You're listening to Amma mea podcast. I don't think it was really about me.
I think I was a catalyst for a conversation that people were wanting to have, and there hadn't been an opportunity as clear I suppose. So somebody's suddenly attacking me. And I'm a farmer, so i'm you know, why should I look at a standard? And I think people have a fear of getting older because women become very invisible.
As they get older.
Yes, and if they, you know, aren't able to rest on the glory of their youth and their beauty and their sexuality, who are they?
Where are they?
In late December last year, Rachel Ward, legendary actress, farmer, wife of Brian Brown, mother of many grandmother, posted a video to her Instagram account. She was standing in a paddock, no studio lighting, no red carpet, no retouching, a sixty eight year old woman on her farm, speaking plainly, and within hours the commentary began. Some people praised her for
looking natural, Others were less kind. There were comments about her face, about aging, about how she used to look, about whether someone who was once a global screen icon was somehow supposed to remain frozen in time. In this episode of No Filter, Rachel and I talk about that
viral moment and what it revealed. We trace her life from British aristocracy to Hollywood glamour, from being dismissed as beautiful but not bright, to walking away from film and eventually becoming a regenerative farmer on the mid North coast of New South Wales. We talk about mental health, about the crumbles she speaks so openly, and about how she has known instinctively when each chapter of her life was over. This is the magnificent Rachel Ward.
Welcome, thank you, very happy to have you. Thank you.
And then you sat down and you were horrified to see that you're well.
I forgot that.
Of course you're doing a podcast, but I forgot that you always film it. Everything's visual, so I didn't even think about it. And look, I was threw on a shirt that I've been wearing probably for the last couple of days, and I didn't realize I'd.
Made such a pick of myself. Look in the mirror, did you come from the farm?
No?
Who's looking after the farm? And no one right now?
Because I can go for if I pre plan, I can go for as long as a week, as long as I've got someone I need to do a couple of moves.
But yes, I have someone coming in and just moves the cattle. Right. But if I'm.
Organized enough, I can go, and I just I can go at this stage. I couldn't go if I was you know, if I was in carving or something like that. But I can go now because they're all just frolicking around in their paddocks.
Yeah.
So I do have a lovely guy who comes in and just moves the cars.
But you obviously don't have someone doing your laundry. Do not have someone doing my laundry? That is shocking.
I just, you know, you forget about looking in the mirrors, and you forget about doing your hair, and you just and you forget about doing your laundry.
That is shocking.
Sorry, Well, this is an interesting catapult into your life, really, and your life which has had many shades, many.
Chapters, many chapters.
Blessed leaders, long life are not as long as it will be, but it has seen you traverse very unusually I think a point at which you were applauded.
For your talents.
Yes, but your talents were appreciated because of your phenomenal beauty.
Well, that's very SWEETI thank you. It's not arguable, is it what beauty?
Well, your beauty, and that you came to I think world attention through your role in the Thorn Birds.
Yes, and you were exquisite.
I mean it brought you world acclaim yes, and attention.
Yes. And what was your life like prior to that?
Oh?
God, I don't know how I encapsulate that. I mean, just so far from where that was, I suppose.
I know that you grew up in an English family. I've heard you speak about how you were had like that, a traditional sort of upper.
Middle class English upbringing. So were you at boarding school? Yes?
I was at boarding school and I was Yeah, I had a very it was a very Edwardian upbringing. I mean, in a way the upper middle classes was stuck in aspects as far as women were concerned. So I was brought up in a world where I mean a great privilege and I had a fantastic childhood in many regards, because I grew up in the country, and I had horses, and I had a little village which we grew up in, and I had some really one particular girl who was the chauffeur's daughter, right, who was.
My best friend. Oh, that's like a novel. Yeah, it is like a novel.
And I spent most of my time in her house because we grew up totally with paid people to look after us. So you could say, I mean, when I look at the way I brought up my children and the way that my children bring up their children, it just could not.
Be further from it.
And I wonder how my mother did it.
But she did not live with us.
She basically from the age that before the age we went to boarding school, she would spend her weeks in London with my father. We were left in the country with a nanny, and then she would come down with a lot of guests and have parties and social life during the weekend, of which we would probably join in on a Sunday lunch or something. But that was pretty
much it. So you could say it was neglectful. But you know, we were safe, we were warm, we were fed, we were you know, we had all the sort of things that come under the heading of privilege.
But was it privilege. It was a I don't know.
My self confidence has always been very low, and I think that has to do with a lot about just not being supported as a child, and we would have like if you told a story, you were told to shit or get off the pot, you know, because you just don't take up too much time from adults. You
were very much seen and not heard. My father had a classic line when he said, at one point I was going to go to university, and he said, what on earth do you need an education for you pretty enough to marry someone very rich, which, and you know, I was brought up in a world at primogenitus, so that women were definitely second class citizens and you did not get a good education. Primogenitus primogenitor is when when everything goes to the firstborn son.
Ah, so as a.
Daughter, you are expected to marry someone rich who will then look after you. So it's very Victorian and that was still going on when I was so my father. I was not mentioned in my father's will, neither was my sister, but my brother and I even have an intellectually handicapped brother and he was in front of me and the will right for inheritance, for inheritance and running the running the estate or whatever.
Yeah.
So as a woman and you, we were brought up in a thing like when there was dinner and things, the women would leave the dinner table at the end of the meal so that the men could talk politics and smart and whatever else they could take business. No, we went out, We left them and they would have their cigars and da da da. So women were not considered part of that conversation. So you did grow up with this, you're not. I don't know how women didn't
grow up with terrible inferiority complexes. I certainly did. And then it was compounded by going to Hollywood, of course. So what was compounded was your value was your physicality or sexuality, your beauty, your how you elevated the status of a man by you know, being a beautiful woman or whatever.
So everything was everything was emphasized.
On what you looked like and how you presented yourself and your social cachet.
So at what point did it become apparent that you had received the gifts of the gods of this physical beauty.
Well, I never recognized it at all. I mean that was I don't know. I don't think you do. I don't I wonder if you do. I mean I think I wonder if you do. I mean, there were certain people who'd say, you know, oh you're lovely darling or whatever.
But you know, you know, I always felt like I was overweight.
