Television star is a country kid at heart

The Warwick actress making a name for herself on the silver screen, Adrienne Pickering

RISING STAR: Warwick actress Adrienne Pickering will star in the new season of Offspring and Channel 9's House of Bond.

ONE of Warwick's own will be in the limelight as Offspring has returned to the silver screen.

Adrienne Pickering stars in the Channel 10 series and has also appeared most recently in the Channel 9 bio-series House of Bond as Eileen 'Red' Bond, and the ABC's Rake as Missy, a writer-turned-drug addict.

Despite making her mark on the Australian television scene, the 36-year-old said she owed her creativity to her upbringing in country Queensland.

Father Peter Pickering said his daughter had remained a fairly private person even after her time in the limelight.

"She's not someone who thinks it's such a big deal (that she's on TV),” Mr Pickering said.

"That's her profession, her work, and she just tries to do the best she can and is very thankful for everything.

"I think she considers herself fortunate enough to be in that industry, and even though it's an industry focussed on celebrity, that's not how she sees herself and she's stayed grounded.”

Mr Pickering said Adrienne, like her five siblings, had attended the School of Total Education where she thrived in drama.

"She liked the school and I think she was able to express her creative needs,” he said.

"She was fortunate enough to have a great drama teacher, Neil Rasmussen, who encouraged her to go on and act, but was also able to express that it could be an unsteady profession and she would need to be fairly resilient.

"That's what she's managed; she started at school and then went to the University of Queensland to do arts but was accepted into an acting course at QUT after her first year.”

After living in Sydney, New York and Los Angeles, Adrienne has now settled in her father's hometown of Melbourne.

Mr Pickering said although work necessitated city living for his daughter, she still tried to get back to Warwick as much as she could.

"Adrienne's mum Delys, my wife, has dementia so Adrienne tries to come back as often as she can,” he said.

"Delys and I were both teachers and we had come back to Melbourne in the mid-70s after living overseas and found it to be a big impersonal city at that time.

"We were both looking for something a little more peaceful, community-oriented and meaningful, and at the end of 1976 I took a job at Scots College.”

Mr Pickering said the decision to move to Warwick had made an indelible impression on his family.

"It's allowed (Adrienne) to develop in a strong environment that allowed her to develop her creative ideas.

"When she was growing up she played a lot of basketball and did ballet and horse riding fairly often and there was no sort of expectations placed on her.

"She was allowed to choose what she wanted to pursue in life.”