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This story is printed by kind permission of Sunday Magazine.
Sunday
Magazine Article 'Sorry. Sorry." Sigrid Thornton is apologising. Again. "Gosh, sorry. Do you mind? Thanks so much. Thank you." The photographer has asked two women enjoying coffee in the sunshine on the terrace of Melbourne's Stoke House restaurant if they would mind moving to another table so Thornton can have her picture taken. The women recognise the actor, of course, and far from being miffed at the disruption, seem quite chuffed to be a little part of the proceedings. As they settle themselves at a nearby table, Thornton is still apologising. Many celebrities view such incidents as their status-given right, requiring only the most perfunctory acknowledgement that people may be putting themselves out. Not so Thornton. She seems genuinely embarrassed to be the cause of such a fuss. Earlier, she apologised and thanked the restaurant staff who had to work around us as they set up for lunch. During our interview she apologised when she felt she wasn't articulating some point well enough. She started our interview with an apology. Sorry," she said as we settled ourselves on the comfortable booth chairs, in the large, sun-drenched upstairs dining room. "I'm a bit brain-dead this morning. "Understandable at 9am. "No, it's not that, I've had this thing, ah, uumm..." Bug? "Yeah, for about two weeks. It won't go away." Thornton has a disconcerting habit of uummming and aahhhing and correcting herself when she's talking. ("Aaahhh, I think that we, well I think that I.Yes, what I mean to say is. Yes. What am I trying to say?") She often stops mid-burble, laughs, and starts again. While this may be partly the result of bug-induced brain death, it soon becomes apparent that the problem is more to do with Thornton's desire to give thoughtful answers, to avoid sounding stale, glib or rehearsed. With someone who's been around as long as Thornton, it's hard not to go over old ground. A few days after we meet, I hear her interviewed on radio,answering many of the same questions we had discussed. Her answers, while consistent with those in my notebook, still sound fresh and are delivered with the same enthusiasm and warmth. That's the thing about Thornton, not only is she a real pro, she's also darned nice. Earlier this year, a well-known Melbourne newspaper columnist, searching for the archetypal example of a nice person to illustrate a point, chose Thornton. She heard about that. She thinks it's funny, sort of. "What does nice mean? It's funny what negative connotations the word nice conjures up for some people, bland connotations in some ways. But if you take it simply, in its purest form, I would far rather be associated with niceness than with selfishness, brutishness or megalomania." Never. "I think I am a fairly optimistic person and fairly genial by nature but, really, I am just muddling through like everyone else." She is also keen to stress that she is not perfect, another word often attached to her name. Still, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary: she is a much-loved and admired actor who has enjoyed an amazingly successful career (was she ever in a dud?) spanning three decades; she is a wife and mother, married to the same man for 23 years; there has never, once, been a breath of scandal about her; she is a vocal advocate for her local community and a World Vision ambassador; she is an active and passionate member of the film and television industry; she enjoys the respect of her peers; and thanks to the mega-successful ABC comedy/drama SeaChange, she is a sex symbol (think Diver Dan, think Max); and, she is beautiful (Steven Spielberg once said she had the most beautiful face he had seen). Not perfect, huh? "No, no, not perfect." Laughing. "Far from it. God forbid, in fact. How tedious would that be. I'm just someone struggling through everyday like everybody else. I do think that I am very, very lucky. I really have been very fortunate to have had around me for a long time now, a really earthed, sort of, uuummm ...." Thinking. "Aahhh, relationship sector. My nuclear family and my extended family are the most important thing to me." While she doesn't talk directly about her nuclear family - husband Tom Burstall, a film risk manager and son of filmmaker Tim Burstall, children Ben and Jaz - her conversation is heavy with oblique references to them. "Having children is the most exciting, challenging, exhilarating, difficult, exasperating thing you can do. The fact that we are living in a rather mad, dangerous and violent world hasn't been enough for me to make the decision not to have them. You must remain hopeful, it's also a beautiful world. "Having children is enormously difficult, but it is also so rewarding I can't verbalise it. Nothing else will give you such a very deep reward and anything worth having requires work. It's the same for friendships and marriage." She is the star of a hugely popular television series, she has enjoyed intimate relations (on-screen, of course) with David Wenham, one of Australia's sexiest leading men; she is keeping hunky William McInnes frustrated, physically and emotionally; and, with yet another love interest in the form of the suave Sean Micallef about to join the SeaChange cast, she's fighting them off. "I think the middle stage of life, between 30 and 50, is about a process of redefinition. When you are very young, you are not able to objectify, as you move into this stage you are better able to do that. It can be a painful experience, but there's no joy without pain. "(Professionally), any kind of definitive categorisation of an actor is restrictive. Not just age; you've got blonde hair and big breasts so you must be a bimbo, you're tall and got a big nose, so you can only play character roles. It's a challenge for any actor. In terms of my sexuality, I think I go with that brilliant person who said, 'youth is wasted on the young'. I wouldn't trade where I am. I wouldn't want to go back." After an almost 30 year career in film and television, Thornton's gestures and individual features are as familiar as those of an old friend. The elegant sweep of her neck as she turns her head, the firm set of the jaw we have seen so often in the feisty, independent women she plays, the pouty lips, the way her button nose and mouth crinkle when she smiles. With the morning sun in her face, she looks great. She is wearing black jeans, a red T-shirt, a grey cardigan, anolive-green jacket and a scarf. It's actually not that cold, but she's been unwell. As is the way with actors, and despite the bulky clothing, in person Thornton is much more petite than she appears on screen. She has arrived sans makeup (the makeup artist will be here before the photographer) and even more classically beautiful than her screen image. She is, somehow, more fragile. Her face is finer than you expect, her cheekbones sharper, and further accentuated by a new shorter hairstyle. The new do is layered and softly brushed back from her face with just a little bit of natural curl for body. It's less schoolmarmish, less lawyerish, less Laura. Not that Thornton flinches from her SeaChange character, Laura Gibson, the big city lawyer whose life falls apart in one day when her husband is jailed for fraud, she misses out on a partnership with her law firm and her son is expelled from school. Gibson packs up her life and her kids and heads for the mythical coastal town of Pearl Bay in search of she's not sure what. The show, now in its third season, is the ABC's most successful ever, regularly grabbing around two million viewers weekly. It recently outrated even the execrable 60 Minutes interview with Tracey Holmes and Stan Grant. Like many others, Thornton has spent considerable time analysing exactly what it is about SeaChange that has struck such a chord with audiences. It is too simple, she says, the think that it is just about running away from it all. "That's part of it, but it is also about finding a community. I think that's something people are looking for. It also explores some of the big (life) issues - love, death, sex - in a very simple, yet not simplistic, way. It has real depth, but even that's not quite it. "I like to think that Laura doesn't so much drop out as drops in to a more fulsome take on her own life through learning that relationships are very complex things. And the best relationships have the qualities of commitment and loyalty and honesty and these things are actually not short-term, but are born of long-term commitments to people." Given half a chance, Thornton can get way serious. While actors tend to have a fair handle on their characters, often inventing whole life stories to help them get into the parts they play, Thornton seems to have taken the process to heart. SeaChange, she says, touches the very deepest ideals we aspire to as human beings. "One of the other central themes is about the innate uniqueness of each human being. And how people don't really change very much fundamentally. They may undergo a metamorphoses, but their central being and responses stay the same." Phew! What a bonus that the show is also well made, well written, well acted and entertaining, otherwise it could have ended up terribly preachy.
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