I just you know, I was a model, and I was always too big to get in I was too busty to get into the clothes. I would very often sit on the sidelines while other You know, there was all sorts of reasons to give you insecurity.
Of course, and modeling is rife with the.
Yeah, it was when it came in that you have to be you know, extremely thin, right, and I certainly wasn't that.
I was quite sort of wholesome.
But someone had the idea that you could be a model. Well, really, yes they did. And the first thing I was told was to lose weight. And I was never a particularly good model. I didn't get much work.
Why were you not a good model?
Because I wasn't thin enough? Right, really, I wasn't quite thin enough. And there was a look at the time I was much more. I don't know, there was very much that.
I don't know.
I was in the time of sort of Sheryl Tigues and right, it was a sort of the American thing, of the long legged, long blonde thing, and I was seventeen magazine. Yes, I wasn't quite you know, it certainly wasn't in that supermodel category by any means.
Whose idea was it modeling? Can you remember? Well?
Probably mine, because I was completely ill equipped to do anything else. You know, you left, you leave your education system. In that world, no emphasis was put on education. I was never expected. There was no expectation for me to do well in school. My brother got you know, smacked over the hand if.
He got a bad report.
Nobody cared if us girl's got bad reports, right, So there was no emphasis, was no talk of careers.
There was no you were literally expected.
And it does sound like I've stepped out of a you know, nineteenth century novel, But that's where That's why I say it was still an aspects that whole mid upper middle class thing.
As far as women go.
The middle class had moved on much more as far as women, you know, thinking about careers and stuff. But for us, it was totally about who you married, you know, had to, you know, it was My mother was a deb she went through that. Now I didn't do that.
And she married will and she married above station.
Yes, she married well, she was very beautiful and she did marry well, and her grand my grandmother, her mother was very pushy about all of that, you know, who she should marry and or anyway, she got married ridiculously. I'm at twenty one or something, had me at twenty one and was you know, completely unready to be a mother and to you know, run I mean, she could run a household, I suppose, but she was just too young to settle down and to think about kids.
And she had that infrastructure that meant that she didn't necessarily have to take on no onerous aspects.
She never I don't remember ever bathing us or anything, or being with us when we were sick or I mean she was a great mum when we got old. She wasn't a good one when we were when we were young, and mainly because I think my dad wanted her on his arm, and so she just wasn't around.
And when she was around, she had quite a sort of short attention span.
So it was very much that thing of you know, how you indulge children to express themselves and you're there forever well they tell long stories and things. There was none of that, none of that, you know, you just did not take up adult time.
But It's funny because I think you often parent, you know, you take on board the way you were parented, or you push against the way you were parented.
And you Yes, I knew very very soon that I did not want my children to grow up in the way that I grew up.
And how did you know what the alternative was?
Because I spent so much time in the chauffeur's flat, right, so I saw I'd seen a family. I'd seen her fill his hype and puttish slippers by, and I'd see them, you know how, all over her father, and I'd see mum cooking in the kitchen and everybody sitting down at the meal, and I just went, I loved it there. Yeah, I couldn't, you know, have enough of it. But so I did see it, and I think that made a big impression on me.
When you left basically the chauffeur's family to go, you know, and when they got divorced.
When my parents got divorced and I.
Was about I think I was about twelve, the first thing I said, is mister Hooper's not leaving, is he?
He was the chauffeur, And I was that was my big worry.
I didn't care about anything else, But I wanted to know that they weren't leaving.
But my family, you ended up leaving them when you went to America.
Oh well, I went to boarding school Rastache, so I was in boarding school at ten. So then that took me on a whole other you know, that was your home became boarding school.
And I was much happier at boarding school than I was at home. Really why.
Because it was just it was because you may your friends became your family, your girl, your intensely the intense relationship that you had with girlfriends that were, you know, your your peers and your classmates. Those relationships were unusually close, unusually tight. And I had a girlfriend that used to torture me because she was she was always going off with other girls, and it was just devastating. I've never loved her and I never felt that jealousy ever again.
But you form those sort of relationships, and they're all girls too, who come from the same sort of world, who were also lacking that connection with deep connection with family, and we had these incredibly intensive relationships.
I think that's still common in schools, yes, probably schools. Like every girlfriend I know who's been to a particularly a private school or boarded has had that real intensity of feeling for one of her girlfriends.
Yeah, and that lasts forever. So I'm grateful for it too. But you know, I just wonder how parents could be. So it's just different, isn't it. Pedagogy is just a very different beast these days than it was. Well, it's what you know, it's what you know. And it didn't seem unusual to me. No, it seemed I had no.
Perspective on it.
No, So you would never say to your parents, can't you stay here with me?
It wasn't even a concept.
No, And you didn't want them to either, because they were quite frightening, right, They were.
Quite frightening, and they were quite impatient. You know.
They just weren't going to be They weren't the kind I look at my daughter now and what she gives to her children, and I just both of them, both of them, and I just I think, what was How was the nanny reacting when I was carrying on like this, age four or two or whatever, and you know.
That you're not theirs?
Yes, And we had a nanny that only really loved my brother, So we were always the scapegoats for everything, yeah, right, And I don't remember caring much, but it was a strange one and it definitely would have had I'm not sure what sort of psychological impact it had, but it would have had it had to have.
I mean, you can't.
Remember that far back, but it forms your obviously, it forms your brain, doesn't it.
Yes, And then it also even if it manifests in rebellion in some aspects or the opposite.
Always having to be good? Which were you always having to be good? Yes? Maybe I did.
I wanted my mother's attention a lot, and I was quite good at that. I was better at that than the others were, so I was the favorite, right, And I was very highly sensitive, so I could feel when her winds changed, so I knew when to get out of her way and I knew how to get to her right.
So I don't know, And it wasn't necessarily being good, but it was.
It was just Yeah, I was sort of highly sensitive about people's when people had had enough, when parents, adults had had enough, which yeah.
And my children, my siblings, never really got that.
So I was always pulling them out by the hair and saying, come on, let's go, because it's it's it's over the time with.
The time here is done. Yeah, it's done.
So I think it's that thing of I mean, I still find this sort of thing quite hard because I have it in the back of my head always shit or get off the pot.
Or don't be boring.
