Simon Burke has been a working performer since he was a freshly minted teenager, and retains the title of the youngest person ever to win a five Best Actor Award for his role in Fred Skepsey's iconic film The Devil's Playground. When I was mixing up rocket fuel from my mum's out of date booze collection, he was on set delivering
incredible and intuitive performances. I've always loved looking at this man's face, a face I've seen with pleasing regularity on my small screen in play School, The Sullivan's Country Practice, Water Rats Rake, and on stage in Sound of Music Chicago, Ley Miz and most recently, of course, Mulan Rouge. The list is seemingly endless, as is the breadth of this man's talent. Chrissy Casters, please meet the magnificent Simon Burke.
Thank you so much. Chrissy, Hey, I've got something to admit that. That's a beautiful introduction. Thank you. But I was for many, many, many men years, I think maybe forty years, the youngest ever recipient of the Actor Award for Best Actor. And then that absolutely incredible little kid from Lyon. I think it's sunny power. But remember that beautiful film in the cole Keipman.
Yes, I loved it.
I mean that was I mean it was a great film and that kid's performance was astonishing and he rightly won the award I think in twenty seventeen.
And ended your reign and my reign.
A little bastard. Take him out, Yeah, Oh don't worry, he'll never again.
What a little upstart eight years old?
What the yeah? I thought thirteen was good.
Thirteen. It's very impressive, Sonny.
That's sun nice for you to do that.
You know, how many roles did you do before Devil's Playground?
I had done a couple of things. I was always interested in being an actor, like from when I was well, from when Uncobata was always a performing and one of those kids that always wants to do it. Yeah, there weren't that many opportunities around, you know, back in the
back in the dark ages when I grew up. Actually, when I was in year six, my best mate at school was this kid, and he was one of those kids that you know, like the sort of chubby kids that does all the all the commercials and the like. But wasn't a snapback a kid at start that's it wasn't that but something like that. Yeah, I was really kind of jealous of him, and I remember one day I I bribed him to give me his agent's phone number.
Wow, and the rest is history history.
So I signed up with this kids agency. I did a couple. I did a couple of Crawford came down in Melbourne, my first time ever in a plank because I'm a Sydney boy. I came down melmoured a couple of Crawford's things, did a couple of ads that I actually had done a play.
Well, and you did this all off your own bat at grade six.
Yeah, my parents weren't into it at all. They were just in fact, my mom still says to me, you know, like you should really think about something else, something.
To fall back on. Oh my god, Simon.
But then just out of the blue, like I audition for Fred Skeepsky and his wife, who was the casting direger at the time, Four Devil's Playground, and yeah, I guess my whole life changed from there.
How long has it been since you've seen that film?
A really really long time?
You must watch it again. I saw it recently and you, oh my god, I could weep just thinking about it. You are so extraordinary.
It's a beautiful film. It's what I think is interesting about the film is that it's because it's set in a Catholic seminary in the nineteen fifties and there's you know, teenagers in it coming of age film and priests. People assume it's a film about clergy abuse, which it absolutely isn't.
Not that that isn't a subject that you know, hasn't should be talked about, but it's more kind of like a kid sort of at puberty, but he just happens to be trying to be a priest, learn how to be a priest, and so it's kind of gentle and funny and it's full of humanity. And the interesting thing about it is that Fred Skeepsy, who wrote, under directed and produced the film, he was That was his first feature film. He was in advertising before that. Yeah, Melbourne boy.
Probably writing things like it wasn't a stack back kid at staff.
I think he did. Yeah, it was his. It was his story of when he was in the fifties, a kid in had a vocation to be a priest, but you know, just kept thinking about girls and didn't happen.
So you've been working a long time, longer than most people, because you know you started as a child. Are you tired of working?
No, not at all, not even in the very slightest. In fact, this year twenty twenty four, it's crazy to believe this, but twenty twenty four is will be the fiftieth on Earth, fiftieth anniversary of my first professional stage appearance, which is kind of crazy.
What was your first professional stage appearance?
