‘I think the fear of turning 40 is just I don’t want to work less’
Thanks to Pretty Little Liars, Home And Away and her latest role playing a wannabe cheerleader, Tammin Sursok is fixed in our minds as a perennial teenager. So it feels something of a surprise that the actor is about to turn 40.
Stellar
Don't miss out on the headlines from Stellar. Followed categories will be added to My News.
“Don’t talk about that,” Tammin Sursok laughingly tells Stellar when asked about her looming milestone 40th birthday on August 19. “I’m not nervous about turning 40, I’m nervous of what that represents,” she says, explaining that she’s fearful she’ll lose out on roles even if it appears that the film and television industry is finally starting to embrace older women. For the mother-of-two it’s pure pragmatism: “I think the fear of turning 40 is just I don’t want to work less.”
Sursok is justified in feeling apprehensive, considering the message she received when she fell pregnant with daughter Phoenix. “I remember having my first kid and they said I was no longer an ingenue – I was 29 years old.”
Sursok is championing for age diversity being reflected onscreen and salutes the And Just Like That cast for revisiting their younger Sex And The City characters and “having sex and taking their clothes off”.
She recognises the need to see the reality of ageing bodies in performances. “Unless we see that we’re going to think there’s something wrong with us, but if we go to the movies and someone looks like they’re ageing then we’ll think, ‘Oh that’s typical, that’s normal’,” she says.
But it’s not just how women look, it’s also how they think that needs to be represented onscreen. In the years since she played Dani Sutherland on Home And Away in the early 2000s, and Jenna Marshall for seven years in the breakout mystery teen drama Pretty Little Liars from 2010, Sursok has supplemented her acting career by creating content for both her two million-strong social media following and the podcast she co-hosts with celebrity interviewer Roxy Manning, Women On Top, which recently featured actors Rachel Bilson and Alicia Silverstone. Topics range from sex and love languages to facelifts and finances. (Incidentally, Sursok is not against plastic surgery but says she’d be too scared to do it herself – and when it comes to family finances, she’s in charge.)
Married to American movie director, producer and writer Sean McEwen, with whom she has two daughters, Phoenix, nine, and Lennon, four, Sursok says she and her husband divide the domestic roles according to their strengths, hence her role controlling their money.
“I believe you should do the things you enjoy or that you’re good at. My husband’s really good at making kids’ meals so he does that and I’m really good at getting the knots out of my kids’ hair, so I do that part. I’m also really good at investing, I love learning about how we can grow financially, so why not do that for our family?”
Sursok, who works with McEwen, 50, on everything from film projects to their social media content, says the pair have always been a team that shares their family responsibilities, and she laments that not every marriage is fair when it comes to the overwhelm of domestic burden. “I see women [on TikTok talking about] how they do all the housework and they’re sometimes feeling bitter about that. It’s good to be a team and it’s good to do 50/50.” She notes that she and McEwen also go to therapy regularly. “I don’t go to therapy because there’s anything wrong, I go to therapy so there isn’t anything wrong,” she says.
As the couple continue to split their time between Australia and Nashville, Sursok explains that their daughters spend a couple of months each year being homeschooled. Occasionally she has to contend with critics who say the girls are being denied stability, but she’s firm in her response: “Their stability is with us. Their stability is knowing that their mum and dad are in the bed every night and they’re always going to have a roof over their heads and they’re always going to have someone who will talk through any problems that they have, and who will love them for the rest of their lives.”
Indeed, a new partnership with Amazon.com.au has encouraged Sursok to consider what makes children genuinely happy. She is launching a nationwide competition today for one lucky child to enjoy a real-life game of “Yes Day” for which they design the bedroom of their dreams. Based on the 2021 movie of the same name starring Jennifer Garner, the concept aims to give children a sense of control and unleash their imaginations.
As Sursok tells Stellar, “I’ve learnt from speaking to child psychologists that kids don’t feel like they have a lot of agency. They can’t make their own choices because everything is either chosen for them or there’s a lot of ‘no’. We have to give our kids boundaries. But I love this idea that we have to say yes to everything, however wild and wacky that is.”
Don’t parents deserve yes days, too? Sursok laughs and reveals that at the top of her wish list is to tour Australia in a one-woman play and she’s hoping to manifest a special theatre project. She and McEwen might write something together but, whatever the outcome, Sursok’s excited for the coming decade. “When I was younger, what people thought I should do and be affected me but the older I get, the more I just want to be the best version of myself. People’s opinions of me are, honestly, not my business.”
To enter the Yes Day competition, head to Amazon.com.au/ultimateyesday.
Originally published as ‘I think the fear of turning 40 is just I don’t want to work less’
Why Sienna Miller ‘doesn’t want to be a movie star’
As one of Hollywood’s most stylish celebrities, Sienna Miller is used to the spotlight. But in recent years, the 42-year-old British actor confesses, she is much less interested in fame.
‘I couldn’t breathe’: Mollie O reveals anxiety attack before gold medal
Mollie O’Callaghan has sometimes struggled in the spotlight as an Australian swimming superstar. Now, she has revealed what really happened at the Paris Olympics – and the anxiety that overwhelmed her.