You know, the worst crime you could be was boring in that world. I was interested when I met Brian and I used the word boring. He said, you use that word quite often. He said, I've never use that in my life. I've never been bored. I'd have been told I'm boring. It was the number one insult when I was growing up was not to be borught was to be boring.
And in what way could you be boring?
Banging on talking about talking about yourself. All the things that I've mastered, right, yes, that I've caught up with. Yet attention to yourself, particularly as a woman, particular as a woman to talk about yourself was very just very judgmental. It was a very judgmental world. Well, I think for women, probably terrible. There was a lot of things when women left the room and they would say she's got a
huge ass or something. Oh yeah, it was brutal brutal, a lot of things about being stupid, A lot of a lot of prisoners.
She's so stupid, you know, a lot of stuff about that.
So you were very self conscious about being stupid or not right.
And in that regard, they also had you coming and going because you weren't deemed worthy of age or bettering yourself. No, but then you were also tired with the brush of being stupid. Yeah, so in this scenario, how do you win? You exit and pursue your own.
Well, I'm just always amazed by more women not being damaged by it. But maybe I'm just don't know them well. And I left too early. I got out very quick. I didn't like the men in that world. I didn't like the young men.
In that world.
They were very arrogant, very cocky, very clever. They'd all been to you know, big boys public schools, and they've been to Oxford and Cambridge. Yes, they had very good educations and you had none, right, I mean, and I left school at sixteen. So and you were literally just in a market for whether au had some money, because they all wanted to see a lot of them were second sons, so they were looking for rich daughters and whether you know, you were a good sword, so it was, you know, I.
Suppose not that different than a lot of people.
After the Break, Rachel explains why she left the world of glamour at nineteen and what it was really like being judged as beautiful but not bright. When you did The Thorn Birds, which I didn't realize was not shot in Australia because it was an Australian.
Story, I realized that glamour had a high premium in that world, and I thought, you know, you can actually be boring and but be glamorous and you can get away with it. You can be dumb if you're glamorous and get away with it. So I kind of recognize that and I went, right, well, then I'm not educated, I'm not the brightest in the forest. I'll be glamorous and so beautiful. I guess I never saw that, but yeah, I definitely got Well, you know, you move in a world,
but there's a lot of beauty. There's a lot of beauty, right, a lot of bety. I didn't feel exceptionally beautiful at all, but.
You were exceptional your background you, as you say, in that time where it was all like big white teeth and font here, and you were I'm going to say English rose.
Yeah, But I got out of that very quick. So by nineteen I'd moved to America. I'd gone to America, and then you were taking face value. It was much more about your own, your own efforts, your own you know, you were you were, You were credited for your own.
What you brought.
You know that.
I wasn't like the Earl of Dudley's North No, new Country.
New Country. Yes, face value. You were totally taken it face value. And I was always quite hard worker. I understood about working. I worked hard at school and I wanted to do well. I was quite quite driven. I don't know why.
I think in my character was your English. No, I wasn't good at English. No, I wasn't because I was a useless speller and things like that. No I was.
I didn't discover that writing and things till much later.
I was good at art. I was good at art, and.
I could work so I could get I was very good at putting in the work so that I could do well in the exams.
But anyway, it didn't do me much good because I know, but.
Good for being an actor, which actually requires quite a lot of work, particularly to take a lead role in one of the first mini series.
No, not what a lot of work. No, it takes you know what it takes.
It takes real guts.
I was gutsy, I was brave, and I remember going to auditions very early on and there'd be a lot of other models in the audition room and I was focused, and I was you know, I was very focused. I was doing my whatever I used to do to get myself into the place, and the others were just you know, chatting away and all of that.
So I was quite focused. And when you got cast, when you got the job, can you remember that the thorn Birds? Oh well, i'd moved. I'd spent a couple of years.
In New York, first as a model, and then I started acting and I did a couple of horror movies there and then I moved to la and I did so I've done a movie with Burt Reynolds before then. I'd done Sharky's Machine was my big break. So that put me into a big league and there was a you know, I had a lot of publicity because at the time, Burt Reynolds was the Brad Pitt of the day. So it was a big coup to get that role.
And it had to go to an unknown because the lead disappears after about first twenty minutes, and if it had been Jane Fonder or somewhere, you know, she was coming back. So I had to it had to be in And then, oh, yeah, I had that was very competitive and I basically beat out most of the women of mine, so I was quite I was obviously pretty,
you know, I had my wits about me. Then, yes, definitely had my wits about me, and I worked hard and I had guts, and those auditions were just horrifying, horrifying.
Always are that traumatic, and so then yeah, thorn Burd's was one of those ones. And I didn't want to do it at first.
I read the script and I thought, oh my god, this is ludicrous, you know, because it was all written in I am but Pantameter. Oh so it was very, very wordily, and it wasn't and it wasn't naturalistic. And also it was very it was very American, and it took itself very seriously. And I went in on the first audition and was probably quite light with it, which had served me well in Dead Men don't wear plaid that I would I done already with so I had a sort of lightness and a humor with my work
and all of that. And then I went into and I did it so I normally did. And I got like four out of ten for my audition because I wasn't taking it probably seriously enough, right, and they gave that no, I didn't get the role. And then I went, oh, I really want this role, you know, I suddenly went out I wanted and I got them to get me in again to audition again, and I changed the way
I did it. I knew that they wanted, you know, I knew they wanted sort of soap opera kind of drama in tears, yearning, yearning and all of that sort of stuff.
You know, you say derisively, but they are very powerful.
Yeah, but yeah, well you know, I mean they are, yes, But for me, they needed the complexity of a bit of light and shade. And for me it was just, you know, every scene I had someone with my father died, my brother died, he left me. It was a dirge and I think in the end probably I was a dirt. It was just that there was no light moments and I had a director who would say to me like and I'd just be stumped over yet another ghastly scene, and he said, you're a little bird.
With a broken wing, and that was my direction, you know.
So it was it wasn't really encouraging me to bring more life to it, so I would have directed it very differently.
But there you go. It was a huge success, So what am I was a.
Huge success, And not only that, but not here it was I mean, it was success here, but god, it got pillared.
Oh she got pillared who was the writer, Colin McCullough.
