Wenham goes behind camera
ACCLAIMED AUSTRALIAN DAVID WENHAM REMAINS BUSY ACTING BUT DIRECTING IS HIS NEW LOVE
He is one of Australia’s hardest working actors, but David Wenham says acting has become a “day job” to fund his ambitions as a director.
HE is one of Australia’s hardest working actors, but David Wenham says acting has become a “day job” to fund his ambitions as a director.
The 52-year-old said releasing his directorial debut Ellipsis, an experimental and entirely improvised film, has already inspired two more projects in the director’s chair.
“Bizarrely, I don’t think I’ve ever been so relaxed on a film set in my life, probably because I’ve been waiting 15 years to do it,” Wenham said.
“I have to go back to my day job (of acting) to pay the bills and I’ll be doing that shortly but in the meantime there are two projects I’m working on at the moment, writing. They will be more formal but they will both be influenced to a great extent by the way we worked on Ellipsis.”
“The day job will have an influence on my directing job until I can fully support that.”
It wasn’t smooth sailing for Wenham, who spent six years working on another project before the funding fell through – leaving him to turn to the experimental film, set in Sydney over the course of one night, with actors Emily Barclay and Benedict Samuel.
“We did no rehearsals and there was only one take of everything with two cameras. It was left to actors’ instinct. I would have loved to have played with that as an actor,” Wenham said.
Having worked with directors including Peter Jackson, Jane Campion and Baz Luhrmann, Wenham said “most if not all of them have had some influence” in his work.
Wenham, whose recent credits include Lion and Romper Stomper, will be working in acting roles in Australia and overseas this year.
He said criticism of Australian dramas casting from the same acting pool was unfounded.
“Last year I appeared in two pieces of Australian television, Wake in Fright and Romper Stomper, and those two pieces combined add up to eight days of work for me in Australia – so if that is overload for one person then I think we have a problem,” he said. “For a country of our size we produce a disproportionate amount of talented and creative people who then go on to work around the world.”
Ellipsis will be shown at small screenings around the country.