Aquarius star Claire Holt: ‘My parents finally believe I’m an actor’

SHE has landed her big break in new US TV series Aquarius, alongside David Duchovny, yet this 26-year-old Aussie failed high school drama.

CLAIRE Holt hobbles into Los Angeles’ Four Seasons Hotel looking anything but the big TV star.

Holt’s sporting a busted right ankle, a sharp new haircut, a broad grin, and lapses quickly back into her Aussie accent the more she chats.

By the time she has displayed genuine delight over the gift of Tim Tams the Australian publicist has brought her — and offered to buy her own cup of tea — it’s clear that while Holt may be big in the US — where she has found success on the back of roles in cult series Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, and in upcoming crime drama Aquarius — she remains a simple Brisbane girl at heart.

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New TV crime drama ... Claire Holt as Charmain Tully in a scene from Aquarius. Picture: Vivian Zink / NBC

As conversation turns to her busted ankle, and the 26-year-old’s self-effacing humour is firmly intact.

“I’d love to tell you I was saving a baby from a tiger attack, but, no I was taking out the trash, wearing the socks and ... ‘splat’ ,” she shrugs

“It’s a clean break — I’ll be healed in no time.”

That was back in January. This week, Holt debuts in her latest series in Australia on Presto alongside David Duchovny (The X-Files, Californication) in Aquarius.

Duchovny plays a detective investigating Charles Manson and his growing band of supporters in the 1960s — before Manson was revealed as the worst serial killer in the US.

Holt plays Charmain Tully, a policewoman desperate for a break in a man’s world at a time female officers were there to make coffee and ‘pat down hookers’.

She gets her chance when she is sent undercover — essentially as bait for Manson.

Hotly-anticipated new TV drama ... Claire Holt as Charmain Tully, Grey Damon as Brian Shafe, Gethin Anthony as Charles Manson, Emma Dumont as Emma Karn in a scene from Aquarius. Picture: Jim Fiscus / NBC

You get a sense of the steel of Tully from the outset, when she brushes off an apology from a colleague that her life was put in danger with the simple reply: “I loved it”.

It’s a similar steel to that Holt exhibited as she fought for the role with multiple auditions — desperate to convince series makers she was right for the part.

“I fought hard for this. And I didn’t have it and I didn’t have it and I didn’t have it, and then all of a sudden I had it,” she says.

“It was one of those fortuitous, awesome things where maybe I wasn’t the obvious choice but it was something I was really passionate about.

“I guess I really didn’t take no for an answer. I forced them to hire me.”

‘I fought hard for this’ ... Claire Holt, who plays Charmain, with Grey Damon as Shafe in new TV crime drama Aquarius. Picture: Jim Fiscus / NBC

Not bad for a woman who failed drama in grade nine at high school, and claims she only got her first role — on Australian teen fantasy series H20: Just Add Water as mermaid Emma Gilbert — because she was a good swimmer.

Pure naivety took her to LA, Holt says. She was 20, had a manager, and no clue how tough it would be.

“Thank God I was so naive, because if I’d known what I was getting myself into I wouldn’t have come,” she says.

“H20 — that was the first role I’d ever auditioned for and I got it. So young me just thought: ‘That’s easy, you just audition and you get the job’.

“I honestly thought I was going to get on a plane and walk into some big studio head’s office and he was going to offer me a big trilogy and that was going to be that.

“I realised pretty freakin’ quick smart that wasn’t going to happen. And for the next year I dealt with ‘no’, all day every day.”

‘First role I’d ever auditioned for’ ... Emma (played by Claire Holt), Cleo (Phoebe Tonkin) and Cariba (Rikki Chadwick) in Ten Network’s H20.

Money was tight — she’d saved a lot of her earnings from H20, sold her car, and when best friend and H20 co-star Phoebe Tonkin moved Stateside, the pair would treat themselves to ‘Frugal Fridays’ at Target, with a budget of $50.

It took a year before the break came — a role in Mean Girls 2.

Five years on, she jokes, her parents finally believe she’s an actor.

“They were always supportive, but I don’t think for a while there they believed I was an actor — because I don’t know that Vampire Diaries translated as well over in Australia,” she grins

Holt has just bought her first house, in Hollywood ‘so I think Dad is now convinced it’s working out’.

Frugal Fridays are over. The age of Aquarius beckons.

AQUARIUS will be available on Presto from FRIDAY (May 29)

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Originally published as Aquarius star Claire Holt: ‘My parents finally believe I’m an actor’