She got pillariedge for selling it to the Americans, And it got pillared here because I got pillaried because it should have gone to an Australian and it went to me, and then I went off with you know, mister Australia, which was even the worst scene National Treasure exactly.
So that was a sin. No. So I definitely got bollocked here, and that was hard. I got pretty.
Bad reviews, really yeah, I got pretty bad reviews. And it took me a lot, and because I was already very insecure, I really took it to heart and it cruled me.
It's like today having trolls.
Yes, because it's public annihilation, Yes, and very public annihilation. It fills you kind of with shame and oh, my god, remember my physicality. When I read the New York Review in the New York Times which said everything that Penny whatever she was called or played the younger Rachel, that the younger Maggie does right, Rachel Ward does wrong. And I remember that, and Brand said, don't read it, don't
read it, and I went, no, I have to read. Yeah, because it's IRRESISTI will never forgot it, never.
Read the comments.
And yet we're drawn to them because I think there's a quest that you know, the dal A Lama said, the worst thing about criticism is that it's true.
There's always a part of you, yeah knows it's true.
There's a part of you that for some reason, and I think particularly true in a sort of creative life, I guess because you see it on a platform where it's maybe in ordinary life.
In normally life you don't see it so much.
But there's a part of you that craves that dagger to the to the hearsh.
And also I was hanging in La with a very with a quite a with a quite up themselves crowd, you know. They art was very serious to them, and proper films were serious to them, right, And I was in this soap opera, so it was like I had definitely stepped down. So it was so ridiculous. At a time when I should have been celebrating the success of it, I was hiding.
I just I just hid. I remember when it came out, Brian and I were in Bathist.
And because he was doing a yeah, I think we were in Bathist or somewhere way out back, and we were in this motel doing while he was doing a film there. And I remember the photographers and the press all at the windows, and I was just mortified by the exposure of being in the thorn Birds and the fact that I'd sort of felt pillaried and I felt like the trolls that had come down, And at a time when I should have been absolutely celebrating it, I was hiding with shame.
So at this point you had fallen in love with Brian Brown, which was part.
Of your definitely my kicking, kicking my life.
That's accident that I married the most working class boy I could find.
Yes, in a complete kind of rejection of where you had come from.
How did your connection happen? It happened on set. Yeah. Was it an.
Instant thing or was it I like this alaraken or something about his rock solid.
Certainty all of that, all of that.
It was definitely hot. He was definitely hot and hot, and he was cocky. You know, he was very cocky, and he was you know what it was. He was supremely confident and he had such faith in himself.
And I wanted that.
I just saw God, I'd love that to be so sure about everything, so sure about his politics, He was so sure about his his values, values, he was sure about his morality. I had none of that. I grew up in such a sort of funny, funny, immoral world. I mean it was sort of Epstein esque clear in any way. You know, you were definitely being groomed to be a commodity commodity. Yeah, so when he came up, he represented something so different and he definitely knew what
was right or wrong. And definitely in Hollywood, you know, there is no writer or you know, it's very cutthroat.
It's ambitious.
People will do anything to get what they want and where they want, and so to also hold on to values at that time and to behave well, you know, according to values and you know what tiny bit of morality I had was was difficult and so I just yeah, I saw this rock who knew had.
I've never met a person more confident.
Confident enough also to pursue you yeah, ut yeah yeah, posh girl, yeah, posh girl, yeah, lay in the dare here yeah yeah.
And he yeah, I dare anyway it was. And then to bring you here or you came here, yeah, I.
Mean I came here, and I, you know, because I were not It was not attached to England. I was not attached to being to what I had experienced. And I loved England passionately, but I didn't like that world.
I didn't like. I sort of knew very soon that I was very uncomfortable.
In and also being I didn't like being a posh girl. It was like every villain was a was a poshee, you know, every every idiot. It was a very cold person, every cold it was a very silly idiot who was a foe whah voice was a poshee. And I felt very tainted by that, and I didn't want to be a posh It was also a time when you know, it was very much the working class thing was coming.
You know, it was very it was you know, it was Alan Bates, it was Oliver Reid, it was Terrence Stamp, it was Michael Caine, it was you know, I can't even think of the girls now, but they weren't posh girls. They were all you know, middle class or working class girls. And as as a model to everybody was you know, it was an anomaly to be a posh girl.
It's sort of not now, but no, it's not. They've all in fla. But when I was, it was all.
My timing was incredibly bad because it was sort of like at a time when the poshies were being maligned or I felt they were, or just being ridiculed quite rightly.
I mean, at the time it was well social, social movement and social.
That's right, definitely, And when I came here it was very much also about Australia finding its own voice and kicking out the voice of the you know, the English and here come I come. You know, absolutely, you know, basically a throwback to the old days, to the colonial days. So that became you know, it's sort of subconscious, but I think it was, you know, it was not the right time for me to be here as far as working.
So when I got here, I really hard to get work for me, and because rightly Australia was very much finding it. You know, it's Mura's wedding. It was Crocodile Dundee, it was breaking morn. It was my brilliant career, it was all. It wasn't the colonial stuff, and I suppose my brilliant career was.
But again, you know, it was a very It was a girl. She was the she was the underclass in that relationship. Yes, and then so you had babies pretty quickly.
Yes, I knew I didn't want to be in Hollywood. I knew it was the same thing. I was repeating the same thing when they where It was also Hollywood had changed, you know. It was interesting going to see his Cliff the other day because it is a real We don't do romance, big romantic films anymore.
And that's why I wanted to be an actress.
I think, because I was just so taken by the romance of those you know, far from the madding crowd, doctor Shafargobush, Cassidy and the Sun. You know, there's deeply romantic films where the women were sort of, you know, so romantic thunder and cross deserts on apoll and they were strong and decent. And I got to Hollywood and
it was suddenly about sex. It was all about getting you in the red bathing suit and getting as much breast out as possible, full endless talk about in contracts about full frontal nudity or not, you know, and suddenly everything became sexualized, did you rather than romanticized?
Did you?
No?
I didn't.
I didn't, And I had the first thing I ever did I did. I was it did have a shower scene and I had drawn pen all around my breath because so they couldn't shoot it. But I remember they enlarged the print so that, you know, because it was obviously it was in a format that cut out my breast, but in the actual film it was wider. So Playboy,
I think, took the wider print. And I remember being at well Beach one day and there was a knock on the door and there was a photographer and a journalist saying how do you feel about having having nudity? And Playboy And that was the first time I knew about it or anything, and they'd obviously taken the things that I'd drawn across, run my breast off, you know, and they're all deep humiliating those moments, and you know, in.
