Ray Meagher: Why I never had kids

HIS Home And Away character Alf Stewart has been a father, stepfather and foster father, now Ray Meagher has revealed why he never had children of his own.

Home and Away's Ray Meagher, who plays Alf Stewart. Picture: Justin Lloyd

HIS Home And Away character Alf Stewart has been a father, stepfather and foster father, now Ray Meagher has revealed why he never had children of his own.

“When I was younger as a freelance actor, I wondered whether I’d be able to feed myself let alone anybody else,” Meagher told The Daily Telegraph.

“It's a funny old profession, it’s very precarious, it's a pretty dodgy old profession employment-wise.

“I have a stepdaughter Rebecca (the daughter of his wife Gilly) who is in her early 40s and I talk to her at least once a week and see her for brekkie or brunch whenever the Home And Away schedule permits, which is maybe once a fortnight, and I love that.”

Home and Away's Ray Meagher, who plays Alf Stewart in Home and Away.

Meagher, the face of Optus’ new prepaid mobile campaign, is delighted to be nominated for Most Popular Actor at this weekend’s Logies. But his wife Gilly won’t be attending with him.

“Gilly would rather swallow a tonne of bricks than go to the Logies­,” Meagher said. “She says ‘That’s your work, you go and you don’t have to worry about me … not knowing a whole heap of people’ so she’s very comfortable with that.”

For 30 years, Ray Meagher has played Alf Stewart on the small screen but, despite being one of our most beloved and unique actors, there’s a reason he hasn’t been seen on the big screen since 1989.

“The last film I did was Luigi’s Ladies,” he told Confidential. “In the 30-odd years I’ve been doing Home And Away I reckon I can genuinely count the number of jobs I’ve been definitely offered that I would have liked to have done on one hand.”

Ray Meagher as Alf Stewart in scene from TV program "Home and Away".

Meagher was wanted for the role played by Bill Hunter in Mur­iel’s Wedding.

“They didn’t have the money in place at the time, ­because I need to give Home And Away 14 weeks notice to get out to do anything, and by the time they did I couldn’t do it,” Meagher (pictured) says.

Another was to play Jack Rennie in the Lionel Rose telemovie. (The role went to Tony Barry).

Actor Toni Collette with Bill Hunter in scene from film "Muriel's Wedding".

“I would have loved to have done that because Lionel Rose was such an icon and I remember watching that fight as a kid and he was amazing, he was one of our indigenous superstars,” Meagher says.

He might have missed out on those, but neither has affected his career.

Meagher even landed a role in the London cast of the stage musical Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert in 2010 and 2011.

“A bloke from the Queensland bush who can’t sing or dance doing a musical in the West End? C’mon,” he says.

Ray Meagher stars as Ray Coptus in an ad for Optus.

Meagher’s latest role has seen him transform into Ray Coptus, a mall cop who takes it upon himself to make sure Aussies are getting the best deal on their prepaid mobile plans in a series of spoof ads for Optus.

With the clip racking up ­almost 600,000 views on ­Facebook and YouTube ­already, Meagher has offici­ally gone viral — something he’s already worried about.

“Do I have to see a doctor about that?” he quipped.

Meagher said he has been a customer of Optus for almost a quarter of a century.

Ray Meagher stars as Ray Coptus in an ad for Optus.

Originally published as Ray Meagher: Why I never had kids