I did a play. There's athetical Belois Street Theater here in Sydney, and that used to be called the Nimrod Theater and it was a play there when I was twelve, playing this troubled Foster kid. And you know, Peter Carroll was in it, Robin Nevan was in it. Wow, Maggie Danny it was. It was pretty cool. So it's weird to think that I've been going that long.
Child actors, child actors, and you know, child performers in general are a interesting breed. I think there's not too many of them around, and I think a lot of people assume that if you were able to have it another way, you would have Is that true for you or is your love of acting just something that started early, and it's been the right thing.
I think it's kind of a bit of both. I think I certainly had a vocation.
Well, it was like a compulsion. It was like you were born to do this.
I think, yeah, I'm not terribly kind of spiritual, but I did have this experience when I was about eight or nine years old. Lady who lived next door to us was making costumes for this kid's play up in we grew up in Darlinghurst, in the Inner City, and she said, oh, do you want to help me take these costumes up? And like big bags, you know, garbage
bag sort of stuff. Went to this tiny little theater where and I'd never been inside a theater when it was dark before, when there was in a show on and we're in the auditorium, tiny little place, and she was having a chat to the woman who's directing it. I was just kid walking around. I just walked down towards the stage and I walked up on the steps onto the stage, and I can remember it as clear as that I just had this feeling in that I said,
this is where I want to be. And I said, I hope what if she asked me to be in the play what does she asked me to play, And from the back of the theater, this lady said, you look about the riot height to be rowboy. Who's the boy robot in our play? Would you like to be in our player? Gods? Maybe I was like doing a triple times that was it? That was it? Yeah?
And how old were you? Eight?
Eight or nine? Yeah? So that was in an amateur theater thing. But I mean my first professional thing was a few years later when I was twelve, double digits.
I've got a friend, a close friend, who was also a child actor, yep, and she's very quick to discourage anybody from following that path. What would you say to a child who feels the compulsion that you felt, Oh.
For goodness sake, just do what you love, do what your dream for. I would be very quick to discourage parents to push their kids. My parents. I think that's probably why I stuck with it, because my parents, they weren't disapproving, but they just thought, you know, I come from a pretty humble beginning. So neither of my parents finished high school, and I was actually quite good at school, and I think they were very keen for me to be academic or what.
Did they want you to do? What would have made them proud at that time?
So I'm talking to Zara about this. I'm just my favorite shirt and it keeps popping open.
But you know that's the look though. Just just just live with it. Well, just you know, imagine that you're Errol Flynn right now.
And everything's fine. I think at the time they would have liked me to have used my brain, because I do love using my brain and you don't. And your job as a performer is to use your heart and your instinct. That's just so much your brain. And I think that's probably why, you know, in the last few years, I've moved, you know, into a bit of producing and and and you know my stuff with I was president of Equity for a number of years, so I but I sort of feel like as an actor, there's another
buttons coming under you're basically naked as an actor. It's sometimes a curse to overthink things. And so often when I'm on stage, particularly, I find myself in a place where I'm just on my instinct, I'm just on my heart, I'm just on my feelings, and that's kind of a really safe place, in a funny sort of way because I do. I'm I'm someone who likes to overthink things and generally, yeah.
Do you think your instincts are ever wrong?
In life? Years?
Really on stage?
Really, And that's the nice thing about doing it for a while, you know, when you get to a certain age, and particularly the role I've been playing in Moulin Rouge, which I'm just about to come to the end of almost three years I've doing it.
Yeah, I was going to say, it's been about thirty years since you've been in that role.
Here. When we finish, it will be eight hundred performances exactly, which is it's extraordinary, doesn't never done, and.
Your schedule is extraordinary.
It's full on. But my particular responsibility in that show is not just with the people on stage, but I'm also kind of a to the show, and it's my responsibility to make sure the audience has a good time. So my show is different every night because the audience is different every night and I'm actually talking to them. But so I rely on my instinct awfully. It's not like doing stand up because I can't do deviate from
the script at all. Yes, I have to use the lines that I have to make them feel spontaneous, like they've never been said before. That's yeah, I think my insixs are. It's nice to be at a place where you can trust your instincts and no. Last night, oh my god, I had this great, being massive note at the end of the encore, like this goes forever.
