Miranda Otto stars in new Netflix drama Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
SINCE making her film debut at the age of 19, Miranda Otto has rarely been out of work. Although the 50-year-old has considered giving up acting over the years, a new role always catches her interest — and this time it’s a chilling new Netflix drama.
TV
Don't miss out on the headlines from TV. Followed categories will be added to My News.
SHE has firmly positioned herself as one of Australia’s great acting exports, but Miranda Otto still harbours an unlikely level of self-doubt and has even considered giving the game away altogether.
The Brisbane-born, LA-based star of stage and screen has been called on by Hollywood titans Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to feature in blockbusters such as War of the Worlds and Lord of the Rings, but Otto baulks at the suggestion of having her own name printed on a director’s chair.
She says she’s not confident enough to follow in the footsteps of others of her calibre who have, such as Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie and Jodie Foster.
“I’ve seen so many people do it so well. I’ve just seen so many fabulous directors — I think, ‘God, how would I be as good as them’,” she tells BW Magazine.
“It’s such a decision-making process and I labour decisions so much and in directing you can’t labour decisions, you really just have to make decisions.”
It is a lingering self-doubt she has battled throughout her career, one that started before she’d even had her first big break.
The 50-year-old has been immersed in the entertainment world for as long as she can remember.
As the daughter of revered Australian actor Barry Otto, she constantly found herself surrounded by the cream of the country’s drama circle.
Despite knowing early that she wanted to perform on the stage — after coming to terms with the fact her dreams of becoming a top flight ballerina would go unrealised due to mild scoliosis — the constant exposure to these brilliant artists fostered an anxiety early on her career.
MORE FROM DAVID MEDDOWS
YOUNG GUNS OPEN UP ABOUT CELEBRITY CHEF MENTORS
HOLLYWOOD STAR WHO DOESN’T DO SOCIAL MEDIA
A nagging question about her place in the industry was only answered when she took her place at the National Institute of Dramatic Art.
“I was brought up around the theatre, so I saw so many fantastic performances from when I was small, into my teen years and into my 20s when I was at drama school,” she says.
“At first it was a little paralysing. That was the great thing about going to drama school, having the space to go off and try to work out what actor (I would be).
“It is intimidating with some of the people I knew growing up who were so wonderful and I respected so much.”
A scroll through Otto’s resume quickly confirms just how prolific and successful an actor she has been.
Since making her feature film debut in Emma’s War at 19, she has rarely been out of work.
While she was making a name for herself for her on-screen work — she was nominated for five Australian Film Industry awards — she was also making her presence known on stage, one of her first loves.
It was also in the theatre where she met her husband, fellow Australian actor Peter O’Brien.
The pair were both cast in A Doll’s House, for which Otto was nominated for a Helpmann Award, and married a year later.
Continuing success would follow both in Australia and in Hollywood, but there was always a nagging question over whether she really wanted to keep going.
“There have been times in my career where I thought of stopping acting along the way and doing something else and then some fantastic role comes along just as I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know if I can keep doing this,’ ” she says.
“Something comes along and pulls me back into it. It’s a constant question throughout my life.”
An academically gifted Otto briefly considered an alternative career after finishing high school, but the lure of the stage was too strong.
“I was going to do medicine and then I deferred for a year and it was really in that year of deferral that I kind of really fell into the acting thing,” she says.
Dad Barry knew his daughter was destined for the stage.
“She saw me playing Uncle Vanya about five or six times at the old Nimrod Theatre and it just got into her blood and that’s what she wanted to do,” he told The Australian last year.
“Medicine was on her mind but acting was almost inevitable, she couldn’t escape it.”
Now that she’s the parent of a teenage daughter herself, how would Otto react if she wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps?
While she wouldn’t necessarily encourage 13-year-old Darcey to pursue acting, Otto hopes any decision Darcey makes is informed by having witnessed both the struggles and successes her parents have endured over the years.
“She sort of has her toe in everything really. She’s acted and done stuff with school and then she’s musical and she’s sporty and then she’s academic so I feel like the field is wide open for whatever ends up being her strongest passion,” Otto says.
“But she has a lot of different passions and things she’s interested in. She really enjoys performing but she enjoys a lot of things.”
Otto has been a regular face on television screens around the world in recent years with pivotal roles in two blockbuster shows — Homeland, where she played a ruthless double-agent; and in 24: Legacy, the latest instalment in the franchise that turned Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer into a household name.
And now, in a complete change of scenery — and further example of her breadth of talent — she gets to play a witch.
Otto is Aunt Zelda in Netflix’s dark new drama Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, based on the Archie comics of the same name.
So dark and mysterious — and funny — is the script, it took some time for Otto to get her head around it.
“It was so different to me, it took me a while to understand the tone of what it was because it’s kind of a lot of different genres in one in some ways,” she says.
“You’ve got the horror part of it and then there’s a very comedic part. So on first read there was so much going on, I kind of found it hard to understand exactly what show it was going to be.”
The show centres on Zelda’s niece Sabrina (Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka), who is half-witch, half-mortal, and her struggle to remain independent in the face of mounting pressure from the followers of the Dark Lord — including the intense and controlling Zelda, her other gentler aunt Hilda (Lucy Davis) and especially Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle), the High Priest of the Church of Night.
The series is one of Netflix’s flagship programs this year.
The streaming service so confident of its success it ordered two seasons straight off the bat.
Otto believes the show differs from many others that are doing the rounds at the moment and is confident that it has the ingredients to cast a positive spell over viewers.
“There’s an essence of this show that reminds me of those shows when I was a kid that were on repeat from America and the sense of fun that it has,” she says.
“A lot of shows these days aren’t so much fun and I think there’s a lot of fun in this show — a lot of fantasy and fun.”