Parramatta’s top 20 most famous faces from number 5 to 1
TWO Hollywood stars, a music icon, a sporting legend and a businessman — today we reveal Parramatta’s top five most famous sons and daughters.
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PARRAMATTA is brimming with celebrities that once called the western Sydney suburb home.
Some were here a long time, others only stayed a short time but have left a lasting impression. Others still live here. Regardless, their contribution to Sydney’s west lives on.
The Advertiser staff debated who should be on the most famous list and where they should rank from position 20 through to position 1. Today we list the top 5.
All 20 are listed on our website for you to have the opportunity to agree, disagree or suggest others who should have be on the list.
5. Napoleon Perdis
Cosmetic king Napoleon Perdis, 48, had humble beginnings growing up in Parramatta. Raised in a Greek-immigrant family in an Anglo-western neighbourhood in the 1970s, life was tough.
It didn’t help either that he loved doing his mother’s make-up.
Mr Perdis first picked up a make-up brush, at age 13, to help his mother, Liana Perdis, prepare to head out.
“She would do these little tips, one of them I actually still use: she used to extend the line of the eye with the eyeliner. She’d put it and then she’d dab it.”
His first attempt at doing her make-up was a little heavy-handed.
“I remember specifically seeing this thing in a magazine: they were putting electric blue mascara on and they put a little bit in the eyebrow to give a little highlight and (I did that to her) and she went out with it — but she looked like a drag queen.
“She was very proud that I had done her make up.”
In 2016, Perdis returned to the manicured lawns of Redeemer Baptist School at North Parramatta for the first time since his graduation in 1987. He wanted to meet with students and show his US-raised daughters where he came from.
“My dreams were made on these very fields and that’s something I want to show my family,” he told students.
4. Rick Springfield
The man behind worldwide No. 1 hit Jessie’s Girl, singer Rick Springfield, was born in Guildford and grew up in South Wentworthville.
He told Sunday Night he grew up as a “moody guy”.
“I was depressed — and didn’t know — by the time I was 14. I was just the artistic moody guy,” he said.
“I tried to channel it in the music and it helped me because I can’t not feel good when I finish a song.”
Sydney still remains a fond place for the singer who went on to become a global pop pin up, thanks to his hits and his starring roles in American television shows like General Hospital.
Springfield revealed the subject of Jessie’s Girl never knew the song was about her.
“She was actually Gary’s girl but that didn’t work when I wrote the song so I changed his name to Jessie,” she said.
“I met her at a stained glass class I was taking before things took off for me in America … she really took my breath away but we never had to the chance to do anything about it … I would totally know her if I saw her today.”
3. Rebel Wilson
Hollywood star Rebel Wilson claims she is from a “bogan” family after growing up with her parents and four sibling in Castle Hill and going to Tara Anglican School for Girls in North Parramatta.
She said her parents took jobs to fund her schooling at the private girls’ school — her mother worked as an ESL teacher and father at the local petrol station. Her grandmother also helped pay for the fees.
“To me (the school) was like a resort. It had a tennis court, gymnasium, its own swimming pool, it was like, oh my god. I thought I was very lucky to go there,” she said.
Wilson said it was a good “training ground” for life — especially life in Hollywood.
“I think I know all sorts of girls and how all sorts of girls operate by going to an all-girls’ school. It’s a good skill to have.”
She was popular by the time she graduated, but it had taken some work.
“Weirdly, girls turned from being really bitchy and mean, and me being a target, to me being the popular, cool one because I never bent to anyone else. I was just myself.”
Wilson has appeared in Fat Pizza, Bridesmaids, Bachelorette, the Pitch Perfect trilogy and Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.
2. Richie Benaud
His infectious voice and eye for the game made Richie Benaud a household name across the world, but the doyen of cricket commentary always described himself as a Parramatta boy.
Recognised as a “true son” of the suburb, Benaud was raised in Parramatta, attended Parramatta High School where he captained the first XI and played for the Parramatta District Cricket Club, formerly the Cumberland Club.
Parramatta Cricket Club president Greg Monaghan said he was a huge figure in sport in western Sydney.
“Probably in terms of recognition Richie is known by millions, if not billions, of people,” he said.
“They say you have made it when you are referred to by only one name and Richie was Richie -you didn’t need another name to know who he was.”
Parramatta, the place and its people, stayed with Benaud for all of his years until his death in 2015 at 84.
He described himself in his autobiography, My Spin On Cricket, as a “Parramatta-boy’’.
Benaud attended Parramatta High from 1942, the same year he made his debut for Cumberland Cricket Second X1, aged 12.
He made his first grade debut aged 16.
A 1947 school report said, “ … to Benaud must go the highest praise. He was an excellent captain and inspiration to the team. It is doubtful if any schoolboy has performed so well in high school cricket.”
Benaud was selected for the NSWCA and NSW second eleven teams and it was predicted that he would go on to greater things.
In 2011, Parramatta Council failed to stop the demolition of his childhood home in North Parramatta. The suburb has an oval named after the much-loved local.
1. Paul Hogan
From Granville to Hollywood, class clown to Crocodile Dundee, it’s been a long journey for Paul Hogan, 78.
Before he took the US by storm with Crocodile Dundee in 1986, the actor and comedian grew up on Blaxcell St in Granville.
Hogan’s dad was in the army, his mother looked after the kids, and he himself grew up as a typical “working-class Westie’’. He went to Marist Brothers in Parramatta but didn’t
like school.
“I didn’t agree with a lot of it, thought I knew better than they did, argued a lot,” he said.
A former classmate said a young Hogan constantly had his classmates in fits of laughter.
“His capacity to be able to make kids laugh even then, in Form Three, was legendary,’’ Phil Ruthven said.
Hogan dropped at out school at 14 and became an apprentice labourer in an iron foundry.
“I sort of grew up there,” he said.
“By the time I was 16 I thought, ‘What am I doin’ here?’ It was such a grotesque job.
“Pulled out of that and got a job at the Granville Swimming Pool as a pool attendant, I thought, ‘This is more like it!’ Like, I had my own swimming pool, in the western suburbs, in the 50s.”
That’s where he met first wife Noelene. They married two years later in 1958.
Hogan went on to become a rigger working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge before rising to fame in the early 1970s after an interview on A Current Affair. Hogan followed this with his own comedy sketch program The Paul Hogan Show, which he produced, wrote, and in which he played characters with John Cornell.
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