ROWENA WALLACE TURNS 75! ‘I AM FULL OF GRATITUDE’
A traumatic moment changed her life forever, but she has no regrets
It might be hard to imagine, but for her 75th birthday this week, Aussie acting treasure Rowena Wallace asks that we picture her working at a Queensland bank. Why? Well, if it wasn’t for a chance role at Brisbane’s “amateur” Twelfth Night Theatre in the ’50s, the actress says she’d likely never have pursued a career on the small screen.
“I would probably still be working at a bank,” she admits, before bursting into a cackle, joking, “I might have robbed it by now, too,” she laughs, so impressed with her self-branded “naughty jokes”.
With five TV WEEK Logie awards, including one gold, it certainly is jarring to imagine Rowena, one of this country’s
most celebrated actors, approving loans! However, like most things in her life, Rowena admits she simply “just fell into acting”. “I never really made the decision to become a professional,” she insists.
With a résumé like hers, it’s safe to say everything worked out well in the end.
DIEHARD FANS
Over the years, Rowena’s financial issues have made life tough, but for her milestone birthday this year, she was thrown a beautiful party by adoring fans.
Together the group raised enough funds to purchase her a brand new phone, something Rowena say she’s extremely grateful for.
“They were just wonderful – they’re lovely people, we had so much fun,” she says of her party, all organised and catered by the group, before pointing out she managed to stay up “past eleven”!
The thought of being surrounded by doting fans, who the actress admits often have better knowledge of her career than she has, is something that still manages to surprise Rowena to this day.
“I never, not once, imagined I would have fans when I was starting out,” she confesses. “I’m very lucky.”
While most might expect Rowena, who is now based in Wonthaggi, Victoria, to look back at her career with great pride, she feels it isn’t that straightforward. “I don’t know that I’m proud of myself, I don’t know what I am really. I’ve been looking back a lot lately, at all the opportunities I was afforded, it’s been difficult going through the motions of my memories,” she admits. Interestingly, Rowena reveals it isn’t her iconic roles in Sons
And Daughters or Prisoner, or the myriad magazine covers, countless parties, accolades and the glitz of her career that she holds tightest in her memory. Instead, it was a role no amount of rehearsal or training could have prepared her for – as an ambassador for World Vision. It was an emotionally taxing job that took the star to remote corners of the world, a journey the actress says changed her life, for better or worse, she’s not entirely sure.
“Going overseas, and to see what was really going on, that was such a gift,” she says of her first trip with the charity, which took her to Kenya, Cambodia and Ethiopia. “I came back from my first trip and I had a mental breakdown,” Rowena says seriously.
“It was weird – I couldn’t cope with Australia. I had to go back to work the next day, I was handed a script... I didn’t know what it was. They had to send me home, and I remember just sitting on the floor of my parents’ home, bawling my eyes out,” she recalls, hinting that she still struggles to process the trip.
NEWFOUND STRENGTH
“It gets into your heart, your head and your soul,” she says of the job, which required her to film packages to be broadcast back home in Australia.
While in Cambodia, Rowena remembers visiting a hospital where she witnessed hordes of mothers in the corridors waiting to see doctors. “I went in with a film crew, and I stood in front of a cot with a little girl, and she died, I saw the light go out in her,” she says.
It was from that moment Rowena accepts that she was never the same. “I just promised myself to use their strength wherever life took me thereon in,” she reveals, holding back tears.
Looking to a brighter future, Rowena is immensely grateful for the love and support shown by fans and everyday Aussies alike. As for her next move, she groans when asked about her tell-all she started teasing many years ago.
“I suppose I should get to it,” she laughs.
“I do have so many stories to tell, but I’m just so rickety and rackety these days that I prefer to watch telly on the couch, it’s a lot easier!”
‘I promised myself to use their strength wherever life took me’