David Wenham on fame, love of the simple life ... and how to win over magpies
He’s a movie star who has acted alongside some of the world’s biggest names, but David Wenham is living a ‘normal life’ in Brisbane. Now he’s about to step back into the spotlight to revive a favourite character.
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David Wenham hasn’t worn thongs in years – 22, to be precise.
He’s a Birkenstock sandals and socks kind of guy. An unwitting trendsetter.
“I think I got there early, before it was cool,” he laughs, as we catch up on a blisteringly hot summer’s day.
“People might have been thinking, ‘Who’s that idiot with the socks on?’,” I venture.
“Exactly!” he replies.
But slip Wenham into a pair of the quintessential Aussie rubber footwear and he becomes a different person.
He becomes Spit – John Francis “Spit” Spitieri, an ex-junkie and small-time criminal.
“It (wearing thongs) alters me physically, and I move in a particular way; it’s a way into the character.”
Of all the roles in Wenham’s extensive repertoire, Spit is a favourite.
A good thing, too, because the acclaimed actor has been unable to escape him since the 2003 comedy Gettin’ Square, when Spit debuted alongside another hapless individual, Sam Worthington’s Barry “Wattsy” Wirth.
Now, the thong-toting, mullet-sporting Spit is back in a new film, and it’s named after him because, well, he bloody deserves it.
“I never had plans to do a sequel but literally every day of my life since Gettin’ Square, somebody will come up to me and talk about this character, which is extraordinary, he is an evergreen,” the 59-year-old says.
“He has been sort of deep within me somewhere since, but this particular film gave me the opportunity to explore him much more and, strangely, put on a pair of thongs again.”
In the film, Spit returns to Australia on a fake passport and is detained in an immigration detention centre, where he makes new friends.
He’s suffering from amnesia but other people from 20-odd years ago have long memories, and scores to settle.
“If I think about it, the film is a celebration of a really good man who’s bizarrely an extremely flawed individual,” Wenham says.
“You can’t help but love him because, regardless of who you are, he is completely
non-judgmental; he will have your back.
“In Australia, we go on about mateship all the time … here we get to see mateship in action.”
Spit is a comedy, with a generous dose of poignancy, and Wenham is nothing short of brilliant. It can’t just be the thongs.
“I know this character well enough now that if you put him in any situation, I think I’d be able to interact completely organically and spontaneously, as he would have done,” Wenham says.
A bit like learning a second language, I suggest, when you become proficient and start to think in that language before you even open your mouth.
“That’s a great analogy,” he says, “it’s exactly like that.”
Spit and its prequel were written by Gold Coast criminal lawyer Chris Nyst and share much of the same crew, including director Jonathan Teplitzky.
But Wenham says the film, which cost around $8.5m to make, only got across the line because of private investors from Brisbane – where he now lives with wife Kate Agnew and daughters Eliza and Millie. Our interview takes place in New Farm, in an elegant guesthouse run by friends of mine.
Relaxing in a teal velvet sofa in the lounge room of Heal House, Wenham talks glowingly of the arts scene.
“Financing for local films is notoriously difficult, film is a tricky investment – so I want to give a shout out to a very, very small group of people who have invested privately,” he says, declining to divulge names.
“We obviously got some money from Screen Queensland and Screen Australia, but without these others willing to back us as a group, artistically, there would be no film.”
Wenham, who moved up from Sydney in 2020 because his wife’s extended family are in Queensland, is genuinely impressed with this adopted city.
“Brisbane is amazing, and I think its time is right now,” he says. “It’s at the beginning of something really quite fascinating, and I’m not just talking about the Olympics. You can feel there’s something happening, culturally.”
He highlights the “extraordinary” Thomas Dixon Centre, home of the Queensland Ballet in West End, the 1500-seat QPAC theatre being built at South Bank, a thriving music scene, and art galleries that are “really, really good”.
“The interesting thing is people in Sydney and Melbourne still perceive Brisbane to be what it was like 10 or 15 years ago.
“They’re completely unaware of the rapid, exponential change.”
For all his fondness for Brisbane, Wenham isn’t here all that much.
“I’m a gypsy, and I live a lot of my life out of a suitcase, but I’ve been doing it for so long, I don’t mind it, and I can honestly say wherever I am, I can be content and happy,” he says.
“There’s no place I’ve worked in that I didn’t enjoy being.
“I’ve been very lucky on a number of different fronts, but what my job has given me is incredible. I look back and think, oh my god, I’ve done movies in Morocco, the Himalayas, southern India, China, Canada, the States, England, Germany, New Zealand – and I never thought it would happen.
“Being a theatre actor was the height of my ambition, to work in this particular theatre company in Sydney (Nimrod, later Belvoir St Theatre), which I did. And then my career took a left-hand turn very, very early.”
In the 1990s, two plays Wenham starred in were adapted for the big screen – The Boys and Cosi – and shortly after, in his early 30s, he was cast as the charismatic Daniel “Diver Dan” Della Bosca in the TV series SeaChange, earning him (reluctant) sex symbol status.
Wenham’s career continued its upward trajectory, and he has now appeared in more than 25 TV shows and 50 movies including blockbusters such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Moulin Rouge, Pirates of the Caribbean, Elvis, as well as Van Helsing and Australia, alongside Hugh Jackman – “one of the nicest men in film”.
