She is strikingly gorgeous, shares the same big blue eyes, is the right age and is a budding actress with serious cred. So it would seem a natural fit for Liana Cornell, 23, the daughter of Delvene Delaney, to have played her mum in the mini-series Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War.
But, although the cherub-faced thespian was asked to audition for the role of her mum in the Nine drama that finishes tonight, the third-year NIDA student decided – after much deliberation, including seeking the advice of her acting coach, Tony Knight – to say no to the audition.
”As much as I would love to play my mother down the track – and there are obvious parallels in our lives – I want to take a very different path,” the actress says. ”I get consistently compared to my mother, and she is so beautiful, but how can you compare yourself to that? I don’t want to be. I want to be my own woman.”
Cornell, whose father, John (affectionately known as ”Strop”), is a key character in the series, says watching her childhood played out has been incredible.
”I loved seeing all the stories I grew up hearing around the dinner table about Kerry come to life on the screen,” she says. ”That story about him telling dad to get a tie had been told over and over. And those one-liners and intelligent spins that my father does so well, and to see their relationship of mutual respect played out was lovely.”
The serious Shakespearean actress, whose ”big dream” is to start her own theatre company, paid homage to Packer and Strop’s yin-and-yang relationship. ”The mutual strength in each of them, which comes out in very different ways – you need to have the KP version of driving it in such a brutal manner and then the gentle ideas man, which is my dad,” she says.
Cornell says the strangeness of seeing her parents – who ”really enjoyed the series” – in their heyday was surreal.
”One of my girlfriends kept saying the actor playing dad [Abe Forsythe] was cute, so it was all a bit strange,” she says.
Her happily married parents, who had been tight-lipped about the telemovie in the lead-up, aren’t ones to blow their own trumpets. ”Dad’s so modest … he doesn’t need anyone to tell him he’s done a great job,” she says.
”He especially loved the portrayal of Kerry and thought it was very well done how he [actor Lachy Hulme] shows such a lovely three-dimensional character and his [Packer's] humanity.”
Cornell says her parents are comfortable with whatever path she decides to follow. ”They are so supportive,” she says. ”If I wanted to go finger-paint in a submarine for years, they’d say, ‘OK, if that makes you happy.”’
Meanwhile, the actress who plays Delaney in the mini-series, South African-born Cariba Heine, is on a high after breaking into adult drama. her hits so far have been for the tween market, including H2O: just Add Water and Dance Academy.
”It’s really nice to get that sort of feedback,” she says when told how much Delaney, who she’s never met, liked her portrayal. ”It would be devastating to think they weren’t [happy], so that’s really important. I was hoping it would be received the way it was, but it still feels a little bit weird!”
A Scout about around Miami
Bon voyage to Jessica Marais and James Stewart and their three-month-old daughter Scout.
The young family packed up and are on their way to Miami as we speak, ready for their next adventure – in which Marais will start filming the US TV series Magic City.
S spotted a removal truck outside their rented Newtown abode on Friday, and the couple returning their keys on Saturday.
The photogenic duo couldn’t be happier, a comfortably love-pudged-looking Stewart embracing being a house husband and stay-at-home dad in the immediate future: ”I don’t want to be an absent father,” he told Sunday Life last week. ”And now my partner – who has a much larger profile than me, can make five times as much money as me – is hot right now … So it was kind of easy for me to go, ‘Just stop what you’re doing, hang your boots up … and learn to be a father,’ it was a no-brainer.”
He’s got his work cut out for him. S hears Scout’s teething!
Some enchanted co-stars
The plot thickens with golden girl-turned-scarlet woman Lisa McCune and her love life, which has been splashed across the trashies.
Her embrace with her strapping South Pacific co-star, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, outside a Paddington cafe has definitely created controversy and intrigue. And, perhaps tellingly, no official word from either camp.
The shots were sold for north of $50,000, we hear – probably closer to the six-figure mark – in a bidding war between new Idea and Woman’s Day. And there’s more to come.
McCune flew to Melbourne on Tuesday, where she was snapped with her children and husband, Tim Disney, but was back again in Sydney on Thursday, when she was photographed dropping Rhodes off to his city hotel after a night at the eastern suburbs house she is staying at while in town. those photos, still on the market at the time of print, will no doubt appear tomorrow in one of the magazines.
Apparently, the co-stars didn’t appear too alarmed to be seen together by the paparazzi on Thursday morning. McCune was even said to crack a smile when they were seen.
‘Jes’ when she tried to hide it
There’s no escaping the magnifying glass in S.
Fresh from her trip to Mexico with her sister, Jesinta Campbell was in all her pin-tastic glory at Myer and David Jones, as well as delivering a star turn at the Men’s Style 50th-birthday bash, creating rumours of romance with P.J. Lane of Underbelly: Badness.
But underneath the glamour, the country girl has a secret she’s been hiding: a tattoo which she told Nova 96.9′s Fitzy and Wippa was hidden in a secret spot.
”Wippa, you’re not meant to tell everyone this! It’s somewhere you can’t see it,” she said on the brekky show.
Too late. The teeny-weeny star peeping outside her halterneck dress at the bash can just be seen in this photo.
Campbell and BFF Lauren Phillips (who goes out with Gary Ablett jnr) got inked to mark her 21st two Saturday nights ago when festivities ended up at Kings Cross.