Can you do a little bit of a note? It's just one little bit, just something?
Well, I probably could, because what I do is I do this great long note that goes forever and ever. It's really showing off and the audience starts according through it, and just at the end of it. Last night I cracked and normally like, you know, that's a mortifying moment, but I just went oops, and then the audience laughed and then the other and you're just like, so there, Yeah, you get to do some stick after a while, you know.
Of course, of course, Starvin Work. We've grown up with you on play school, we know you very very well. Is there something about you that perhaps we do not know?
Wow, there's a lot of things about me that were like all of us doing a real secret. I had a very strange experience a few years ago where I was tryned buy someone in a four hour who I've never seen before. And she's very friendly and talking to me and said, you know, it's been ages since we've seen each other. You remember meeting me, don't you? And I went, yeah, of course, you don't like you do because you don't want to be a you know, offend
of someone. It's a mistake on the make again. And she said, well, you know, remember we met that night or those years ago. And said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I said, and we had that night together. I went yeah, And she said, well you need to know that we that we have a child what And that was patently not true because I hadn't seen her before and certainly had been with her anyway, Like a long story, it got a little bit weird. I just thought that was kind of crazy.
Sort of a photo of this child.
No, no, she just said, I do remember saying to her, look, you know, you know, like you know I'm gay, don't you said? That's what you said to me that night. So it's like everything was coming.
You had never seen this woman, seen.
This person before in my life, and wow, So it was a bit odd, and it was at quite a public event, and so I just kind of forgot about it. But I was a bit unnerved by it.
Yes, I can imagine you were.
Four months later, I'm sitting in a rehearsal room raheasing something and it was here in Melbourne, and my mail had been said to sitting going through my mail, you know, while other people up on stage and well America Express Bill, oh yeah, yeah, NAB Statement, Department of Farm Child Services and and there's a demand for child support from.
This from somebody who you had never met and had never.
And I have to say, like, so, then there was a big rigmarole. I had to like believe rehearsals and bring child Services comment more, and the.
Further rigmarole of having to sort it out.
What I found incredibly kind of interesting about it was that the onus was on me to say that I would not support this person. I said, but I don't have a child. I never met this I said, no, no, you have to say that you will not support this person because we can't get back to them a letter.
So actually, all I remember at the time is that I thought it was the system has actually been really well plas because it means that so many men must fall under through the cracks and refuse to do stuff, and so it is actually quite well sorted.
They kind of skip over the step of actually establishing paternity.
Skip.
That doesn't matter.
No, you just have to say, well I support this person. Either said well I don't even They said, look, I understand the question is weird, but in order for this to be complete at this stage, I have to say no. And so I said no, and they said, right, that will go away. Then about a year later, I was in Dublin actually, and I got a call from my agent saying that I've been served with a notice of the Federal Court for not failure to appear.
Simon. I feel sick anxiety about this.
It was full on that because I honestly, honestly, honestly had never seen this person in my life before. And look, obviously.
It was there. I know that you're adamant that you'd never seen this woman before, but and you're not heterosexual, so that the chances of you sleeping with this woman very slim. Was there any moment where you went.
What dod't they do last night? Yeah?
Yeah, maybe I you know, had too many negronas you know, Was there ever that moment?
No? No, I mean no, no. So basically, look, the end of the day is it was, it was, it was. I had to then engage a slister and of course you know, of course DNA is going to yeah, but I had to go through with that.
So you had to do the DNA and it was kind.
Of an interesting experience for a while, but once it got into this other world of having to prove, which is easy because it's just the DNA test a DNA and that was conclusive. But then it did But then I would still be contact with this person. Yeah, and they would still say that, you know, because I guess if someone is convinced about something, then then all sorts of conspiracy goes into it. So it then became I just became it was weird, very heavy.
It was very very weird. It's a very weird story. Why do you But everybody's got a weird story. Why do you? What do you think it is about you specifically that helped her create this fantasy of you being the father to her child.
I mean, I've thought about it a lot, and most of all, I was really well concerned. I've only met her for five or five seconds when she said that all those years ago, and I was mostly concerned for the kid. I guess I did sometimes think maybe she'd see me on play school and she was a single mom, and maybe I looked like someone who'd be a great dad. Maybe the I.
