Joel Edgerton puts down much of his success, as one of Australia's most respected actors of his generation, to the one time he had to wear a dress.
"My trajectory was a combination of luck. I mean, I back myself but I had a few moments of luck," he says on the sunny deck of the Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf Restaurant. "I was cast as a woman in my graduating show, called The Poet, the Women and Frocks, and Alan Wilson, who was an agent at the time, took me on because he was impressed by me in that play.
"I don't think I would have stood out as much if I wasn't wearing a dress."
Fifteen years later, Edgerton, 35, couldn't find himself in a more different role as he takes on the part Marlon Brando made famous: Stanley Kowalski in the classic Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire.
Directed by Norwegian star of the stage and screen Liv Ullmann and co-starring Cate Blanchett, Streetcar is this year's big-ticket item for Sydney's theatre scene.
But Edgerton, in his laconic way, is unfazed by the media hype surrounding the role of Stanley, which has been played by some of the greatest West End and Broadway stars since it premiered in 1947.
The rest of my article on Joel Edgerton can be found HERE.
1 comments:
With no disrespect to Joel, a reading of Irene Selznick's excellent biography "A Private View" will show why the shoes of Brando in the role of Stanley are impossible to fill. Until the last remaining audience member who ever saw Brando on stage in that role has died, and until every copy of the film is destroyed, that once-in-a-century genius won't be forgotten. Even T Williams, who had originally written the role as an overweight middle-aged Polish laborer, was instantly persuaded that Selznick was right and he was wrong, that Brando's electrifying, visceral stage presence warranted completely re-thinking the character. The rest is theatre history.
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