Retrospect, are they still No?
No, now I wish I'd been less precious about it.
Take it off. Yeah, you've got a moment in the sun. Yes, I don't know.
No, I mean, you know, you're so sensitive at that age. You become a tough old boot, you know, by the time you get to my age, and those things don't matter. But you just go why didn't I just you know, rip it up and just you know, take advantage of that moment.
But you don't have that perspective. No, And there is something about wisdom.
Yeah, and there's no one there to say, well, actually, funny enough, my mother was there to say, don't take it all so seriously, darling, you know, but of course that was just rude.
Coming up.
Rachel discovers the impact her move to Australia head on her mother. Was she enjoying your success and when you move to Australia, was she?
How did that play with her?
No?
She, you know, I think it's awful when your children moved to the other side of the world. No, she was.
Devastated by it. Did she come here, Yeah, she did a lot.
She did a lot, and she was a great mum later on, and I think she realized what she'd missed, and she and she didn't have a close relationship with her other two at all, and she did with me, but and then I was the one that moved to the other side of the world. So yeah, yeah, you know, horrible for her. But did she know she was sort
of a little bit. I remember not not long before she died, she said there was we were at a dinner or something and a man was playing paying me more attention than her, and I remember her saying, rather loudly to him, we can't all be movie stars. So she was definitely sort of irritated by it. But yeah, I guess she She wasn't. She wasn't someone who put herself out that particularly, so she didn't and she thought
it was slightly vulgar. I think the whole thing again, you know, the talking about yourself doing this sort of thing, you know.
But also enjoyed it. Did she enjoy being, you know, slightly disgusted by it.
No, she was called La bruta Mamma Da Maggie in Italy, which was the brute of the mother of Meggie, because you know, I, you know, people.
Asked me about my upbringing very early, and it was.
It was a strange one when you neglect, when you spoke so frankly about your upbringing. How did that resonate with her or did she brush it off? Or do you think that she self reflected?
Do I think she's self reflected. I think she thought I was making a lot out of nothing, right, yes, which is that she never she never moved outside her class. She never had. She stayed very very close in that world. So she never was aware of the sort of the sort of disdain, the ridicule. She never felt embarrassed by being an elite. She never felt self conscious about being elite.
She sort of neither did my sister. I remember being in the chauffeur's car following the school bus home, and my friend was on the school bus and they were all with a gang of kids at the back of the bus or jeering and laughing, and because we were in and in fact her father was driving the car, and I remember being so mortified by the idea, and I remember hiding under the front seats so that, you know, I couldn't be seen. I was very self conscious about
being different. And my sister had no problem with it at all. She was just sitting up with the back and I don't know why I was sensitive to it.
Well, that's unusual as well, because that's exactly how establishment works, is that people are very happy to buy into establishment because that's how the structure works.
But you had this, I don't know this.
I had a sort of inverted synobism. I didn't want to you know, it's like I mean to this very day. Brian is very proud of being a working class hero. You know, he will drop out a hat the fact that his mother made dedarning for a living. You know, there is something very gallant and heroic about coming up from you know, nowhere and making something of yourself.
If you come if you make.
A success for yourself and you've come from a privileged background, it's really considered, Well, you didn't have to do much, did you, Not much of a journey for.
You, Yeah, silverspoon, silver spoon, And also a sort of sense that you were a bit soulless, that not really suffering gave you any kind of soul.
And I don't know where I get these ideas from, but you know.
I think it was what you read, and it was just really subconscious, weird stuff and I just did not like being an elite. And I still feel uncomfortable with that. I mean, I'm much more able to talk about it because I think it's kind of a fascinating place to come from, and because I think you can throw a light on what that hose, how those elites are made, why we've got into this Epstein situation, you know, what
makes people like that? I mean, I remember my father had He was a conservative voter, and he had no care about really how society functioned. He wanted to make sure that his money was looked after, and that he maintained his privileges, and that he hung with his privileged cohouts.
And that his poached eggs already when he wanted never considered it, you know, never.
Yeah, he was snobby, and it was for me very clearly. I mean, I think it was a lot to do with my friend who was the chauffeur's daughter, who would make fun of me as being posh.
What was her name? She was called Sarah hooper Ah. Do you still see Sarah Hooper. She died, did she.
Yes, But she was such an influence and she was a bit older than me, and she we had great riding adventures, and she would, you know, come riding with me. And she was a forceful, a force of nature, and she was a very dear friend. But only for those very formative years, you know. And then I went to boarding school and she went to the local grammar school and we went our different ways.
So when you were in Australia, and it's funny that you talk about elite, because then through the dint of your husband's work and your work, you became part of kind of a cultural elite, which is different, more of a meritocracy, I guess.
And then so.
You also could have had just this kind of charmed, easy life life in Sydney with all its beauties and whatever and doors opening and.
Then and I did, Yes, you did, yeah, And it was you know, fantastic, fantastic.
But you still had a yearning in you. Yes, I did have a yearning in me.
I've always been kind of unsettled and looking for purpose and something. I'm the kind of person who loves to climb very high precipices, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of the you know, the challenge and the conquest and getting there. So I was very you know, I was recognized that my acting career was done once I came here, and I recognized there really wasn't a place for me really here, and I knew I had
to change careers. So I went back to university and I did a communications degree, and I thought, well, I would start writing, and I really found my love of writing. And then in the end then I had small children, so that was very hard for me to sort of take that seriously. And then I started, you know, I'd read a lot of scripts, and so I started writing scripts.
And then I you know, write Palm Beach.
Yes, well, and I wrote Beautiful Kate, and I wrote all my short films that I did before that. So yeah, I you know, that was a big mountain to climb, to change those, to change careers, to know when it's over.
I was quite good at knowing.
This one is done, my use by date is over here, I've got to move.
Get off the part. Yeah, I was quite good at that. I reckoned. I was always slightly ahead of my cohorts. In like having.
Moved first sniffed the bree I sniffed the breeze.
That was a good one, Yeah, sniffed the breeze. And so I then so.