It’s a far cry from Wenham’s first job out of high school. “I was an insurance salesman with the NRMA, and my mother thought that was great, very steady,” he recalls.
“She was really upset when I got into acting school (at Western Sydney University) and had to resign after six weeks; she was mortified, but still supportive.”
To understand Wenham’s burning desire to act, you have to go back to his childhood.
He was, to borrow from Monty Python, a very naughty boy.
“I was the last of seven (children), so I was always fighting for attention,” he explains.
“It was literally a teacher (at Christian Brothers’ High School, Lewisham) who said to my parents, ‘Look, when your son is in the class, I actually can’t control the class, the kids go wild, have you ever thought of acting lessons?’”
Bill and Kathleen Wenham quickly researched options and by the following Saturday, their 13-year-old “class clown” was enrolled at Phillip Street Theatre, where he met a young Nicole Kidman.
“Those classes opened up the world; how incredible was that Christian brother? For somebody to have that facility to recognise something in a kid and go, look, he’s using all of what he’s got, sort of destructively in a way, and if you channel it into the right area, something really interesting could happen.”
Wenham’s English teacher also took an alternative approach.
“How he dealt with me was on Friday afternoons he put aside 20 minutes at the end of the lesson whereby I could stand at the front of the class and basically entertain the kids,” he says. “I used to do impersonations of politicians, including Gough Whitlam, and of Harry Butler (a naturalist who had his own TV show In the Wild), so to let me do that in class was an amazing thing for somebody to do.”
A born comedian he might be, but Wenham’s career has been diverse by design.
“Comedy, I think, is one of my strongest suits but it’s not something I get the opportunity to exercise very often,” he says.
“I never wanted to be pigeonholed. I like to subvert people’s expectations.”
He also says comedy is “bloody hard”.
“There are few really, really great comic actors. I think it’s much easier to make somebody cry or to make somebody scared than it is to make somebody laugh.”
Wenham seems to have mastered all three.
However, if he hadn’t succeeded as an actor, what might he have done instead? Selling insurance doesn’t seem to fit. A Birkenstock model perhaps?
“Funny you ask,” he says, “I lived near the Botanic Gardens in Sydney for many, many years, and the happiest people I would see worked as gardeners.
“I would go on walks at least four times a week, from Kings Cross down the steps to Woolloomooloo and then through the gardens to the Opera House, I’d do a loop and come back. I spent so much time in the Botanic Gardens, and it’s like, if I could just be a gardener there, I would be so happy.
“And I’m not very good, you know, I don’t have a great knowledge, but the idea of just watching things grow, and sometimes die, and the seasonal changes that occur over time, just absolutely fascinates me. I love it. The natural world I never get sick of.”
Very soon after moving to Brisbane, Wenham befriended a magpie.
Rather than fearing walking the streets during “swooping season”, he “learned to do exactly the opposite”.
“I have befriended the magpies, it’s the strangest thing, and for a period of three years, myself and a magpie had this really amazing relationship. It would come looking for me and greet me.
“It began when I was in the garden, doing something with a bit of soil and a little worm came out, and the magpie was looking at it, and I just put the worm a bit closer and the magpie took it and left.
“The very next day I was in a neighbour’s garden talking, and suddenly the magpie arrived and came next to me, and in its mouth it had a worm and it put the worm down in front of me. When I didn’t take it, the magpie eventually just picked it up and left.
“And then I started to look online about it and these birds have extraordinary memories and can recognise people. If you don’t do anything to scare them, they will look after you. Don’t run, don’t swing anything around your head or whatever, just be very calm.”
One day, Wenham’s beloved magpie stopped visiting. “It was found on a piece of lawn, not far away, and it seems, and I hope I’m wrong, but someone actually killed it – and it’s like, oh my god,” he says.
Trying to lighten the mood, I tell Wenham I think the happiest people in the world are butchers. I’ve never met a grumpy one.
“Yeah, you’re right, mind you, you could never get the smell (of raw meat) out of your hands, I’d rather be a gardener,” he smiles.
Seemingly at odds with his childhood desire for attention, Wenham these days likes to “fly under the radar”.
It’s also how he copes with fame. “I live my life in a way whereby I try to have as normal a life as possible,” he says.
“Fame ebbs and flows. You could easily stoke it, it’s a very easy thing to do. I don’t use social media to increase, you know, attention or anything. Some people do. I decide not to.”
He says when a new movie or TV series comes out, “suddenly the level of recognition goes up very, very quickly”, but he’s not had “an experience with a member of the public that’s been detrimental”.
“People are really lovely, always. The only time I’m like, please don’t do that – and I don’t mind people coming up to me in a restaurant – is when I’m about to put a piece of my meal into my mouth. Otherwise, yeah, I’ll chat to anybody who wants to chat.”
In his down time, Wenham likes visiting art galleries and museums, quiet places he finds “soothing and contemplative”.
“I find peace there and because I do have a great interest in contemporary art, it sort of fires me creatively as well. But really, I’m happiest when walking in nature gardens.”
Just don’t expect him to be wearing thongs.
Spit premieres in Queensland cinemas March 6
Originally published as David Wenham on fame, love of the simple life ... and how to win over magpies
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