Leeanna Walsman: ‘I look in the mirror and I see how old I am’
The 44-year-old actor may have been working for three decades, but she says every new job feels like the first.
Ginger & Smart “Soloist” gown. Christian Louboutin “Hot Chick” shoes. Ambra tights (worn throughout.)Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford
“I am not the queen of any of this stuff,” Leeanna Walsman says, a finger tapping her video-call screen on a wintry July morning.
Dressed in a leather biker’s jacket and sitting cross-legged on the floor of her inner-city Sydney living room, she is framed by an orange couch and leafy potted plants, a small fluffy dog sleeping contentedly on a rug to one side.
A respected stage, film and TV actor, Walsman, 44, is not enamoured with talking about herself. “It doesn’t come naturally to me,” she says. “I guess it’s part of the job, but it’s not the part of the job I’m best at, thank god.”
She draws her hair up into a temporary ponytail and laughs. “There’s always this fear that I will just talk all over the world,” she says. “I don’t know how to be concise. With a script, I’m fine.”
Eminently friendly despite her wariness, Walsman has been boning up on magazine stories after discovering old Sunday Life pages lining boards at the ceramics studio she attends. “I had a read,” she says of the issue’s cover story. “And I saw that it was quite a few pages.”
She gives a broad smile, only slightly carpeting a look of doom. “I mean, how many pages do you have to write about me?”
Walsman would much rather talk about ceramics, her trekking and motorbike travels, and her three-decade-long love of acting than herself. “Performance is my absolute passion,” she says. “Always has been.”
After falling in love with acting as a child, Walsman made a strong mark in her first two films, the crime drama Blackrock (also the late Heath Ledger’s big-screen debut) in 1997, and the coming-of-age feature Looking for Alibrandi in 2000.
Stage productions, starting with La Dispute in 2000 and including Saturn’s Return and The Shape of Things at Sydney Theatre Company, Melancholia at Malthouse Theatre, Othello for Bell Shakespeare and Opening Night at Belvoir, further revealed what Australian theatre director Benedict Andrews described as Walsman’s “acute emotional intelligence”.
Ginger & Smart “Soloist” jacket. Christian Louboutin “So Kate” shoes. Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford
It’s the same for small-screen roles, which include Police Rescue, Wildside, Heartbreak High, Love Is a Four Letter Word and Safe Harbour, for which she was nominated for AACTA and Logie awards. Not to mention her short films, such as Tangles and Knots, which screened at the Berlin Film Festival.
Walsman’s most recent film, Bosch & Rockit, co-starring Luke Hemsworth, won her a 2022 Film Critics Circle Award as best supporting actress. And she is no stranger to Hollywood blockbusters, having been cast as bounty hunter Zam Wesell in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (keen fans can still buy an action figure based on her shape-shifting assassin).
Today, Walsman’s focus is less on blockbusters, awards or, as mentioned earlier, media attention. Uncrossing her legs she looks around. “Rubes,” she says, whistling gently. “Rubes, come here.”
A fluffy rescue terrier stretches slowly before walking over and into her owner’s lap. “This is Ruby,” Walsman says. “I love her. She’s my best mate.” Ruby gives her owner a nuzzle.
Taking off her jacket, Walsman leans towards her screen’s camera. “What did you think of it?” she asks.
She’s talking about Human Error, Nine’s new crime drama series in which she plays Detective Holly O’Rourke, a seasoned investigator leading a homicide team in a Melbourne murder case (Nine is also the publisher of this masthead). Made by the creators of Underbelly, Romper Stomper, Wentworth, Offspring and Love My Way, Human Error also features Matt Day as O’Rourke’s husband and Steve Bisley as her father, a retired detective.
The series, inspired by actual events and with The Age crime reporter John Silvester as a consultant, bears shades of Scottish author Ian Rankin’s Rebus books as well as Sally Wainwright’s TV drama Scott & Bailey.
O’Rourke is a razor-sharp detective dealing with a labyrinthine investigation, treacherous colleagues, compromised parental responsibilities and an increasingly complex personal life.
