‘I’m lucky to have a roof over my head’: How Aussie actors are coping in US isolation
As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases surge close to 400,000 in the United States, Australian LA-based actor Harriet Dyer says she’s lucky she’s safe. She shares how she is dealing with the crisis overseas and life in Hollywood.
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Harriet Dyer is sitting in bed glued to her phone when it hits her.
She’s living out the exact dream she made for herself in her teens. The same dream she kept quiet for years because as a kid from Townsville, becoming a Hollywood actor seemed like
a fantasy.
But here, in her home in Los Angeles, the 31-year-old actor is looking at a photo of herself in a scene from her latest film, The Invisible Man, and can’t quite believe it.
“As an actor you get sent a bunch of still photos from the film to approve … it was weeks after we’d finished filming but that’s when I had a moment,” Dyer says.
“Suddenly there was a picture of me sitting next to Lizzy with a Universal (Studios) globe logo at the bottom and I was like, ‘Wow, I’m in an American studio film with Elisabeth Moss’.”
In all the thoughts that creep into her wild, creative and frantic mind, Dyer allows herself time to linger on this one for a while.
Big budget American movie with Moss – actor-of-the-moment, Emmy Award-winning star of The Handmaid’s Tale and global sensation. Dyer smiles to herself. She did it.
Two years ago, she left behind a rising career in Australia – having starred in Love Child, No Activity and The Other Guy – and followed the path well trodden by wide-eyed actors to LA.
She borrowed money from her parents to afford the green card, packed up her life in Sydney (where she lived at the time) and hoped for the best. She’s never looked back.
Since moving to the US, Dyer has landed the lead role in American drama, The InBetween, The Invisible Man and was set to be the lead in NBC pilot, American Auto, before the coronavirus outbreak halted filming.
And just before the world was turned upside down, Dyer was in Australia filming a new ABC drama, Wakefield, where she plays a character with bipolar disorder.
Dyer is, by anyone’s standards, a star on the rise.
It’s not the type of place you expect to be the breeding ground for vibrant, dynamic and world-class arts. But Dyer says it makes perfect sense that in North Queensland, under the burning sun surrounded by idyllic beaches, there’s all the promise, freedom and opportunity a child could have to dream big. And dream big she did.
Dyer grew up in Belgian Gardens in Townsville with parents Mark and Diana, brother John and sister Madeleine. Their childhood revolved around music, dance and theatre.
Dyer became addicted to the stage, and the glorious praise that came with it, at age seven.
“I was in Annie when I was seven and I’ve never had such good feedback in my entire life,” jokes Dyer, who went to Belgian Gardens State School and Townsville Grammar School.
“When you’re that age and people are saying, ‘Oh, that kid is good’, I thought I was all right so I wanted to do more … I got addicted to the positive reinforcement,” she laughs.
Dyer signed on to sing, dance and act in everything she could in groups like the Townsville Choral Society and North Queensland Opera and Music Theatre group. She’d win awards in categories far more senior than her age and became music captain of school choirs and bands.
But Dyer remembers the exact moment in her teens when the fire was lit.
“I was sitting on the carpet at home watching Muriel’s Wedding and saw Toni Collette have that big cry in the change room in the wedding dress when she says, ‘Whooo’d waaannaa maarrry meee?’ ” Dyer drawls, perfectly mimicking Collette. “It was gut-wrenching … it was such a big ugly cry. I thought movies and television were
for models.
“I thought if Muriel can look like that in one of Australia’s best movies, then they don’t want just beautiful models, so I took that with me into my next few years and that’s what got me to drama school in Sydney.”
Despite advice to do something sensible and reliable, like become a lawyer, she followed her
gut instead.
“It’s one thing to be good at acting but everything you hear is ‘penniless actor, broke actor’ so to chase it, as I did at 18, you have to think something will come of it, otherwise you can’t go hard and throw yourself at it.”
So, she threw herself at it. She left Townsville for Sydney at 18 to study a year-long musical theatre course before turning her focus to acting in 2009 and joining the Actors Centre Australia.
Soon after, she landed a role in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Pygmalion(where she “locked eyes with Cate Blanchett” in the audience) and later toured the country with Bell Shakespeare.
That’s when the television networks came calling. She was cast in a recurring guest role on ABC’s Janet King in 2014 before securing her breakout role on Australian screens as Patricia Saunders on Nine’s drama Love Child. But she proved she could do it all, switching effortlessly from heavy drama into comedy, joining the cast of Aussie crime-comedy, No Activity, co-created by and starring her now long-term boyfriend, Patrick Brammall.
Despite the growing, and impressive, resume, Dyer wanted more.
She packed up her life in Sydney and moved to LA in 2017, joining Brammall, 43, who had left a year earlier to carve out a career in the US.
The move was a risk she didn’t think would pay off, so much so she left most of her belongings behind in her Sydney apartment. And she laughs, they’re still there.
