A WORK OF ART
With celebrated careers on both sides of the camera, the Otto family is one of the most illustrious dynasties in Australian stage and screen.
With celebrated careers on both sides of the camera, the Otto family is one of the most illustrious dynasties in Australian stage and screen. A project linked to Barry’s lifelong passion for painting recently brought them together for a colourful reunion. By Jessica Montague. Styled by Jess Pecoraro. Photographed by Hugh Stewart.
Family portraits are often stiff and tense affairs, all carefully arranged limbs, awkward smiles and general discomfort at something so staged and unnatural. But not for the Otto clan. Photographing acting legend Barry in his overgrown backyard, with daughters Miranda and Gracie and granddaughter Darcey, is raucous and fun. A scene of slapstick comedy with some high fashion and theatrics thrown in.
At one point, Barry (dressed in top-to-toe peach Gucci with high-heeled boots) windmills his arms in full flight to show the crew how his shoulders work after having surgery. After another take, Gracie runs off to retrieve Bluebelle, one of the family’s beloved Burmese felines, who happily poses in 90s-style reflective sunglasses Gracie bought online. Miranda, meanwhile, attempts to look all poised and professional, but has the giggles because no-one will shut up and stare down the barrel of the damn camera. An onlooker manages to squeeze in among the laughter that it’s looking like an Aussie backyard version of an Alessandro Michele campaign. “We’re available for hire,” Gracie shoots back. “If anyone will have us!”
The word that most often comes up when describing the Ottos – both self-prescribed and from outsiders – is eccentric. An eccentric creative family that wears the label loud, proud and endearingly over-the-top. But such a phrase, even if the Ottos don’t mind it, belies their respective talents. Barry has starred in many of our most iconic films (Strictly Ballroom, Cosi, Australia, The Dressmaker) and been a theatre stalwart since the early 70s. Eldest daughter Miranda, 52, was born into the biz, but has carved out her own stellar career across blockbusters (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, War of the
Worlds), television (Homeland, Rake) and stage (A Doll’s House). Meanwhile her 32-yearold half-sister Gracie is a respected short-film, documentary and TV director, whose 2013 project The Last Impresario was a festival favourite.
While they are all undeniably close, their careers have naturally taken them all over the world, and they only really share quality time together once a year. It’s usually over Christmas, when Miranda, actor husband Peter O’Brien and 15-year-old daughter Darcey – shot here with her family for the very first time – fly back from their base in the US. In typical Otto fashion, this last festive season they ditched a typical sit-down dinner for a fun game of Finska on Coogee Beach instead. “It’s a Finnish game with blocks and they’ve all got numbers on them and you’ve got to throw and knock them over to reach a total of 50,” explains Gracie. “It was just really simple, but it always is with our family. Everyone can play.”
Sydney as a hometown is firmly where the heart is. The old family house, which has been theirs for decades, serves as the anchoring point when everyone is here and, in this case, doubles as the set for Vogue’s shoot. Barry shares the rambling freestanding Victorian house, built in 1885 and situated in Sydney’s inner west, with second wife Sue Hill (Gracie’s mum) and the pair’s son Eddie, 34, along with Bluebelle and their other cat Bogart. “Like, it’s all falling apart, but there’s just so many memories,” says Gracie of her childhood home. “For years I’ve always continued to live here [between being overseas] because it’s always centred around eccentrics and my eccentric family.” (There’s that word again.)
To an outsider, the house is part antique store with a touch of the Grey Gardens about it, but with an undeniable charm. Crates of old cricket balls litter the living room floor, while dozens of canvases clutter the downstairs hallway. There are more canvases, as well as hundreds of oversized art books (Rossetti, Renoir, PreRaphaelites), stacked all over the house that hint to Barry’s other, less well-known career: that of an amateur fine artist.
Unbeknownst to many, painting has been a part of Barry’s life since his upbringing in Brisbane. It was recently brought to more public attention, thanks to a solo exhibition at Belle Epoque Fine Art and Antiques, five minutes down the road in Petersham.
“It was an obsession at such a young age. I remember being a four-year-old with a pencil and drawing little funny things, like a fly settled near me on a little desk,” recalls Barry. “I started to draw it, but then, of course, it flew off.
“I went to Brisbane Tech and studied art for three years and loved every minute of it,” he continues. “This was before wanting to be an actor, seeing the theatre and being educated about that. It was always art. Always drawing and then painting with a brush when I was six or seven, before watercolours and oils later on.”
Now aged 79, Barry paints from the back verandah every day and stores a lot of his work in the original coach house at the rear of the property. Both Miranda and Gracie grew up knowing this creative pursuit was just as important to their dad as his acting career. “It’s sort of what he did when he wasn’t on stage,” explains Miranda. “Like, if he had three months off before another play, he’d probably be working on an exhibition. When I was growing up it was a really big part of his life.”
Barry’s exhibition Otto: An Artist’s Life, which ran for a month over January and February, coincided with the tail end of the recent family reunion. The apt timing allowed the Ottos to celebrate Barry’s lifelong passion and also sift through fond memories.
