Looking for Pia Miranda: star on a journey of self ‘rediscovery’
After her breakout role in Looking for Alibrandi, then years spent raising a family, Pia Miranda, now 50, is set to become a regular on our screens once again.
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Turning 50 has changed Pia Miranda.
While fans often still think of her as the little Italian schoolgirl in the cult Aussie classic that changed her life, the Looking for Alibrandi star has spent a big chunk of the past 20 years raising children Lily and James, and caring for her disabled father.
But now at “good ages” of 13 and nine, the kids are well into school and her father is well cared for. So now – well now is about her.
“I feel pretty good about turning 50,” Miranda says. “I’m always kind of positively skewed – but I do feel weird that I’m 10 years older than bloody Greta (Scacchi) was when she played my mum in Alibrandi, so that’s kind of weird,” she laughs. “But I’ve got a few friends who never got to make it, so in that respect I know how lucky I am.”
To mark the milestone, she’s dancing her way through a journey of self rediscovery.
She’s on Channel 7’s Dancing With The Stars – something she knew she could never say no to – and earlier this year went to Italy on her own, to visit her father’s Italian hometown of Lipari, one of seven of the Aeolian Islands off the northern coast of stunning Sicily.
“Dad was super excited – my dad has been disabled for a long time, so he’s not able to go back, so I think me going back was a really emotional experience for him, and I went back to his old street and it was lovely.”
It was an emotional experience – for her father, Vincenzo, 73, too – and one so moving she wrote a book about it, Finding My Bella Vita, to be published in September, telling the story of her life. “The book took me back to my roots, taught me who I was, and helped me discover who I want to be moving forward,” she says.
“Writing it helped me put together those pieces of the puzzle and in the process made me grateful for the life I now have.”
The Network 10 reality TV show Survivor winner can do a lot of things, but she can’t speak Italian well – just enough to get by when she’s there. But that, too, came from her father.
“I think because my dad came out after the war and suffered a lot of racism – I think he was really scared of us having accents and that kind of thing – so he was really determined not to teach us Italian which was quite funny,” Miranda says.
“I also learned a lot – I learned that there is no limit to the amount of pasta I can eat – like, no limit. I never got sick of it – never, like I’m still smashing pasta every day.
“I met my friend Janine (Allis) from Survivor and we had a few days in Milan, and then I met my manager down in Sicily as well – but Janine and I had the best three days in Milan – honestly, we travelled so well together.”
Growing up as a half Italian schoolgirl in Australia, Miranda felt many parallels to her own childhood and that of her famed breakthrough character, Josie Alibrandi. As is the experience of many second generation Australians, she never truly felt like she belonged. And while there were so many similarities between her and Josie – there was one stark difference most would never guess.
“I’ve never done tomato day,” she says, referring to the famous opening and closing scenes of the 2000 film, based on the story written by Melina Marchetta.
“People constantly come up to me and tell me about their tomato days, and I pretend I have just because I don’t want to break their spirit. But I definitely went to a similar school, a private girls’ Catholic school, and there’s a lot of stuff in there that I really identify with.
“I had lunch with Melina recently and said to her – ‘People still come up to me, 20 something years later, and they don’t just say ‘I like it’ – they say ‘it meant so much to me growing up’.’
“I felt the same way about being in it too. It’s the first time people like us were reflected back on screen – and on top of that, for me, being a young actress – I never thought I would get a lead role in something.
“Just never.
“So that was amazing that I did, because it just was never something that occurred to me – I always thought I’d be the sidekick.”
Miranda gets too embarrassed having parties, so she had a “little family lunch” at a favourite Italian restaurant for her birthday, and then had a few girlfriends over for some afternoon cocktails – again, accompanied by the best Italian food Melbourne had to offer. Doing Dancing With The Stars was another part of the celebration.
“It’s one of those things – it’s not something that I ever felt like I could say no to when it came to me, because it’s just such a nice, different experience,” she says.
“I thought it would be a nice thing to try something new for my birthday – and it was, actually. It really perked me up – it really made that whole big birthday thing a real celebration.
“Because for so long, I just kept my head down, and then I had kids – and I guess it’s one of those things that as the kids get older – I did what I think a lot of parents do … the kids are in school, and all of a sudden, you’ve spent 10 years raising them, and it’s a nice time to try new things and to re-find myself.”
She says even though dance training was seven days a week for two months, it still allowed her to be mum and strike a balance.
“It was really accommodating – so they let me do the training near home, so I could drop the kids at school, and my son came and hung out at the dance studio quite a lot, so it was really great in that sense,” she says.