I certainly did that as a model, and I certainly did that. When I came here. My you know, acting career was done. I went back to America quite a bit and did still did work over there, so but I didn't really work here at all. So I still had a few years when the kids were young, when I was going over to America and doing you know, television HBO, and I did against all odds.
I did against all arts actually before I came here.
And then the minute you the minute you leave Hollywood, someone takes your place very quickly. So I lost any kind of cashet I had by coming here and marrying Brian and being here and having kids and all that. That went very quickly. And then I sort of found myself.
You know, Brian was working a lot. I was here, I was alone, not didn't have any I didn't know anybody here, and we were living up in the Northern Beaches, which was beautiful but lonely, and Brian was working a lot and away a lot, so that was a hard time. And then I went to uts and I loved that, and I started writing. And then I did a Tropfest film and I loved it. I did it with the
kids at school. I did it because my kids school wanted to do it in years five six they wanted to do a trop fast, so I did it with them, and of course they got absolutely bored of it in about five seconds, and I was sort of alad you didn't.
And I didn't.
I saw the pres this is great and yeah, So then I became obsessed about doing that.
So that was another extension of your creative self. And then there's a massive pivot born about by the twenty nineteen fires, the catastrophic fires, because you, through your family life.
Had had this farm. Yep, that was like an escape for the family. It feels very unnatural.
Suddenly this conversation I want to know about your life. I mean, it's yeah, it's very It's funny doing interviews because it is very one sided.
You suddenly feel like this is ridiculous. Now what is he doing?
You? Like this would be a ten parter. This really is like every every byway and culder Sack is filled with riches.
I think yeah, there's had certainly been some big U turns or yeaes. Yeah, so the and you know then I got into the directing or do you want to talk about the farm?
Yeah, I want to talk about the farm, okay, because then I also want to talk about your immersion in this new world and sustainability of farming and regenerative farming, which I think, once again you were ahead of the curve on I think.
Yeah, I hope, so, I hope. So anyway, yes, well I had a farm. Very quickly we got a farm. We were filming something something called The Good Wife up in the mid North Coast and Brian and I very much fell in love with everything about it, and we just did one of those things. We were young and had enough money to buy a little farm and we just didn't think about it. And it was way too far away from Sydney and took six bloody hours to get there.
So it was stupid, right, it was sort of stupid.
But for me, the country was very evocative of my childhood country. So it was sort of roaring, rolling hills, quite quite a small little valley, right, It was a sort of didn't have that wild quite the wildness and the scale of most Australian stuff that parched. No, it wasn't parched, it was green. It was and for me it definitely spoke to my heart somehow. Anyway, we got that and we just had it as a we didn't you know, it was you know, going back to England.
We did go back to England quite a bit, but it's a big schleap when you've got small children, yes, And we didn't want to do that, and we didn't really want to go to Bali or whatever around here. So we got a place so that we could go every holidays. We didn't go overseas every holidays. We went to the farm. And it was a small farm at that stage, and so the kids grew up really going
every holidays to the farm. And because I'd grown up in the country and I was pretty good with horses and things like that, we got horses and just had.
A wonderful, wonderful holiday. But load of is not a farmer not do.
There is beautiful Docco called Rachel's Farm. Yes, very beautiful and beautiful because I think if you think about the quest, you know what our purpose as humans always to find another aspect of ourselves to roll into.
And they're hard, those things because you know when changes. You know, I knew when my film career was over. I knew when my directing career was over, and it was heartbreaking.
Transitions are hard, Oh god, they're hard, Yes, really hard.
And I know when you say union was a job you had missed out on, specifically.
Job seven years of not being able to get work right weirdly after, I mean, you know, of see one feels. I mean, I felt I had a lot to offer and I was pretty good at it and I made some you know, terrific stuff. But I think everybody probably feels like that, and I think I probably wasn't as
good as I probably felt that I was. But you know, and at the end, you have just a lot of drawers full of scripts and they haven't gone anywhere, and you've you know, there's so much work goes into trying to get a project up, you know, because they're expensive, and there's it's very competitive and there's always somebody new
coming up. And I did get into the directing kind of late, and I was known as an actor, so to change that mantle was hard, and it wasn't necessarily taken as seriously as it could have been as if I'd started as a director and gone to film.
School and yes, had that pedigree or that had that degree.
People always a little bit skeptical, Oh well, she'll have a little play and then she does it.
Also, because you were married to Brian Brown, do you think or not so much. I think she's always to blame. Let's blame him.
No, he was always absolutely fantastic because he produced a lot of them too.
But I'm in externally.
Do you think there was always a thing of that you don't necessarily need the job or.
I don't know, I did? You know?
It's so fickle, it's so who's in favor and who's not, and who you want, who people want to work with, And it's very copycat. You know, suddenly somebody becomes hot and everybody wants to work with them, and literally a week later they're out of fashion or they've done their
dash and it's somebody new. And you spend a lot of time and a lot of energy getting to a place where you can be responsible for a budget and to tell a story, and suddenly it's gone and it doesn't matter what you do, it's just gone.
And also the industry is very small.
So if you make a bit of a mistake on something, or you don't do as well as you thought you should, you know it's over.
It is over.
And so you you obviously have no trouble as you said you like to to, you know, scale a pinnacle time and energy. You were like, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to become a farmer.
Yeah that was that was pretty recently.
Yes, that was pretty recently then that I had basically a big breakdown.
I've always had a bit of mental health issue. Really. Yeah.
It's funny because you seem, I mean externally when I see you really do, and maybe it's because you're very poised and you have beautiful posture, but it's.
Hard to imagine you crumbled. Yeah, and you were crumbled.
Yes, I've been crumbled a few times. A few times. I've had crumbles, and I've been on antipressants for a long time, right, And I am.
Deeply grateful to them because it was I was.
Yeah, I'm someone who's undone unravels quite easily. Wow, quite a lot. And it comes from you know, I think in the end this what does it come from?
I think it's self esteem.
I think it's not liking yourself enough. I don't know what it is, but it's it's in there and it will never really go.
I just did. I did the Adelaide Fringe.
