Bewitching actor Miranda Otto casts a spell over Hollywood
From a bad-ass witch to dance doyenne, Brisbane-born actor Miranda Otto draws on her hometown roots for roles that have won her fame and acclaim worldwide.
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One of Miranda Otto’s most precious childhood memories is dressing up in her leotard and ballet tights for regular dance classes, just down the road from her Holland Park home.
“I danced when I was really little in Brisbane. For three years I went to a ballet school in a scout hall, down the bottom of Marshall Rd, near where I went to school,’’ she says.
While Otto, now the luminous star of films such as The Daughter and Lord of the Rings, moved as a seven-year-old to Hong Kong and then Newcastle (NSW), her love for ballet never wavered. In fact it only grew stronger.
“Ballet-wise I got very passionate about dance when I was 13,’’ says Otto, who was diagnosed with mild scoliosis as a teenager.
It’s been a bonus for Otto to recently be offered several dance-related roles including portraying American modern dance pioneer and teacher Ruth St Denis (1879-1968) in her latest movie The Chaperone. Two years ago she featured as no-nonsense dance teacher Madeline Moncur in Dance Academy: The Movie.
“It’s been fun to play some dance-related characters. The lucky thing is they are not expecting me to dance myself,” Otto tells U on Sunday. “I grew up in that world and I found it
a really interesting world. I put a lot of hours into dance in my teenage years but I didn’t feel I was talented enough to get where I wanted to go. Dance is a passionate life, it’s a glorious thing but it’s tough on the body.’’
St Denis had many famous pupils including choreographer Martha Graham and silent film star Louise Brooks. In The Chaperone, a 17-year-old Louise (Haley Lu Richardson) is selected to attend the Denishawn school in New York City in the early 1920s and she is accompanied by kind chaperone Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern), who is also from sleepy Wichita, Kansas.
Miranda says research is one of her favourite parts of acting and she studied plenty of footage and photographs of dancers trained by St Denis.
“Ruth was very regal. She’s the figurehead and spiritual leader of the school and even though her partner (Ted Shawn) has been doing a lot of the teaching, she’s also hands-on. Ruth lives in a bohemian world and her relationship with Ted is complicated,” she says of the film which features a screenplay by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey) who adapted
Laura Moriarty’s best-selling novel. It explores the early life of the promiscuous and ambitious beauty Brooks, who became one of the world’s biggest silent film stars.
Miranda, 51, was attracted to the story of Norma’s self-discovery as Norma, like Louise, finds new horizons to explore in New York.
“I love the modernness of the story, the acceptance of everyone and the openness, as well as the idea of understanding and tolerance in relationships,’’ she says.
Otto is grateful she has an understanding husband, fellow thespian Peter O’Brien (Underbelly). The couple, with 14-year-old daughter Darcey, moved to Los Angeles five years ago when Otto won the plum role of ruthless CIA Berlin station chief, Allison Carr, in Homeland.
“I came over for one show and we’ve ended up staying, and made a life here,’’ she says. “There is a great variety of work especially with television which is going through an extraordinary period.’’
Otto secured the key role of Rebecca Ingram in 24: Legacy (2017) before a star role in Netflix hit The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, with the third season about to start filming.
After filming back-to-back Sabrina seasons, she needed a break. That is, until a role came up for Will Ferrell’s new comedy Downhill, shooting in Austria, and she could not say no.
“My agent sent the script for Downhill and I really wanted this role. It was a very funny role,
I was playing a German woman opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell,” she says.
“I’m a huge fan of both actors. On the first day I was sitting and working with these two actors around a restaurant dinner table, it was one of the funniest days of my life. I have never improvised so much. It was so much fun.’’
Otto has never been hotter in Hollywood than she is now. She even has had to join Instagram to placate all her new Sabrina fans. In the popular series she features as Zelda Spellman, who along with sister Hilda (Lucy Davis) are the aunts to teenage orphan witch Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka).
“Zelda is a fun character to play, she’s really well written, the show is a bit like film noir and a touch of horror. The show has a naughty, campy sense of humour, it can be watched at a young romance level and at a magic level,’’ she says. “Zelda is a bad-ass character, I love her inappropriateness and how naughty and wicked she is.
“Sabrina is such a rich world. Lucy and I love making up all kind of stories about all the objects in the house and the history of things. It’s the funnest part of acting, letting your imagination run wild and being creative.’’
While Otto is regularly stopped in the street for Sabrina, she is
still recognised for her role of Eowyn, goddaughter of Rohan’s King Theoden and slayer of the witch-king of Angmar, Lord of Nazgul, in The Lord of the Rings.
Otto, who was an A-grade student, contemplated studying medicine but fell in love with acting during her gap year and won a spot at NIDA. She is the daughter of Brisbane-bred acting icon Barry Otto (Strictly Ballroom and The Dressmaker) and grew up watching her father perform on stage.
“It’s an interesting transition, going from being an audience member as a child to playing alongside the people you watched,’’ says Miranda, who admits she was initially intimidated.
Soon after graduating from NIDA she starred in David Williamson’s play Brilliant Lies (1993) in a role written for her. She performed in the Brisbane season and then featured in the titular role of Gigi for RQTC’s production in 1995. That is the last time Miranda has worked in Queensland but she remains a passionate Queenslander, especially with most of her family still living here.
“I find it hard because I can’t watch State of Origin in Los Angeles. When I’m in Australia, you can’t talk to my mum when in it’s on, she’s also
a Queenslander through and through,’’ Otto says.
The Chaperone is showing now
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