“But it was constant training – I did seven days a week and we didn’t slack off – like I cracked a rib and we kept going – we were maniacs,” she laughs.
“To shoot Dancing we went to Sydney for a month – but then the set flooded so we had to do the show in a really short period of time, so we had to learn all about dances really quickly, so it was a lot of work. I found the camaraderie between the celebrities and the dancers so good – it didn’t feel like a competition when we were out there.
“We were all watching each other and we’d be nervous for each other as we were for ourselves. And I think because I really, really love my charity – Dolly’s Dream – I’ve always wanted to do something for them, as opposed to Survivor, where I was trying to win it for myself.
“It was almost an added pressure where I knew I had to do my best because I was trying to win it for the charity.”
Dolly’s Dream was created by Queensland’s Kate and Tick Everett following the shattering loss of their 14-year-old daughter, Dolly, to suicide, after ongoing bullying. It is a cause close to Miranda’s heart.
“I was in Warwick (in South East Queensland) at the time it happened – I know Dolly’s school was in Warwick and my parents-in-law used to live there, so I think I connected on that level, and having young children, it makes you think about that stuff,” she says.
“I also have a lot of family that live in the country and in rural communities, and I know that when it comes to mental health issues and for bullying and outreach, there’s a lack of services for people who live in the country.
“And then on top of that, I just don’t know if there’s enough conversation about changing the way that we relate to each other online, especially with young children. When I did Survivor, I went through a couple of days where people were really angry with me online and said stuff that was really out of hand. And just because I was bored, I’d go and look at what their profile was – and a lot of them were parents with young children. And I thought if parents of young children are engaging in this behaviour online, how are we going to get our kids to change the way they think?”
She says meeting Dolly’s parents during the show
was really emotional.
After Looking for Alibrandi, the Altona, Melbourne, local called Sydney home for about 12 years, joking that they could never afford to live there again.
“I lived in Sydney for maybe 10 or 12 years after Alibrandi and then I just wanted to be back with family and also there was no way I was gonna afford to buy a house in Sydney,” she laughs. “It’s mental – we did not stand a chance. And because we are both freelance it was hard enough anyway.”
She says working as an actor in Australia is a challenge – a good challenge, but hard nonetheless.
“Australian actors don’t earn a huge amount of money, so if work comes up, you have to take it, that’s just the way it is,” she says. “And there’s a lot of really good actors around so it’s hard to get work. So I’ve always just managed.
“My husband (Luke Hanigan, 49) works in television as well, so those hours are quite irregular – he worked on MasterChef (as a sound engineer) for years and years – so it’s just been a juggle – parents helped and I had some amazing babysitters who would help me out.
“And like any parent, it’s a juggle.
“But I’ve worked a bit now and I do love looking ahead and seeing I’ve got a few months off where I can be at footy and do the school run and all that kind of stuff which means a lot to me – catch up on Real Housewives of New Jersey – that’s my and my husband’s dirty little secret,” she laughs.
At the end of last year Miranda also shot new Aussie drama Heat with Darren McMullen, Jane Allsop and Olympia Valance, which comes to Channel 10 soon. “I’m so excited about that – I had so much fun doing that,” she says.
“It was shot in November and December of last year, which was a really nice shoot and such nice people, and we shot in Melbourne – and a lot was actually out of the Neighbours’ studios before they ramped up again.”
Back in 2019, Miranda also proved something to family and friends she’s been boasting about for years – the diehard fan won Survivor.
“Survivor was extreme – and that’s not because I wanted to ‘just try that’ – it was literally because I have been watching Survivor since the very first season,” she says.
“I’ve never missed a season.
“And I know it sounds conceited and really strange, because I’m not this kind of person – but I was convinced I could win it.
“I drove my friends and my husband mad.
“The minute I saw it, I went, ‘I know how to win this’ – and I’d sit there with a glass of wine and say what everyone did wrong. I was like, ‘I swear to God, I know how to f--king win this’ – and thank God I did because I was such a dickhead for 20 years telling everyone I could.”
Between busy times, she balances life well. “I’m also really good at being lazy in between those times, so I’m very balanced,” she laughs.
“I’m very good at doing nothing, so I’ve earned a couple of months off. I guess it does sound like I have a lot going on at the moment, with Heat and Dancing – but I have had a lot of downtime in my career, so it sort of seems like we do heaps of stuff at once and then you have downtime.
“There’s definitely been a lot of the same old stuff that every parent goes through, which is weeks and weeks and months and months at home listening to Frozen and trying not to drink before 5pm,” she says with a laugh.
Originally published as Looking for Pia Miranda: star on a journey of self ‘rediscovery’
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