Robert Coleby gave son Conrad his first break as an actor when he was just a boy

Conrad Coleby’s future career was set when he was a boy following experience on location with his actor father Robert.

Buried in the credits of the 1980 sci-fi TV series Timelapse is the line: Baby played by Conrad Coleby.

He was six months old, it was his first acting gig, and the credit was at the insistence of his father, theatre and film legend Robert Coleby, who played the series’ lead, a computer genius cryogenically frozen in 1979 and thawed out some 12 years later.

“He played my grandson,” says Robert, 71, as U on Sunday chats by phone to him and Conrad, 37. “They said could we possibly use Conrad for the baby, and I said, yes, as long as you give him a credit.”

About seven years later, Conrad also got a gig on one of his dad’s shows. And this time the acting bug had well and truly bitten. The series was Tanamera: Lion of Singapore, and Conrad had been asked to play the son of a lead character who returns from war.

“It’s a little serious, because this father has found another lady he’s in love with in Asia; so it’s a family breakup,” explains Robert, while Conrad listens in, chuckling now and again. “It is set in a grand house and Conrad had to come down the stairs and open the door to reveal his father. And they did several takes from various angles and then called a tea-break.

“Conrad sort of wandered off into the garden. He was looking very gloomy so I walked down to him. I wasn’t sure why he was so upset – maybe he thinks they don’t like him.

“I said, Conrad, don’t worry if they make you do it many times, it’s not like it is anything you have done wrong, they just need the cameras to cover it from various angles.

“He looked at me and said, ‘no, it’s not that, it’s just so sad that he’s never seen his father and then he comes home, and then he’ll leave and he’ll never see him again!’

“Now, there’s an actor! He was right into it; and he was just seven-and-a-half with a very posh English accent.”

The pair are enjoying recalling the early days. Unable to be together today for Father’s Day, they took the chance a few weeks ago to catch-up at Dove Farm – the property owned by Robert and his wife, former model, Lena Taylor, in the Tallebudgera Valley on the Gold Coast — when Conrad was in Queensland for the season launch of A Place To Call Home.

Robert’s character in A Place To Call Home, Douglas Goddard, bowed out at the end of season 5; with Conrad debuting in the current and final season, as Douglas’ long-lost son Matthew.

Conrad says it seemed predestined that he and his sister Anya (Farscape, All Saints, Flipper), would become actors considering their childhood. Their dad, born in Ipswich in the UK, built most of his career in Australia, with noted roles in such series as Chopper Squad, Patrol Boat and All Saints.

“It was always the favourite thing of mine to follow my dad on to a set or into a voice studio,” says Conrad, who is also known for roles in Home And Away and Sea Patrol. “I used to love accompanying my dad to work. I saw the lifestyle of an actor and thought it was really good fun. I probably ruined a few sets for continuity because I’d go on and rearrange things.”

Apart from those very early TV series, father and son have rarely worked together.

They filmed no scenes together in A Place To Call Home; when they appeared on stage in a Queensland Theatre Company production of Other Desert Cities in 2013, their characters never spoke a line to each other; and when they were in the same camera frame in All Saints, there was a distinct division.

“You were the ambulance guy carrying that heart-attack patient and I was the doctor hovering over him,” says Robert.

“I was the working class guy,” says Conrad

“And I was the professional with the upper class kind of attitude towards him,” says Robert, as they both joke that maybe very little has changed.

But there is a close bond between this father and son. They will often play their guitars when they are together; and discuss their artwork.

“We both paint,” says Robert. “Conrad’s more of a, hmmm, I suppose, he does some really good abstract stuff. Quite quirky representational paintings, I would say. He’s got a real talent.

“I remember being fascinated by guitars as a teenager. And I spent most of my school days sitting up the back of the class trying to draw guitars. And I could never draw one side that mirrored the other. They all looked a bit lumpy, or something.

“But Conrad, from the age of three or something, could always draw symmetrical shapes so well.”

He could also, at about age 8 or 9, slip into the pseudonym of James, the waiter, at family gatherings.

“We’d have parties and we made sure he became James,” says Robert as his son groans in the background. “He had a little tea towel over his arm.

“So, unfortunately I suppose, we just forced him into acting!”

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