Carla Zampatti dress. Christian Louboutin “Hot Chick” shoes. Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford
“Holly’s a ferocious multitasker,” says Walsman. “She’s like the queen of being able. She’s just juggling so much. But just because she’s a detective, a mother, a wife, all these different fragments, it didn’t mean that she had to be so different from me.
“I didn’t give her a very different physicality from me and I tried not to fall into a stereotypical display of, ‘I’m in power’, or ‘As a woman in power, I have to make my voice louder and more ferocious to be heard.’
“It was important that Holly led with compassion and empathy and was very open because, unintentionally, her situation isn’t the norm. What you find out about Holly and the choices she’s made, she isn’t all apologetic or full of shame about them. That I find very exciting.”
“I thought I’d have to walk on set and do things that were different to how I usually perform. But actually, I was encouraged to be more myself.”
LEEANNA WALSMAN
It’s the first time she’s played a lead role in a TV series. “I’ve been acting for a very long time, which is weird to say because I look in the mirror and I see how old I am, but I don’t understand it in my mind. Whenever I get a new job, I always feel like it’s the first.
“With this one, I thought I’d have to walk on set and do things that were different to how I usually perform. But actually, I was encouraged to be more myself.”
Walsman’s love of acting began when parents Bob and Elaine, who started work at 5am on weekends at Paddy’s Markets in Sydney’s Chinatown, began sending eight-year-old Leeanna to nearby acting and dancing classes. It was a natural fit. “I would always be performing, in a way, with my dad, who was a lot more of an extrovert than me,” she says.
Carla Zampatti suit.Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford
During high school, she joined the NSW Public Schools Drama Company. By the time she reached year 11, it was the only reason she wanted to be at school. “I ended up dropping out and not doing year 12,” she says. “But being in that drama company and doing those Saturday classes in Chinatown organically navigated me into the world of acting.”
Another recent organic evolution is pottery, a lockdown hobby that developed after she joined a local art studio. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh God, do I have to have a purpose to do this? Do I have to sell these ceramics to allow myself to have this hobby?’ And then I thought, ‘No. This is like going to the gym for me.’
“It’s got the same effect on my mental health as doing Pilates and yoga and eating well. Me funnelling my energy into something creative is very, very positive.”
She says the style of her ceramics (she recently had two pieces in a group exhibition in Bondi), constantly changes. “I’m technically sloppy but through all the mistakes something beautiful always comes out. It’s like a true expression of me and what’s happening in my mind.”
Walsman reaches off screen to bring a sooty black-and-cream vase into view, its curves marked with banksia cone-like indentations. Then she shows me another, this one patterned with bright coils of blue, yellow and red. Working with clay, she says, is just like acting: “If you fully drop in and are receptive to what’s happening around you, something great happens.”
Conversation then turns to another of Walsman’s passions: motorbikes. In 2022, she spent five days riding the frequently hairy 350-kilometre-long Ha Giang Loop in Vietnam. This year she visited again, travelling to the caves of Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park.
And her adventures aren’t confined to those on two wheels. In 2021, she walked the Larapinta Trail in the Northern Territory, solo. “I like being in a situation where I’m overwhelmed by my environment, the beauty of my environment,” she says. “I’m a very spontaneous person. A lot of the trips I go on happen within a week or two of having the idea.
“It’s the same with acting. It’s very intuitive. I think a lot about it, and I do a lot of preparation, but when I’m on set or on stage, it’s about wanting to be in the moment.”
Then she reveals, “My favourite thing with acting is not the performing. It’s before that. It’s the rehearsal, working with actors, directors, everyone. It’s the challenge, the unexpected, the unknown, doing things you never thought about doing before.
“That is thrilling.”
Human Error is on Channel 9 and 9Now.
Fashion editor: Penny McCarthy; Hair: Darren Summors for Oribe; Make-up Aimie Fiebig for Rare Beauty.
STOCKISTS: Ambra; Carla Zampatti; Common Hours; Christian Louboutin; Ginger & Smart.
Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up here for our free newsletter.