Danielle Cormack is going mental. At least that's what she says on the phone when she calls to again postpone our interview – not that you can hold it against her.
On the day we finally meet, the award-winning TV/film/theatre actor is dashing between three jobs — as wardrobe
mistress for short film Redemption, and filming two TV shows: new local, Lost-esque drama The Cult (onscreen in September) and Walt Disney fantasy series Legend of the Seeker.
She's also just seen off 13-year-old son Ethan on his first day back at school, but is somehow squeezing in a soda and a chat in the lead-up to the release of homegrown 'dramedy' Separation City on August 6.
After a stint criscrossing the Tasman for theatre gigs, Cormack was ready to sink her teeth into the relatively rare meat of a New Zealand feature film (penned by cartoonist Tom Scott). In her signature naturalistic style, she plays uber-organised, overtired, libido-less mum-of-two Pam, whose relationship with husband Simon — played by on-the-up Aussie actor Joel Edgerton — has become about as familiar and exciting as an old sock. This has left him with a wandering eye that settles on mutual friend Kati, played by heavyweight English actress Rhona Mitra (Boston Legal, Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans). Cormack, who admits everyone knows everyone in the New Zealand acting fishpond, relished the injection of internationals into a film that "didn't necessarily feel completely Kiwi".
Because she's flying from Auckland to the Wellington premiere on Wednesday, Cormack hasn't watched the film (on DVD) until just before we met. "I thought I better take a look at it before I start talking about it." She agrees it's a little depressing about the prognosis for long-term relationships. "But I don't necessarily aspire to that conventional relationship anyway — the ones I've had haven't particularly conformed." She can relate only vicariously, not personally, she says, to the film's "successful, white, middle-class family with two kids" and their smug-married friends.
Cormack hopes the film will inspire debate about the nature of romantic relationships. "Are we supposed to be monogamous for the rest of our lives? How do you keep that element of surprise going in your relationship because, you know, the biology of humans is such that we don't have chemistry pumping through our veins for our entire relationship with someone."
The 38-year-old is notoriously private about her private life. Partly because other people's feelings are involved; partly because her work is the raison d'interview; and partly because she just doesn't think it's that interesting. "I wish I could say I'm dating Judy Bailey right now," she jokes, "but I don't know what Judy would think of that!
"But hold on, let me think about this because maybe I don't feel so guarded about it now — it's a cliche isn't it, the actor or the person in the spotlight wanting to keep their personal life personal. I'm a walking cliche!" She ponders but decides it's still not for public consumption. "Maybe I never kiss and tell. If I do, I'll give you a call."
Cormack, who pulls off a funky rock-chick outfit, could certainly pull a newsreader. We first glimpsed her lean limbs and well-documented curls on shoulder-padded late-80s soap Gloss. Fast forward 20 years and Cormack doesn't look much older, but her CV has certainly plumped up. As well as a dozen feature films (including The Price of Milk, Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, Channelling Baby, Via Satellite, A Song of Good) and several short films, she's also notched up 20 plays here, across the Tasman, and occasionally further afield.
But it's the small screen where much of the work is. TV credits include Maddigan's Quest, Rude Awakenings, The Strip, Marlin Bay, City Homicide, and Shortland Street. Just don't go summing her up as "ex-Shortland Streeter Danielle Cormack", a description she read recently, despite the fact that her core-cast-member role as nurse Alison Raynor was back in 1992-93 — and it's not as though she has been a one-trick pony since. "Acting kept on finding me."
Playing everything from a headstrong hippie to a poncy Ponsonby professional, Cormack has avoided being typecast by mixing it up workwise. Sometimes saying yes comes down to needing the money ("I just bought a $500 car off the side of the road"), but usually it's because there's something about a project, perhaps the role, theme, director or cast, that really attracts her.
The Vagina Monologues, Spare Prick, A Streetcar Named Desire, Topless Women and now Separation City — you'll notice Cormack's never been shy of projects where sex, whether explicit or implicit, is central. Pointing out sex was often the selling-point but not the essence of these projects, Cormack says getting intimate can be awkward, but necessary to the story. "I've never really had that much of a problem with it [sex scenes], which might be quite telling actually. If there's no nudity in this project, I don't want to take part!" she laughs.
So as a late-30s, as opposed to a 20-something actress, is it ever a feast-or-famine situation? Whether her youthful looks have anything to do with it, and while she doesn't want to jinx it, the simple answer is "no". The offers keep coming.
While she gets enough work from her base out "Westside" in Henderson suburbia, yes, she's had the urge to do the whole uproot-to-Hollywood thing "in fits and starts. But I'm a realist." Getting snapped up at your first LA audition can happen, she says, but many wannabe starlets have laboured under an illusion of easy success. Still, she reckons it's easier to get US work nowadays in the age of strong agent contacts.
That's how she picked up work in US company Pacific Renaissance Pictures' fantasy shows including Hercules, Cleopatra, Amazon High and Xena, the latter of which earned her a flurry of fan letters, a spot on the convention circuit and a 2003 berth aboard a cruise-ship of groupies. Fantasy shows are "an opportunity to really dress up and have a bit of fun, running around with imaginary friends and oversized weapons," she says with a laugh, plus it's nice to do something a little lighter occasionally, and something her son wants to watch.
Since her pregnancy was incorporated into the plotline of 1997's Topless Women, juggling motherhood with multiple projects (in various stages from conception to completion) has required a take-it-day-by-day approach. "Actually, second by second." But it beats working 9 to 5. "I don't know what would happen to me if I had a 9-to-5 job. I don't know what would happen to that job!"
The flexibility of the acting industry — where just about everyone (apart from Shortland Streeters perhaps) are perennial freelancers — frees up time for other pursuits. TV-host work includes presenting Alt TV music show Fire It Up! and fronting an Intrepid Journeys trip to Syria (where she was propositioned by a sheik in return for camels). Radio, in which she's dabbled as a BFM and Kiwi FM DJ, is her back-up career — she also wouldn't mind being an architect, a designer or working in fashion — but for now she's meshing her love of music and writing as one half of band Bob Geldof with Jonny Brugh whose experimental music is set to her "tongue-in-cheek poetry and stories". She's also dabbling in play and short-story writing, collaborating with writer Karyn Hay on a poetry book and fitting in the occasional gig as MC, event presenter and speaker. But acting is still her bread-and-butter.
Although she enjoys the fast-turnaround challenge of TV, and seeing the "magic" end-result of a film, her favourite medium is theatre because of its immediacy, character breadth, flexibility and "forgiveness. I can play a 90-year-old woman. I can play a 13-year-old boy." Critically-acclaimed 2007 solo show The Case of Katherine Mansfield, for which she adopted a severe bob, has been her most challenging role to date, partly because Mansfield's verbatim quotes didn't translate easily to the stage.
One of Mansfield's quotes was: "Risk, risk everything. Care not for what people say, for fear breeds failure". And that's how Cormack does things. "I don't think you can find out things about the world or about yourself if you don't take a step with a certain amount of risk . . . You never know what's around the corner."
Separation City is out in cinemas August 6.
The Cult debuts on TV2 in September.
Actress Danielle Cormack. Photo / Janna Dixon
Danielle Cormack is going mental. At least that's what she says on the phone when she calls to again postpone our interview – not that you can hold it against her.
On the day we finally meet, the award-winning TV/film/theatre actor is dashing between three jobs — as wardrobe
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