Don't know, maybe you were an easy answer to who's my dad?
Him?
The screen that man that you love.
Yeah, that's weird.
But have you heard again?
Not recently, No, but it did come back a few times. It became quiet troubling in the back of my in the back of my mind because it's sort of.
It would just lurk in the recesses waiting for the next installment.
Like it was also like it was also wildly interesting by the same token, I mean, how many people does that happened too? But then I thought to myself, like, you know, and I'm by no means massively well known, but I just thought, if you, if you were like a big, big, big stuff, that sort of thing would probably happen to you twice a week. Yeah.
Did you have a partner at the time, And what did he think about this? Was that a strange conversation?
You know what he's like? He was actually with me at the time, and he woke up he had to get up the next morning at five am to go to work and he said, you've got a baby. This is a dickhead. But that was when it was stillimum in the realms of it being such a weird Yeah, just a wild story became. It just became and expensive music.
Yes, I imagined. So yeah, well that's very, very interesting.
So there you go. But I'm sure I certainly haven't told anyone that fun.
I'm sure in an alternate reality, Simon, you would have been a wonderful father.
Yeah, I'm sure I would have been too.
Do you have any questions for me?
Okay, I mean I suppose I've been thinking about this, like.
You can ask me anything, absolutely anything.
Because we know each other very recently, but we feel like we've known each other forever.
Like no one else in my life.
It's crazy, isn't it crazy. I might tell the story how how I met you in a minute, but I've always you know, since we've become you know, I'm obsessed with you. I love you. I really would love to know what your dreams and stuff were when you were, like when you were that age that when I was first starting out, like when you were eight or nine or ten, and what did you dream about? What did you want to do well.
I was a very quiet child, and I had two sisters and they were much older than me, so I was sort of an only child in a way, and my parents split up when I was very young, grade one, so I kind of spent my first sort of that time from prep to grade six kind of working out the lay of the land of my new existence. You know, I'd gone from everyone at home very sort of idyllic normal life, never had to think about anything, to all
of a sudden feeling very tumultuous. So I sort of I felt like that part of my childhood was about surviving. So I didn't really have any dreams. I just had to work out what was going on day to day. And I didn't know actually what I wanted to do with my life, for what my purpose was until much much later, like late twenties. Really, I was just sort
of floating around enjoying people. That was the common thing is that once I ended up at school around some like minded girls, I felt very secure and safe again. And I'm still friends with those girls now that I'm when I was ten and eleven.
I wonder if that's got you know, like it's it is quite incredible how much and quickly and strongly we connect. And I wonder if it has something to do with the recognition of kind of that sort of trauma from I had a pretty horrific time around around the time that I became an actor. My parents were going through a pretty horrible breakup thise lots.
Did you feel like isolated?
I was an absolute, absolute loner.
Yeah, maybe that's what we've identified in each other.
And then I just got this little It was almost like I was saved and I got into this to this other world where I suddenly I was sort of special or not special but actually valued. Yeah, and scene, and I was suddenly funny and I was suddenly good at when I did.
And it happened to me at school.
And so I think that thing of feeling so alone, being by yourself dealing with adult drama.
Absolutely no judgment on my family. Everyone was doing what they could do. You know, at the time it is hard, but and it was hard for all of us individually, but that's just how I felt. I just felt really like, oh, what the hell has happened?
When I know what you mean and I feel the same, and none of mine either. But it's that thing of no matter how much care is around you, when you're alone by yourself, dealing with what's going on in your in your bedroom at like you know, eight nineteen eleven twelve. That's that's for once.
Yeah, that's interesting, Simon Burke. Can I interest you in a round of talk Taro?
I'm not sure.
Set of tarot cards? You know how this works?
No? I don't. Don't you know my cards read?
Well, I'm shuffling them all up and you just got to pick one that appeals to you and then I'll read it out. God, anyone, anyone, everyone's a winner. Have a pool. That's what they say. That's what they say, the son. That's the correct lexicon. Have a pool, Have a pool. Who was that guy that got caught in the anyway?
Having a pool? Who is it?