“I have an entire apartment set-up with all my clothes in Sydney that a man, who is excellent, just lives in … that’s how much I didn’t know it (the move to LA) was going to take off.”
But in a city full of wannabe stars hoping to make it big, she needed to standout, she needed to be herself.
“I realised pretty soon I had to turn up my ‘Harrietness’ and stop trying to blend in and fit in,” she says. “I had to lean in to the things that make me unique, which is the way I talk to people, the way I ask questions, the way I can make people laugh. I had to identify with what makes me special, lean into it and engage with that so I was less forgettable.”
And, she jokes, she needed to quit being a modest Australian actor.
“There is something about being an Australian actor, or just being an Australian, that we don’t want to be too big for our boots … so it’s quite common to talk yourself down … I learned very early on in LA that shuffling on your feet going, “Oh yeah, well, I’m OK”, doesn’t work at all, you lose their attention.”
“I have to sell myself and say, ‘I’m really, really good’ and then, I have to go home and take
a shower,” she says breaking into her infectious hearty laugh.
It’s taken her years to find that confidence, as she recounts stories of piling on make-up to cover “bad acne” worrying how she looked under the bright audition lights. But with her growing years has come valuable life lessons.
“I turned 31 last year and something settled in me, I accepted a few more of my own imperfections and I let go of a few things I can’t control,” she said.
“Imagine having a camera in your face 14 hours a day, it does force you to do a bit of soul searching: what are you giving out to the world, are you a kind person, are you a judgmental person, are you fun to be around, would you hang out with yourself?
“With my job, there are so many mirrors and lately, I’ve been asking myself those questions and trying to be a better person in the world.”
By letting go, she’s been able to fly, even in times she thought it wasn’t possible; like auditioning for a role in a Hollywood thriller.
“When I got the part (in The Invisible Man),
I was immediately nervous, I was like, ‘Shit, now
I have to play Elisabeth Moss’s sister’ and she is at the top of her game right now and all of my scenes are with her,” she says.
“I’ve got to go head to head with her otherwise it won’t work, so I was pretty nervous but I took that little mantra that ‘I’m right for this’ all the way throughout the job.”
As Dyer reflects on working alongside Moss, she realises how far she’s come.
“When you think of a Hollywood star, and I’m just a kid from Townsville in my mind, I’m thinking she’s not going to want to talk to me, and then she does, you realise you’re no different to all the other actors,” she says.
And, she admits, it was Moss who taught her what could be the greatest lesson of all.
“She’d just done a really big scene and I said, ‘How did you go? Did you nail it?’ and someone in Australia would go, ‘Ah, I dunno, maybe?’
“She just looked at me right in the eye and said, ‘Of course I did’ …
I thought, ‘Oh damn, that is cool’ … it wasn’t egotistical either.
“Without her giving me any advice per se, her reaction to that question is all the advice I needed: just back yourself. She taught me to be proud of your talent.”
Dyer is walking the streets of Sydney talking to U on Sunday on the phone when she interrupts the conversation and laughs.
“A Stan bus with my face on it just drove past,” she says, talking about an ad for the second season of The Other Guy on Stan, where she shines as Stevie.
Without missing a beat, she continues on casually, modestly ignoring her new-found fame.
But as she settles into life in LA with Brammall, known for roles in A Moody Christmas, Upper Middle Bogan and midwife Leo in Offspring, the pair are as down-to-earth as they come, offering snippets of their funny life musings on Instagram.
With Brammall’s career also taking off, after No Activity was championed by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and remade for a US audience, they’re both carving out successful careers but Dyer says their hectic schedules have only brought them closer.
“What it makes you do is never take each other for granted because you never know if he gets a call, or I get a call, and suddenly you’re in Atlanta for seven months,” says Dyer, who first acted alongside Brammall in Australian film Ruben Guthrie in 2015.
“You’ll be pretty sorry that you were grumpy about the dishes when they’re in Atlanta for seven months.”
The pair are each other’s biggest support in an industry that can be exhausting and a country that can be challenging, especially so now as the coronavirus outbreak takes hold.
“Life has changed drastically for all of us,” says Dyer, who returned to LA days before the travel ban was put in place.
“We are all in this together, I just know I’m lucky to have a roof over my head and health insurance in the States. The Australian arts sector has been devastated by this though … so when this is all done, please try and get out to support as much local theatre as you can. Until then, stay home.”
But for now, Dyer will continue to live, as she always has, with belief.
“All those opportunities that Townsville provided, all those festivals, shows they put on, it did provide a pretty amazing training ground for me to really build that belief in myself … without all those opportunities, I wouldn’t be here” she says. “To succeed and do well, you just need a few people to believe in you.”
The Invisible Man is available on Foxtel, Apple TV, Google Play and Telstra TV Box Office
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