Summer Bay to Hollywood: Aussie soap Home and Away awash in A-listers
IN terms of producing Hollywood stars and homegrown talent, Summer Bay must surely be Australia’s most over-achieving suburb.
Confidential
Don't miss out on the headlines from Confidential. Followed categories will be added to My News.
IN terms of producing Hollywood stars and homegrown talent, Summer Bay must surely be Australia’s most over-achieving suburb.
The fictional beachside town, which was brought to life by the Seven network 30 years ago in a little show called Home and Away, has gone on to produce some of our biggest
A-list stars.
Yesterday, actor and radio host Kate Ritchie, who spent 20 years of her life on Home and Away, paid homage to the show sharing a series of throwback photos from her first day on set on January 17, 1988.
“First official day of shooting on a show no one had yet heard of. 1987. Balmain backstreets,” she wrote next to a pic of herself, aged just eight.
READ MORE: Kate Ritchie: ‘Puberty wasn’t kind to me’
The late Heath Ledger, Chris Hemsworth, Isla Fisher, Naomi Watts and an array of other big screen heavyweights, also started their careers on Home and Away and went on to make it to the big time.
Ray Meagher, who plays Alf, has been at the helm of Summer Bay ever since day one and let slip he nearly didn’t sign on to do
the series.
Kate Ritchie’s sexy photoshoot in underwear: ‘I’m challenging my boundaries’
“We filmed the pilot in a couple of weeks and then they said they were going to make it a series. I thought ‘that’s good, might be three months work’, but they wanted me to sign for
two years,” Meagher, 73,
told Confidential.
“I said no, I’m not signing for two years, that’s a lifetime. I refused. That was 30 years ago. And I’m still here.”
As for how much longer he will stay in the Bay: “I probably won’t do another 30, I don’t think the good Lord would be that kind to me,” he said. “I might have an answer on that shortly. I’ve got to meet to discuss any future contracts, it might be all over then, or it might go a bit longer.”
British and Irish media outlets and fans also celebrated the show hitting the big 3-0, heralding their three decade “love affair” with the program that still airs twice a day on RTÉ, Ireland’s national public service broadcaster. International fans took to Twitter to describe the show’s impact on their lives. One Irish fan tweeted “we named two new calves Shane and Angel”. Another said “two girls in primary school took Angel and Finlay as their confirmation names”. While Hazel O’Toole recalled every pair of 16-year-olds in 1996 fighting over who got to be Shannon and who got to be Selina.