Todd McKenny now now now Tod McKenny and centennial part. I don't think he was having a pool? Now, that was pee wee Herman. All right, you have pulled a card. This is talk Tarot. I'm gonna ask you a question that's on the card. Simon Burke, Please relay the story of when you and I first met the car.
Wanted to know that the car that's.
Incredible, It's extraordinary.
The day we met it is like see it in my memory, not just because it was you, but because it was actually my sixtieth birthday. You couldn't I mean, you couldn't believe that.
I'm I cannot believe that you are now older than sixteen.
Just yeah. It was in the middle of lockdown. It's lockdown six when you could only associate. You're going to have five in a.
Group, yeap out in a park or area, you know, five Mexicans and.
Can I can I give us some background of that story? Of course, So it's my sixtieth birthday. I wake up. I mean Melbourne will and Rouge is in lockdown when allowed to associate with anyone sort.
Of two years ago.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like October twenty twenty one and I was planning, Yeah, it was going to be. My partner was in city, couldn't get to Melbourne. My family is and he couldn't get to Melbourne. I'm like, oh great, I'm waking up on my sixtieth birthday. And what I've been doing is and our cast hadn't seen each other for two months because we were in lockdown. We weren't allowed to see each other. I'd go with a walk
with a person here and there. Yeah, and so my two co leagues, Des and a Linta who played Christian and the teen said we hardly knew them. They said, oh, what's your birthday, Let's meet in the botanical gardens for a walk. I thought, oh, okay, they'll be nice. That's sweet.
It's something sweet of them.
So I met them at the gates and I walked around and they talked happy birthday. And then I walked around a corner and there were six blankets spaced six meters apart, with five members of the cast on each blanket. So beautiful, thirty the whole caster turn up in groups.
Of five, socially distanced for my.
Birthday, and like it was like maybe it was like one of the most special things anyone's ever. I hadn't know any of these people.
I feel like your heart would just stick just last.
They completely exploded. And so there was a bit this is like about midday, and there was a bit of champagne going on whatever, and I was naughty because I went from blanket to blanket, But yeah, is it. I was coming home and I was very very I was in Fitzroy Gardens and meeting some friends of my partners again social addistance on a blanket. I was sitting with them and suddenly Chrissy Swan walks past, and I went. She turns on me and looks at me, where is hello?
And I turned to you and we run and we like hug each other.
We had never met. I'm like, it's silent bag.
It was crazy because because we have a mutual friend and you and I have been kind of like liking each other's things on Twitter for like, I know, ten fifteen years or something, I felt like I knew you. And when I walked past you and you bought, you went and we like hugged. My sh is completely open now and we just held each other for like, yeah, it was. It was so it I'll never forget as long as that was forget it. It was like and I almost said to you, God, it's been ages how
long since I've seen you? And when we've never met.
We've never met. I've never had that with anybody else.
Crazy, isn't it?
It was crazy? Thank you so much for joining me today. You are pure joy. And what is next after Mulin Rouge? I know that that is a in the in the recent history, in.
The recent history. Yeah, well I'm I'm about to start something pretty pretty cool here I just can't talk about yet, but it'll be pretty soon.
So are you the face of online paternity tests? In the case of that lady, you are not the father?
Oh tee? What something interesting?
You know?
We're talking about about passion projects and yes, you know. Yes. During my time on Mulin Rouge, my very very closest friend is an amazing actor director writer called Helen Dullymore who played She's just She's just one of She's the brilliant woman. And we have written and produced and starred in this little web series which has will be coming
out very soon called The Five Minute Call. And it's set backstage in her dressing room of a fictitious music Australian successful musical which is a terrible musical apparently, and we're the two sort of nasty we're playing sort of horrible versions of ourselves. It sounds we have been in it. We have been, and we've got like Georgie Parker as a guest star and Trevor Ashley's it's it's I'm so proud of it because we wrote it together and we've a couple of mill and rugs castro in it, and yeah,
have a lookout for it. It'll be around in a couple of months. Called five minute call. I'm so happy and so
Excited that I'll absolutely keep my eyes piled for Thank you so much, Simon Burks for having me