From school ‘mooner’ to household name: Melbourne actor Stephen Curry on new Netflix thriller Pine Gap
FROM school “mooner” to household name, award-winning Melbourne actor Stephen Curry has never been afraid to bare all. But his new role as a power-hungry alpha male in a Netflix thriller sees him become an uncharacteristic “mean dude”.
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THINK big-screen bad guy or TV villain, and Stephen Curry probably doesn’t spring to mind. But these are the gigs the beloved comedic actor — who kickstarted his career 21 years ago as goofy Dale Kerrigan in The Castle — laps up, not only to break type and flex different acting muscles, but to snare a day off if there’s ever a barbecue scene.
After his chilling portrayal of a serial killer in last year’s film Hounds of Love, he’s back as the “mean dude”, intelligence analyst Jacob Kitto, in Pine Gap, a new six-part thriller for ABC and Netflix.
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“He’s an alpha male, and alphas can’t control their alpha-ness,” Curry explains.
“He loves his power and takes delight in ruining people’s day. Good at his job, but bad at people and relationships, which is why no one invites him to barbecues.
“The great thing is, if they write a barbecue scene, you know you’re getting a day off.
“It’s also nice to have that departure and be paid to be the person who upsets people. The good guys have a box you have to play them inside. You can’t even put your toe near the line, but guys like Jacob and more so the serial killer, you can piss on that line. It’s fun.
“I don’t get to (be alpha) very much in my life. Coming from a big family, trying to act any way alpha you just get laughed at.”
Curry, 42, grew up in Deepdene in Melbourne’s inner east as the youngest of five children — four brothers and a sister. Each has worked as a professional actor at some stage, having got their start in kids’ theatre group, the Toorak Players (now Track Youth Theatre).
“Even though it was based in Kew, calling it Toorak gave it some level of esteem,” Curry says.
“It gave us a real love for acting … Mum still blames them for none of us being able to build her a pergola.”
At Bulleen’s Marcellin College, he was the class clown with what he calls a penchant for mooning, culminating in him being suspended in year 12 for baring his bottom on a TV during a media studies class.
“My teacher took one look at the screen and said, ‘Stephen Curry, go straight to the principal’s office’. My reputation had been so sealed she just needed to look at my arse to know it was me. I’ve grown out of that. Although (my six-year-old son) Arlo isn’t an extrovert, he doesn’t mind flashing his butt cheeks at all. Of course, if he ever gets suspended from school, I’ll be very disappointed. Who does that?”
Curry’s love for the industry was sparked at the age of six when he tagged along with his brothers to the weekly Lotto draw with their dad, who worked as a government supervisor for Tattslotto.
“We got to go into the Channel 7 studio in South Melbourne and we couldn’t believe the cameras, and all the lights, and we got to meet (presenter) John Deeks. I tasted coffee for the first time and there were Monte Carlo biscuits. It was the best day ever.”
About seven years later, Curry landed his first paid role in a Wedgwood Pies ad, which also starred his older brothers Andrew and Bernard as featured extras while he was “in a sea of far better looking people than me”, including a young Jane Allsop who went on to Blue Heelers fame.
The following year he got his first line in a show — in a Fast Forward sketch called The Whizz Bang Theatre Company with Glenn Robbins and Michael Veitch.
“I told everyone at school, but then they revoiced me. My one line. It was terrible.”
BUT better things were to come. Curry was 20 when he appeared in The Castle, a movie he says he owes his career to, and one that has left such an indelible mark on Aussie pop culture, people are still reciting his lines back to him more than two decades later.
“Funny how people sometimes play a long game with it, too,” he says. “They’ll come up and introduce themselves and start talking, and I’m thinking ‘Oh, this is a nice conversation’ and it’s not until eight minutes in they go, ‘So … dug any holes lately?’ That was the reason for the whole chat.
“You could’ve ridden past on your bike and yelled that at me and we’d be done. All jokes aside, I’m so proud of The Castle. Very rarely do you get something like that fall in your lap. Pretty much the reason why I’m sitting here talking to you today is because of that film.
“It just keeps being a vital part of Aussie cinema. It looks terrible and sounds terrible, but that’s part of the appeal that it looks like it was made in your backyard.”