“When Gracie first sent me some of the pictures that were going to be in [the exhibition] some were things that have been on Dad’s walls forever that I thought he would never give up,” continues Miranda. “At first I was really shocked that he was willing to part with some of these pieces. So in some ways it was confronting he was willing to give up works he loved so much over the years, but I think we all go through things where you just want to let go of stuff. It was really lovely also to see the periods he’s been through and to look back at times when he was doing the different styles over the years.”
While Barry’s artistic style may have shifted slightly over the decades, his method has stayed consistent. He’s found muses close to home (Miranda has been the subject of two entries to the prestigious Archibald prize), but Barry also largely chooses to replicate other works. He’ll take a painting from late 19th-century greats, such as Leighton, Klimt, Rossetti or Renoir, and re-create it before overlaying it with his own ethereal style.
“I’ve got all these great painters who have ever lived that I can look at and really study and sort of be encouraged by them,” he explains. “I’m always finding, in going through my art books, that: ‘Oh, there’s a painting I love. I’d like to have a crack at that.’ I’ve got a lot of other art that’s been photographed too, that I love.”
It was only too fitting that a gallery named after the La Belle Epoque, the golden age of European beauty at the tail end of the 19th century, hosted Barry’s latest exhibition. “I once asked him once why he chooses to paint adaptation artworks instead of original compositions, and he wants to get inside [artist’s] minds, absorb their life, dissect their methods and dismantle their brushstrokes,” explains gallery director Leigh Capel. “The work is so special because it is reflective of his unique talent and creativity but also his eccentric personality. They represent a lifelong love of art.”
Capel first came across Barry’s art working in auction rooms back in 2013, and learnt that while many people own originals, few are willing to part with them (and more often than not wanted insurance appraisals). “His work reflects his incredible admiration for women and female beauty,” Capel continues. “His muses are not only a mix of the Victorian era glamour, but primarily the beautiful inspirational Otto women. In this light, his oeuvre is extremely personal.”
And also, it seems, a crowd-pleaser. On opening night, legends from the local film industry, including Gillian Armstrong, Neil Armfield, Dan Wyllie, Brendan Cowell and Claudia Karvan, were only too happy to spill out onto the footpath for an impromptu block party when the gallery became jam-packed. Inside a cello and violin duet complemented the artworks, while cans of Hawke’s Lager did the rounds among the thespian crowd weaving down the street.
The lead-up – and opening night itself – also doubled as perfect fodder for Gracie’s latest project. For the last year and a half, she’s been filming her famous dad for
“The work is so special because it is reflective of his unique talent and creativity but also his eccentric personality. They represent a lifelong love of art”
an upcoming documentary, Otto On Otto. At present it’s an unscheduled passion project between jobs, the most recent of which was season two of Matt Okine’s comedy The Other Guy, which Gracie directed for Stan.
“I’d been meeting people overseas and trying to work out my next project, but it hadn’t really worked out,” she says of the film. ”Everyone was like: ‘Why do you idolise all these older men that you know and think are cool that you’ve met at Cannes when you could just do a doco on your dad, who is way cooler than any of them?’ For me it’s a way of capturing his life in the last leg. There’s no rush. I think maybe it could be an observational film, because he’s so interesting to watch.”
“I think Dad is such a one and only. Most people who know him in the business know him really well and know of all Dad’s flourish and enthusiasm and eccentricity, so it’s nice to celebrate that and document it”
“I think Dad is such a one and only,” Miranda weighs in. “It’s really nice to see somebody celebrate that and try to capture him in some way. Most people who know him in the business know him really well and know of all Dad’s flourish and enthusiasm and eccentricity, so it’s nice to celebrate that and document it.”
Judging by Gracie’s social media, there’s audience demand for it, too. “He’s such a star on my Instagram even though he has no technology, no idea what the internet is or social media or anything like that. He just knows when I say to do something that he should do it,” she says, laughing. “When I have 700 people watch a video, there will be the same 700 watch the next video – no-one drops off. People message me and say: ‘Oh, he’s so entertaining, he’s such a lovely man,’ so he’s definitely got a new audience in a way.”
Barry is the last person to be basking in a newfound attention among millennials, though. He’s much more inclined to wax lyrical about the women in his life and recount their achievements with all the gesticulation and verve as if he was performing on stage.
While Miranda is now predominantly based in Vancouver, where she films the popular Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Barry makes it known several times that she is a “real movie star” and has set up a beautiful life in Los Angeles for Darcey with her husband. Speaking of which, his only grandchild has acted in one of Gracie’s short films (2018’s Desert Dash), but says she has no concrete plans to follow the family profession. (“I really like maths at school,” she counters.)
“She’s a gorgeous girl and talented,” gushes Barry. “She can play three instruments and she loves sport, female sport. We’re so very proud of her.” As for Gracie, he reaches for another gear. “She’s the perfect example of a 21st-century woman and has travelled the world. When she grew up I think she thought there was nothing a boy could do that she also couldn’t. She just knows the sort of life she wants and she’s living it and challenging herself all the time.”
While everyone in the Otto family clearly adores Barry and wants to celebrate his various pursuits at this latter stage of his life, it’s equally apparent he’s has been reflecting on the most meaningful role he’s ever played.
“The best thing that ever happens to you are your children,” he concludes, “watching them grow up and do what they want with their lives. I’m just so very proud.”