Festival the day before the night before last, and I had to host it and I was the MC and stuff and I'm so anxious, and so the chatter in my head was just screaming, You're going to screw this up. You're going to You're not going to know your lines, You're going to bugger it all up, you know. And there were lots of young I was on the sort of it was a it was a farming stories, a love story, and it was basically other farmers talking about their experiences.
And this and that.
And they were younger than me, and they were farmers. They weren't performing, and they were fine. They were really excited about it, and they felt really proud of what they'd done. And I was sort of still, you know, deeply insecure about being able to pull it off, and you know, and I just I find I find this quite easy because I do feel like we're having a chat.
But I find anything where there are expectations and it's not it's not feeling like I'm going to make a fool of myself in front of other people.
It's a fool for me. It's me not living up to the standards that I have.
And that's that which is the critical voice that was from my beginning of like, oh she's a bore, she's stupid, she's got a big bum.
You know, it was those those things very early on. Never leave you.
And yet it doesn't matter how many times you get the external affirmation that what you're doing is great because the internal I know.
And all of a sudden, I've had such lovely feeds back from all of that thing. When I was pit by the trolls about looking at what is.
Actually paining me now?
To think when you have said that you have this, you know, this internal struggle with yourself, my thought was, oh fuck.
When people said those.
Did not minds, did not mind at all, because no, didn't care.
Now why didn't come Number one?
I I don't have expectations about my appearance now, so what so I looked like, you know, like I've been like a farm or I come out of you know, like I haven't looked in the mirror for a what.
I don't care if people have put a post about the farm, so it's about it was. It was related to the thanking.
With people thanking my neighbors that Christmas, who's been so great, and how I couldn't do it all without them, you know, because they always jump in and you have this wonderful community of people who you're all connected to, and they communities and I was just thanking them and I didn't think really, I just and also I never have my camera, you know, I just do it myself and I don't really put touch thing into it. And I was basically
just thanking them anyway. Yeah, must be quite a shock for people.
Who know me. I've done lots of them. I don't know what. Oh, I know because I went gray, that's right. Oh, that's right. I let the gray go right. Yeah. And I was the first time.
Yes, and I've done you know, yes, and I probably and then the film that you know, I had lighting and it was nice sliding and I didn't look too wretched, I suppose in Rachel's Farm, which was only four years ago.
When did you realize.
That that you'd.
Had quite an impact?
Like did you see the comments? You don't strike me as someone who's on your.
Phone a lot.
No, I mean I might have to be on my phone a bit because I've got this new business. So I'm trying to you know, selling your Not only I'm an advocate, I'm an advocate for regenerative farming now. So I need to be on social media and I need be talking about the issues about what is going on with small family farms, and I need to talk about how, you know, the tiny percent of the farmers get for
their prodi produce, and how we're killing them. And you know, sometimes that takes an outsider to see have that perspective and I and I do feel that is my path for now. And I know I've got to, you know, step into my noncomfort zone to do that, but I really don't care about how I'm looking in that. That's not what I don't think anybody when you put out.
That post, what was the first comment that you saw where you went, oh, can you remember?
Well?
I think I first saw people coming to my defense first, and I went on, what are they talking about? And then I saw some of the other ones, and no, I really just went, oh, you poor thing.
You know, you are really afraid of aging.
I'm not afraid of aging, and I feel better now than you know, as an older person than I did. Yeah, the expectations of so many things, your sexuality, your physicality, everything has gone of that.
It's such a relief. You put up a really lovely post actually where you.
Said, where you spoke about the beauty and of aging and.
The myriad of benefits that came that.
You said, it's not anything to be frightened off, and yet people are obviously frightened of it. Why do you think you in particular, why do you think that happened? Because it's like you said, You've put up lots of posts of yourself. You've never been you know, you're not having hair and makeup before you go out in the farm, So it's not Why do.
You think people were so affected? I think I don't think it was really about me.
I think I was a catalyst for a conversation that people were wanting to have and they hadn't been antunity as clear I suppose. So somebody's suddenly attacking me and I'm a farmer, so i'm you know, why should I look at a standard? And I think people have a fear of getting older because women become very invisible as they get older, yes, and if they, you know, aren't able to rest on the glory of their youth and their beauty and their you know, their sexuality, who are they?
Where are they? And I think you know, definitely see that it's a law.
Of diminishing returns too, because you cannot and there's you know, a thousand kind of you know, wrong way turn back examples of people who have tried to hang on to that.
Yeah, And I think women in our own age are completely understanding of it, and you don't disappear for them. And women should never a fear that, you know, a huge cohort of your peers are never going to go because they're always interested in your path like I am in other women of my age. You know, I'm riveted to know how they're navigating it, how they're how they're doing it, you know what they're doing, and I mean,
the only thing is doing it silently. But you know, a lot of us don't need to be shouting about it. You know, we're looking for peace, and we're looking for connections, and we're looking for our family, and we're looking out for our family. We don't need to be shouting for the rooftops I think men still go on beating their chests until the cows come home. But I think, you know, a lot of women are just doing their stuff, being very productive, but without shouting about it.
And I wonder, I think we lose a bit of.
Power from that, because we all know that, you know, media attention is power, and I think that it is harder for them to get traction when they want to promote something or they want to say something, and they want to do something because they just don't have the the well, they don't have the media space, and they don't really four they don't really have a psychic space out there. Yes, but I think a lot of them don't care. I mean I often used to think why
do women do it? Because when I was younger, and I was thinking, well, I'm still going to be, you know, jumping on tables when I'm ninety, and you go and why do they let themselves dispre And I think it's because you get to a point where you don't want it.
Yes, you're happy to release it. You're happy to release such this is a thing, so you were not affected.
But in my experience, also you know, working in the public eye, often people who love you are more affected on your behalf.
So how was your husband?
How was I saw your daughter came, yes, yeah, how was that for them?
You know, Brian doesn't take anything very seriously, so he was probably just laughing and he knew I wouldn't take it seriously too.
I mean it was I was hardly.
He's seen me on the floor, he's seen me killed up, and yeah, well that's what he's seen. But he knows that that's not my achilles heel right, he knows that that wouldn't undo me. And my daughter was just sort of like, well, she's very much on social media and she's very you know, she's an influencer, so she does
and she's brilliant at it. Yes, she does the most amazing post for the good farm shops and she just went, I think she just knows such a different part of me, you know, such a thing that again I think as a younger woman, she went, how dare you attack someone who's doing so much, who's so vibrant, who's so connected, and did a how dare you diminish them just because they haven't done their hair and makeup?
