Already an established actress in Australia, Wendy Hughes, 37, decided it was time to internationalize her career and move to Hollywood. Last February Hughes made the move, with her two children and husband, Patric Juillet, a producer. Hughes has appeared in almost 20 films in Australia, including ”My Brilliant Career,” ”Lonely Hearts,” for which she received a Best Actress nomination from the Australian Film Institute, and ”Careful He Might Hear You,” for which she won the Australian equivalent of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Recently in Chicago to promote an HBO film, ”The Heist,”
Hughes talked with freelance writer Norma Libman about her career choice and the challenge of moving halfway around the world.
My career was an easy choice for me because from age 14 I knew I wanted to have something to do with the theater. I was always fascinated by the stage.
At first I was a ballet dancer and I was very committed to that. You know how young girls are from about the ages of 8 to 18. I`d practice every night of the week and all day Saturday.
But I started to realize a few years into it that I wasn`t very good at it. I was too big, too heavy, I couldn`t jump properly. Everyone else would be 5 feet off the ground and I`d only be about 3 feet off.
But I still wanted to have something to do with the theater or the entertainment industry. I couldn`t sing, either, so that just naturally led to acting, which was the only thing I found any kind of satisfaction in. I found it exciting.
I started doing amateur dramatics. I was 14 or 15, doing plays at school and with church groups or youth groups. Then I decided after high school to apply for a drama school in another state. I got accepted, went there, and from drama school, went professional.
Once I started acting I got hooked very quickly on the whole thing of expressing yourself and being able to be other people. You get out a lot of emotion, whether it`s screaming or crying or whatever. I found that very rewarding.
Once in a while I thought I might be a nurse or something and my teachers would say, ”No, Wendy. Don`t do that, darling. You really wouldn`t like that.” I think they knew me more than I knew myself.
My parents did not discourage me. They were wonderful, especially my mother. She helped me enormously and encouraged me.
And I think it was my tenacity, too. I was very tenacious about doing first the ballet and then the theater. So they just let me go.
My mother did tell me that her mother used to take her often to the theater. So I think my mother had a feel for it, through her mother. It must have rubbed off somehow.
I remember my mother taking me, when I was quite young, to a matinee of
”The Misfits,” the wonderful Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable film, which, of course, wasn`t suitable for a child. Obviously, she wanted to see this film.
I was fascinated by it, too. I still remember the imagery of it all and the magic. I do think film has a certain magic to it.
What I like most about acting is the challenge of trying to pull it off. When you`re doing a scene and you know that it works, it`s just very satisfying.
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Your adrenalin really has to be working and if you have to play some emotion, you have to work that all out within yourself. I guess you just get an adrenalin buzz from all that.
As for juggling my career and family, being an actress works out really well, as opposed to working all the time, 9 to 5, five days a week, 50 weeks a year.
As an actress you work for three months and then you might not work for four months. So you end up being able to spend a lot of time with the children.
When I`m at work I have a nanny to look after them. And then they always come on location with me and I`ll put them into the local school. That will get difficult as they get older and get to high school, but so far it`s worked really well. You do have to plan things, though.
I`m not a great socializer so I don`t go out a lot at night. Normally I`m always there at night with them. Whenever I`ve had three months away from work, though, I start to get desperate to get back to it. I`ll be thinking: do I have to load that dishwasher again?
Deciding to come and live in the United States was probably the most difficult decision I have ever made. I`d been thinking about it over the last couple years. I`d discovered that I like it here, I like the American people and I realized I needed to do it for my career.
In Australia you keep going around in the same circle. There`s just not a great deal happening with the Australian film industry at the moment, which is very sad.
I`m very well known there and there`s just nowhere else to go, once you get to a certain level. And I thought, I`m either going to have to stay here and try to do something else as well, or move on for a while.
I knew that if I wanted to have the chance at a wider range of roles and a more international career I would have to be where the action is. And most films and television roles are cast from the United States, Los Angeles in particular.
So it was quite a big decision, but once I made it, it was easy. Once you actually decide, then it`s much easier. You just do it. You do feel very isolated when you move to the other side of the world. But I wanted to take on this challenge, and work in a wider market, so I did it.
Here I`m much more anonymous, which is nice. You don`t have people doing triple takes or staring at you. I can go to the supermarket looking any way I want. I`ve been here several times before so I do have a few friends, but not as many as I have at home, and sometimes I do get a bit lonely.
The children were very excited about the move and when we arrived I wasn`t working for the first month and a half, which helps. We put them into school and did all that.
And I brought a nanny with me whom they knew. They treated it all as an adventure. They seem to be quietly slipping into a whole new system.
What I miss most is that there`s no corner shop (in Los Angeles) that you can just walk to. You`ve got to get in the car and go to a supermarket. So I put everything off and do it all in one big trip.
A move like this is scary, but I know if it doesn`t work out I can move on to Europe or go back to Australia. It was not only the career thing, but I just felt that I wanted to try living somewhere else because I`d never done that. I just wanted to live in another country; see how that is.
My husband, who is a producer, is in the business, too, so we`re both going through the same thing. It`s quite exhilarating, even if it`s very unsure. He`s working on some projects that I`ll be involved in, but it will take awhile to get established and for people to know that I`m here.
It takes time to get exposure. You`ve got to be prepared to hang in there for a while. Having made 20 films in Australia is not the same as having made a North American product. It counts, but not quite as much.
I`m enjoying it here. I find Americans very generous of spirit to newcomers. I like being close to Europe and to so many fascinating places here. It`s so big, this country. I have to get in a car and see all of it.