The funny side of being earnest

TAKE one singing, ukulele-playing comedic talent and throw her into the acting cauldron and what comes out? Lots of earnest frowns.

TAKE one singing, ukulele-playing comedic talent and throw her into the acting cauldron and what comes out? Lots of earnest frowns.

 Sydney-born, Melbourne-based Virginia Gay, 31, says she is as surprised as anyone that she keeps getting cast in serious roles - first as All Saints nursing unit manager Gabrielle and, now, uptight lawyer Frances on Winners & Losers.
"I am always amazed people want me to be serious," she laughs. "I'm a gangly goofball. Frances is very uptight. She always gets to be the butt of the joke without being aware of it, which is actually really delightful to play.
"And Gabrielle, bless, I don't think she told one joke a season in All Saints."
Despite all that earnestness, Gay says she loves being an actress.
"It's the greatest job," she says. "You live in this constant state of make-believe which is gorgeous. There's something beautiful and childlike about it that's just really, really addictive."
She concedes the worst thing about the job is if you have a bad day "millions of people are going to see it".
"With acting, that lives with you for the rest of your life," Gay says. "And, because you're usually a hypersensitive soul anyway if you're in this business, you just don't sleep for weeks. You're just, 'Oh my god ... '
"Although, I used to live with a doctor and I'd come home and I'd be, 'I really screwed up a scene today' and he'd be like, 'I WATCHED PEOPLE DIE!'. I'd be like, 'Yeah, right, that puts things into perspective'."
Gay says beyond Frances's drive on Winners and Losers, there is little she relates to in her character.
"She is organised and in control. There's no clutter anywhere and I think, 'If these people who love this show could only see my house' - borderline clinical hoarder. I'll probably be on Celebrity Hoarders Gone Wild at some point.
"I'm trying to be really good about it, partly because I live in a one-bedroom apartment so I would actually smother myself in my sleep.
"I never pay a bill on time, I never have highlighters that work. Basically, we're diametrically opposed."
Gay is vastly quirkier than her character, too. She lists her famous person crush as French star of the 1960s Yves Montagnes; she regrets "brushing out my curls as a teenager", warning it makes curly-haired women look "like a well-groomed spaniel"; and has been a "chronic insomniac" for 10 or 12 years.
"I'm the worst," she sighs. "I never sleep. The worrying is what keeps me awake."
But, beyond tossing and turning, life seems to be going well. She is seeing someone, although she won't say who. "It is fun but it's early days," she teases.
And, speaking of teasing, she reveals that's a topic she knows a bit about - thanks to her surname. As a child she copped a lot.
"Good grief," she exhales. "I am the last member of the Gay family to still have this as a last name. Everybody born after 1981 (when she was born) rather sensibly changed their name.
"It's a name that I stand by now really strongly and really proudly because gay is not anything to be ashamed of. So it's actually given me a taste of what my gay friends must have gone through.
"It makes me all the more outraged that we continue to discriminate on the basis of sexuality, on the basis of gender, on the basis of race, anything."
She gives a laugh at how earnest she suddenly sounds. And in a flash all seriousness vanishes when asked how she'd like to be remembered.
"As the thinking man's sexpot," she declares. "I would like that on my tombstone."
Winners & Losers, Tuesday, 8.30pm, Seven