And I think, very interesting thing that you have given your daughters and your son, isn't it as opposed to what you had.
So your daughter's not in the feetal position. No, you've done that as a mother. Yes, perhaps amazing, I hope.
So. No, they're not in fetal positions now yet. Now my daughters certainly aren't. Actually none of them are. They're very confident, very very comfortable in their own skin. Yeah, they've got Brian's confidence, nearly all of them. My oldest daughter is slightly more sensitive. I mean they're all sensitive, but I.
Mean she's more.
She's not someone who wants to draw attention to herself and she's not going to be in the live life no, so she's more, she's shyer.
I have a theory about the impact that you made with your just videoing yourself songs, makeup, and it's that I think very few people are given, as I said earlier, the gift of the gods, which.
Is this rare beauty, thank you, like rare, and there are very few women who willingly step aside from it.
And most women are like at some.
Level, maybe not not actively, but it's just exists in you. Oh if I had that beauty, that would be like the ultimate prize. And to see someone who has that beauty and who's opted to not.
But you know, if you're given that gift that it's not worth very much.
Not everyone who's given that gift knows that.
It's not yours. It's the gift from the gods. Yes, you have not earned it, So it becomes difficult because you are always that's supposed to be enough. So it's and you don't ever feel like I did nothing for this. I just happened to have the lovely mother who you know, and I had some good genes. I would rather have been given the gift of music, or the gift of being good at maths or good at you know. So the achievement, achievement gift something that I've worked hard for
that I've used my guts myself, you know. That's why anything that I did for myself I had pride of. But anything that was hinged on, that that hung on that never gave me very much satisfaction. And the sooner I could get rid of it, the better. The sooner I could get satisfaction from being a director or being a farmer, or anything that had nothing to do with being in front of a camera or using your looks for advantage.
That's interesting because.
And I think a lot of a lot of women have been given the gift of the gods would feel that that is, it feels unearned, the concentration on what is superficial, whereas what you've done is is literally and metaphorically made a connection with the earth, groundedness, groundedness.
It's really interesting because you see it in the farm, docco in Rangel's farm.
You seed. It surprised me. You said I used to be thin skinned. Do you remember something that. Yes, I've always been quite thin skinned.
And now you said your connection with the land and the farm and what you're doing, like changing the life.
Of the land. Yeah, I can't remember. I did say I was thin skin, but I can't remember. If I I'm not.
Scars definitely make you tougher going life, you know, going through life, you just do get I remember that, and I look at my grandkids and I go, their love is so fluid, you know, what they're experiencing. Their emotions are so fluid. You know, they're so open and vulnerable, susceptible to deep passions, to deep loves and lights it's always hate love, you know, it's so extreme. I think when you get older, it becomes much more in control. Yeah,
I definitely feel like I'm more robust. I'm more resilient, and which is what I'm trying to make my land.
Obviously, there is more robust.
You feel that it's a lot of land is very vulnerable because it's been mistreated. It doesn't have cover on it. It's not it's not it's not loved enough, you know. In a way, it's it doesn't have the resilience and the and the robustness that we need for it to function properly. Yes, so in a way, I've got that resilience, the resilience and all of.
That to function properly.
I have to thank you for your advocacy in this area because I've relatively recently as well, started buying our meat from a small farmer that I drive past in South Gippsland in Victoria, and he had a sign on his gate and now he delivers to the city once a month.
Beautiful guy, And that's so good to hear.
There are so many I was reading a stat the other day on the small farms that have disappeared in America one hundred and eighty thousand squat farms over the last I E is like crazy.
Yeah, much more.
There used to be three hundred and eighty million cattle or livestock in America and now there's like thirty eight million or something.
I mean, the.
Reduction in their farming has been extraordinary, and basically it's because they've just ruined their country and so it's it's eroding,
the top soil has gone. They've poisoned it with so much glypher say that you know, they had this thing now where they've realized that between Baton Rouge and New Orleans it's now called cancer Alley because there's so much glypha say it has been sprayed on the fields up in you know, like Nebraska, in all that big farming land, and it all goes into the river system and it all comes down the river system and it's in the rain, and it's in the clouds, and it's in our hair.
It is everywhere, and you know, we need to be really addressing this.
And yeah, I think it's a space that. I mean, it wasn't.
Until I got into the farming thing on a thing because yes, I was ramped up with fear about what we were doing to the country to climate wise, I was definitely very susceptible to that, and I felt very impotent to do anything other than doing a bit of recycling. And yet I felt, why aren't we doing more? We've got to be doing so much more. So I felt, you know, not only in the end did I have power. In the fact I was filmmaker. I could tell this story.
I could tell the story a Regen which I wanted to do with the region farmers, but then was talked in the fact note has to be your story of discovery, which was a very good thing, and the producer Tina Dalton was the one who pushed me there.
I was a.
Farmer, so I could change my farm, you know, I could change the way I farmed from just being a conventional farmer to really paying attention to looking after my soil and my lad.
And I was a consumer.
I could really make sure that my values about climate and being and being an environmentalist and caring about what was going on with the water and our table, our water table and our soil, I could change that around just my small thing also, and I could understand that to put my values those values, I could buy according to my values of being an environmentalist.
Rachel Ward, God, I love you Oh, thanks, thank you.
I can't believe I spent so much time banging on about the early days.
But it's interesting the journey of how one comes to where they are. Sometimes you can only recognize it by turning to look back and hopefully not turning into a pillar of salt.
Thanks for being such a great year, and I'll have to catch up with your life right now.
Wow.
What struck me most about this conversation is how matter of fact Rachel is about endings. There is something deeply radical about a woman who refuses to cling to the glory of youth, who refuses to pretend she isn't aging, who refuses to stay where she no longer feels she belongs and instead chooses the farm, the dirt, the long view. Thank you so much for listening to No Filter. The executive producer of No Filter is bre Player. The assistant
producer is Coco Levine. Audio production by Jacob Brown and video editing by Josh Green. I am your host, Kate Lanebrook. I can't wait to see you next Monday. Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast is recorded on