worked in furniture sales and styling between performing gigs. “I don’t know whether I have any pride left,” she adds, laughing.
Jane’s number-one priority has always been Lucia. “We’ve been a pretty tight unit,” says Jane. “She doesn’t want a bar of me at the moment, but surely that’s just [being] a 17-year-old girl. Actually we are quite dependent on each other in a strange way.” The pair enjoy Netflix, binging on shows like Babies or Cheer, going out for Japanese, or just making dinner at home – Jane in the kitchen and Lucia drawing or doing her homework. Jane is adamant, though, that she is Lucia’s parent, not her best friend. They’re not afraid of an all-out barney. “Oh God, she’s a firecracker,” says Jane. “She tries to win an argument at all costs. We’re very vocal, as my neighbours will attest.”
When she was little, Lucia was known around the neighbourhood for her high-pitched squeal; Jane says they are as stubborn as each other. “She’s got a very strong sense of self – what she likes and what she doesn’t like – and she cannot be dissuaded,” says Jane. “She’s passionate about what she believes in and sometimes she blows me away with her ability to really feel for other people. She’s shier than me – frankly she’s horrified by me ... that I’m boisterous and I like joking around.”
Back in her school uniform, the photos over, Lucia sits next to her
“Being in Wentworth has made me feel like there’s nothing I couldn’t have a crack at.”
mum and squirms when the focus turns to her. “Caring” is the first word that springs to mind when she is asked to describe her mother. “Even though she’s on your back, it’s because she has your best interests at heart,” says Lucia. “She is always there for me and she makes me feel better when I’m stressed. She boosts up my confidence.”
Now in Year 12, Lucia is not sure what she wants to do next year, but it won’t be acting; she has never been especially impressed by her parents’ industry. “I think we put a lot of pressure on kids in these final two years [of school],” says Jane. “Some kids have a burning idea of what they want to do – I always knew I wanted to be an actor – but we’re in the minority.” Jane scored her big break as a teen on The Henderson Kids in 1985, and has since racked up a resume that includes some of Australia’s best-loved TV shows, including All Together Now, A Country Practice (where she met Vince in 1994) and The Secret Life of Us. Lucia will watch Wentworth, but says she hasn’t seen her mum in any other roles. She has enjoyed watching her dad, though, in shows like Underbelly. “He’s had a flashier career than I have,” says Jane.
Lucia’s classmates knew her mum best when Jane was on radio – as one half of Chrissie & Jane from 2012 to 2014 on Melbourne’s Mix 101.1, the country’s first all-female breakfast duo. They were on a ratings high when they were inexplicably disbanded and Jane was teamed with
Matt Tilley in 2015. “It was like waking up every day and going to work with your bestie,” says Jane. “We hardly planned anything – we’d just get in there and flap our gums for a while.”
Radio presenters traditionally mine their personal lives and Jane was no exception, but it did get her into monumental trouble with her daughter. “I went to a quite wellknown dance school and it’s very full-on,” explains Lucia. “Mum went on the radio and called all of the mothers ‘dance mums’, but in a bitchy sort of way. All the girls were so pissed off at me.”
Jane looks sheepish: “But I fixed that up, didn’t I? Sort of?” Lucia says nothing. “A little bit?” Jane asks hopefully, before concluding: “Maybe not.”
In the end, she felt like she was compromising her daughter and left radio four years ago. Many thought she was mad, walking away from that lucrative world to try her luck in acting, especially in her mid-40s.
Wentworth has since made her feel more viable as a middle-aged actress, but roles at the time were scarce. She started her midwifery degree three years ago. The eldest child of school teachers, Jane was raised in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges to think it was never too late to learn anything; her mother retrained as a social worker when she was 50.
Acting and delivering babies, Jane insists, are not so dissimilar: they both demand empathy and a cool head under pressure. Her younger classmates might be more tech-savvy, but she has one major thing over most of them: “I’ve pushed a baby out of my vagina – and 17 years has done nothing to dull the memory of that pain!” she says, laughing. “Uni has opened up my world in a great way.”
A confirmed baby fan, Jane would have loved more children, but life had other plans. “I just naturally assumed I’d have three kids – I’m one of three girls,” she says, “but my relationship at the time didn’t last long enough for that and unfortunately there hasn’t been another opportunity.”
The disintegration of her 12-year relationship with Vince in 2007 became tabloid fodder, which made the split even more painful – and then there was a bitter legal battle over the home they shared. In 2014, Vince had
a son, Massimo, with actress Diana Glenn, from whom he later separated.
In more recent years, Vince has made headlines again, charged with driving offences and possession of the drug ice. Jane says she has dealt with it by not making any comment, but Vince told Good Weekend two years ago that Lucia had made him explain himself. “I apologised to her, and she was incredibly mature about it,” said Vince. “Her understanding, empathy and wisdom are quite powerful.”
These days Jane’s Instagram feed shows Vince, Diana and Massimo joining her and Lucia to celebrate birthdays, Christmas and school formals. If they make a messy family life look easy, “it’s not”, says Jane. “We just value our kids and their happiness, and I really get along well with Diana. I’m so thrilled to welcome Massimo into our family – and we do
call it ‘our family’. Sometimes it doesn’t function that well, but when you’ve got your kids’ best interests at heart, no matter what happens between the adults, that’s actually as simple and as difficult as it gets.
“Both Diana and I have wanted to facilitate Massi and Lu having a relationship. He’s very much a part of her life and that’s the way we want it. We have always done things like, if
I go away, rather than move Lucia around too much, Vince will come and stay at my place because I’m more organised. It just works well for us.” She and Vince still have “rip-snorting fights”, says Jane, but have emerged as “genuinely good mates” who co-parent 50-50.“He has always been a tremendous dad to his girl – he’s done his very best,” says Jane. “I mean, he drives me insane, but he would say the same thing about me. That’s why we’re no longer in a relationship.” Jane describes her daughter as resilient. “She is just everything to me,” says Jane, “and we haven’t had an easy time. I admire her courage just to see herself through a difficult situation. She’s often a good influence on me. She’ll say, ‘Mum that wasn’t very fair,’ or ‘Maybe there’s a better way that you could deal with that’. She can be quite worldly.”
The thought of her only chick flying the nest is crushing: “This process of separating from each other, which starts when they’re about 14, has been a bit heartbreaking,” says Jane, “because you realise you’re not required to do that much for them anymore. Sometimes I look around the empty house and think, what am I going to do now?” Between shooting Wentworth and her midwifery study, Jane has enough to keep her busy – and then there’s her new boyfriend. One of her best friends, actress Rebecca Gibney, got her onto a dating app.“Bec was just like, ‘Nup, we’re getting you out there!’” But after some “dispiriting” encounters, Jane was set up with a man through family members. “He’s not in our industry, he’s just a sensational bloke,” she says, “so fingers crossed.”
Fifty may feel like an approaching freight train, but Jane is also in the throes of a promising new romance, on the brink of international TV exposure, and about to watch her daughter take flight. It’s undeniably an exciting new chapter.
“I feel like time has marched on, but I’m so happy at the moment,” she says.
“I’m saying I’m 50 now so that I’ll start to get used to it. I just think, onwards and upwards – I’ve got grand hopes for this decade.” Perhaps ageing really does have its upsides after all. AWW
“Lucia is just everything to me ... I admire her courage. She can be quite worldly.”