2 Hearts actress Radha Mitchell on the ‘90s film she looks back on most fondly

Australian actor Radha Mitchell looks back on her dozens of roles to reveal which one she holds closest to her heart and why her latest project is her most personal yet.

When she arrived at hotel quarantine in Sydney late last year, Radha Mitchell admits she almost had a panic attack.

“It was dark and the windows in the room wouldn’t open. Not having air... It was a lot,” the 47-year-old explains to Stellar. Yet it didn’t take the Australian actor long to appreciate the relative freedom of her home country compared to Los Angeles, where she normally resides.

“I was looking out at the harbour and the water, and at all these people outside. It was totally different to what we’d been experiencing in LA, where everybody’s masked up and on alert. You get used to it in a way and it’s sort of something you live with. But seeing people free like that… We’re very lucky here.”

“I think we’re coming out of a kind of innocence; this is really waking us up.” (Picture: Getty Images)

Quarantine not only afforded Mitchell plenty of time to people-watch – “I’d ride my exercise bike while watching the people outside in the pool” – it also gave her time to pause and reflect on the state of the world during this pandemic.

“I don’t have a political perspective, necessarily. It feels like a big experiment, [especially to see] how it’s playing out in different spaces and affecting everybody psychologically,” she says.

“It’s causing us to deeply question the world we’re building. I think we’re coming out of a kind of innocence; this is really waking us up. And it’s probably a good thing.”

Talk to Mitchell long enough and you realise that she’s deeply introspective and just as private. Born and raised in Melbourne by her single mother [her parents divorced when she was young], she was named after a Hindu goddess and travelled to India many times with her mother, and later for film projects.

“When you look back on your life, you ask yourself, who did I spend my time with?’” (Picture: Supplied)

She began acting as a teenager on TV comedy-drama Sugar & Spice, and like many local actors who have gone on to work in Hollywood, cut her teeth on shows like Blue Heelers and Neighbours.

Yet, after a career spanning three decades, Mitchell still looks back most fondly on her first film, the 1996 hit Love And Other Catastrophes, which told the story of two students looking for a flatmate.

“I didn’t know anything about anything before we made that movie,” she says with a laugh. “What a little miracle that was! It was a homegrown film that got sold and ended up going to the Cannes Film Festival. That movie is close to my heart.”

But it was the 1998 film High Art that would put Mitchell firmly on the map and introduce her to audiences in the US, where it was an arthouse hit.

“High Art was really interesting. It was an entry into the US world of filmmaking, but it was also that kind of ’90s independent space,” she says, recalling her role as a young magazine intern who falls in love with an older woman.

“I didn’t even realise how unique an experience it was at the time.”

“I didn’t know anything about anything before we made that movie.” (Picture: Alamy)

Unique is a word that could be used to describe Mitchell herself, given that her career has seen her play more than 70 very different characters across genres ranging from drama (Finding Neverland, Man On Fire, The Waiting City, Looking For Grace) and comedy (Swinging Safari) to horror (Silent Hill, Rogue) and blockbusters (Pitch Black, Olympus Has Fallen).

Before agreeing to any role, Mitchell always looks for certain qualities in a project: the people involved, the intelligence of the story, the originality. Yet, sometimes, it’s something even more personal that draws her to it.

“My latest movie 2 Hearts is ambitious because it’s about two love stories that are somehow enmeshed,” Mitchell says. The film tells the true story of organ donor Christopher Gregory and organ recipient Jorge Bacardi.

“The issue with the transplant was very personal to me because I lost a friend who was waiting for a lung transplant. And waiting for it with an open mind. And it just… never arrived. It was strange how this story came to me, and I felt that somehow there was some serendipity there.”

Radha Mitchell features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

She also got to the chance to age on screen, a challenge that she says was “very exciting”. “I play the character from their mid-20s to late-60s, so that was a real experience. And while there’s a weight to this story, [my character] is in the light. She’s not afraid, even when things are scary, so it felt more like a courageous journey.”

Participating in a true-to-life film about life and death naturally led Mitchell to do some internal pondering. “I thought, ‘When you look back on your life, you ask yourself, who did I spend my time with?’ I’m really lucky to have spent my time with some wonderful people.”

2 Hearts will be available on all major digital platforms from February 10.

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