Since its 1997 release, Curry has been in fairly constant demand as an actor. His last “real job” was at 18 at a bakery in Hawthorn.
“I don’t have any skills so I’m hoping this all very much continues,” he deadpans.
Continuing on with comedies after The Castle, Curry made the move into drama with 2001 miniseries Changi, playing a prisoner of war. It was a shift that would cement his longevity in showbiz.
“I never thought of myself as doing drama — just like I never thought of myself having kids, I guess,” the father of two says.
“I thought that’s for grown-ups and then I realised, if I could do drama and comedy, I’ve just doubled my chances of employment.”
Curry has gone on to dozens more film and TV roles, as well as on stage, including bringing Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketches to life with Shaun Micallef in Good Evening in 2010.
Other memorable turns include playing TV legend Graham Kennedy in 2007 miniseries The King, in which he lost then gained 8kg to play the younger then older Kennedy, and also netted himself a silver Logie. In 2011, he dropped 15kg for his big-screen jockey role portraying Damien Oliver in The Cup.
Next year, he’ll venture behind the scenes to produce (and star in) $10 million Aussie heist movie Cape Tribulation, and he’s just wrapped filming on new Channel 10 comedy series, Mr Black, which is scheduled to air next year.
He plays the title character — “another alpha bastard”, a former sports journalist who has a degenerative disease that forces him to move in with his daughter and her boyfriend, but becomes hellbent on breaking them up. Nadine Garner plays his estranged wife.
Earlier this year, filming for Pine Gap — which centres on the tense working relationship between Australian and American intelligence analysts at the facility — took Curry to Adelaide.
While external scenes were shot near the real Pine Gap, about 20km out of Alice Springs, internal scenes were filmed on a set that looked authentically close to a proper control room thanks to producers hiring former Pine Gap employee David Rosenberg as the show’s technical and creative consultant.
Curry reckons the joint US and Australian defence facility is an inspired setting for a series, as well as Rosenberg’s tie-in book Pine Gap: The Inside Story of the NSA in Australia, out now through Hardie Grant (RRP $30).
“It’s such a place of mystery and good fodder for conspiracies,” he says. “Because of national security, they can’t tell us anything about it. It’s a fascinating place. It’s our Area 51. All of that central column of the world — Australia, Asia, the Middle East and Russia — every bit of satellite monitoring goes through Pine Gap. All that tit-for-tat rubbish between Trump and Kim, it comes through here.
“When we were filming, there was a strike on four munitions factories in Syria. It was the Yanks, the French and the English in a joint mission so all of that (intel) would have been verified through Pine Gap.
“That, to me, is endlessly fascinating. It’s big, and a very important geopolitical position for the Americans to hold. Then you have people who say it puts Australia in a more visible and tenuous geopolitical position than we might otherwise be.”
Curry’s scheming Pine Gap character Jacob is far from Curry’s own everyman charm, which saw he and mate Dave Lawson front a successful series of AFL Toyota ads for several years. Ads for Smith’s chips and voice-over work also help pay the bills.
“It’s all part of putting shoes on my kids’ feet,” he says. “I got told by too many teachers that this (acting) was a very bad idea so those voices are still ringing in my ears and will be forever, I guess. Actors don’t retire, they just stop getting work, so you hope that that’s around your 70s when all you want to do is play bowls and go camping. The fear factor is good because it keeps you on your toes, but it’s also far more real when you’ve got two hungry mouths in your house.”
Curry and his wife of eight years, Naadein Crowe, live in St Kilda East with sons Arlo, 6, and Beau, 4, who’s showing signs of following in his dad’s performing footsteps.
“Arlo’s like Naadein in that be doesn’t care for the limelight, whereas the little one, Naadein calls him my karma, but if that’s as bad as your karma’s going to get, you’re doing OK.
“One hundred per cent he’ll work in a creative field. I’d love to say I’ll discourage him at all costs but as long as he doesn’t take any roles from me, it’s fine.”
PINE GAP STARTS ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14 ON ABC-TV AT 8.30PM, WITH ALL EPISODES THEN AVAILABLE ON ABC IVIEW.
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