More than just a Dawson’s peek
Un. put. Downable. Forget warts and all: Charlotte Dawson’s coming autobiography, Air Kiss & Tell: Memoirs of a Blowup Doll, is spleen and more.
The manuscript is filled with the frankness and openness we’ve come to love and expect from the fiery, Twitter-friendly Kiwi, pictured, with
This jaded gossip columnist, who has chronicled the ups and downs of Dawson’s scandalous life in the past decade, thought there were no surprises left.
Boy, was I wrong. I was left stunned by the take-your-breath-away moments and sheer courage of her candour.
The Allen & Unwin tome, co-written by her friend and blogger Jo Thornley, does not gloss over anything. from sex tapes to plastic surgery, Monopoly to marriage, valium to vodka, all Blacks to blackouts, there are no parts of her life – which lends itself well to cleverly crafted chapters – that are off limits.
Most poignantly, she discusses her suicide attempt after her split with Matthew Rhodin in 2007, which landed her in St Vincent’s psychiatric ward for three days . he found the publicity that accompanied being in a relationship with her simply too much to take at the same time he was arrested and accused (and subsequently not charged) with defrauding the Commonwealth Bank in a botched property deal.
Her recounting of wanting to end her life at that moment after years of rejection and her sense of feeling a failure is stirring, yet at the same time she manages to lose none of her trademark self-deprecating humour and sense of irony. ”I wanted it to be like when you tell a story 10 years on at a dinner party,” she says. ”The truth is there but at least you can laugh about it.”
Sarah sings to the beat of her drum
There’s little doubt flame-haired singer Sarah de Bono stands out in a crowd.
But the young singer has revealed for the first time how she
was so traumatised by
being bullied at school for
being perceived as different, she was forced to change schools several times.
”I was nobody for a long time and I felt very alone,” she tells the September edition of Girlfriend magazine, on sale Wednesday.
De Bono is one of eight ambassadors, including Ruby Rose and Johnny Ruffo, who have signed up for the magazine’s 12-month project, Project You, which is aimed at building teen girls’ self-esteem through activities and monthly challenges.
”I changed schools so I could start afresh and leave that old bullying life behind. It was then that I realised the problem wasn’t me. all that time, I’d been thinking, ‘Maybe it’s me. maybe I’m too different’. I thought they were bullying me because I was strange or there was something wrong with me; I really believed that for a long time.”
De Bono says learning ”different is special” was when she started to become herself.
”Believing in yourself is the key to success. Growing up, we’re always trying to be someone else. We’re always trying to fit what we think we should be instead of becoming who we are … Different is special.”
MORSELS
He may be Brad Pitt’s brother, but we reckon Doug Pitt has been separated at birth from former Rooster Luke Ricketson. The visiting junior Pitt, who is the owner of ServiceWorld Computer Centre in Missouri, was snapped with his doppelganger, who is now a sport sales exec at Channel Nine, when the opportunity came up as part of a long-running in-office joke about lookalikes. Hilarious. meanwhile, now his duties are done, Pitt has had the chance to holiday with his wife, Lisa, the couple flying by seaplane to Jonah’s at Whale Beach on Friday to stay for a couple of nights for some well-deserved R&R. Nice work if you can get it.
A gathering of society’s well-heeled at Chiswick last week was not to celebrate a baby shower for Erica Packer’s looming birth in September for her third bubba, as reported. Rather, S has learnt the laughter-filled ladies’ lunch, which included Sarah Murdoch, was to celebrate her 35th birthday. Congratulations!
Mike Goldman was let out of the Big Brother compound on the Gold Coast, where he has been working on the series that launched his career, to don a pair of flares and MC the 10th annual Variety Op Shop Ball at Sydney Town Hall last Saturday night. while velvet and faux fur took centre stage, the biggest star of the night was four-year-old Variety appeals recipient Milla Wolman, who came in her special supportive, fitted bodysuit that Variety helped fund for the young girl, who has cerebral palsy.
Rowena Wallace is about to get her claws out again, Pat the Rat style, during a special guest appearance on the CI Network series Deadly Women tomorrow night. Not since Sons and Daughters has Australia seen Wallace doing what she does best – playing the evil family matriarch. Tune in to see her play Melbourne underworld figure Judy Moran in the series, which profiles some of the world’s most notorious female killers and explores the psychological motivation that drives some women to become murderers.
Local label Bec & Bridge has had some stellar stamps of approval of late, largely thanks to young Hollywood princesses, including Lea Michele, Miley Cyrus, Emma Roberts, Nicole Scherzinger and Carrie Underwood, who have taken to its kitten-ish look with gusto. But the label struck serious royalty this week, decking out the famous tush of J-Lo at the launch of her world concert tour. she squeezed her booty into a white-lace ensemble of hot pants and midriff-baring top. It’s called inspirational marketing. ”We’ve had an amazing selection of celebrities that have chosen Bec & Bridge pieces recently,” designer Bec Cooper told S. ”We always want to ensure that we’re aligned with strong and confident women, so when we see talented young women like Carrie Underwood and Lea Michele wearing the brand, we feel like we’ve really hit the mark.” The brand is being picked up by international stores such as Nordstrom and Saks.
jcasamento@sunherald.com.au
twitter: @jocasamento1
16 JULY 2012
