How Nick Bracks shook off his shadow and learnt to move his mind

″⁣Have you ever felt like you were stuck living in the shadow of someone close to you?”

This is the existential question posed not by me, across the table from actor and mental health advocate Nick Bracks at the chic Botanical Hotel in South Yarra, but by Bracks himself in his no-holds-barred podcast Move your Mind.

In an episode on overcoming adversity, Bracks – son of Steve Bracks, the third-longest-serving Labor premier in Victorian history – interviewed Sean Brosnan, the son of James Bond star Pierce Brosnan.

Bracks had cold-called Brosnan after reading an article about his life and discovering it had uncanny parallels to his own.

Nick Bracks at The Botanical in South Yarra.Credit: Arsineh Houspian

Struggled to be his own person growing up with a famous father: tick. Began abusing alcohol: tick. Got into acting: tick. Survived sickening car crash with childhood friend that ended up all over the news: tick. Quit drinking: tick. Became poster boy for mental health: tick.

“I reached out to him and said, ‘I think it would be amazing to have you on the podcast,’ and he said yes straight away,” Bracks says.

Brosnan, a former alcoholic and drug addict, initially followed in his father’s footsteps and worked as an actor, director and producer before pivoting to become a counsellor in Idaho, specialising in addiction.

“Sean told me his story and there were so many crossovers where it was just very, very similar, the experience we had and the challenges we face,” Bracks says.

“We became close friends through it, because you are bonding over this thing that very few other people in your life can understand.”

Bracks, who now lives in New York, has suggested we meet at The Botanical – an old stomping ground – during a whirlwind visit to see his family and attend the premiere of Breaking Point, a short film highlighting the men’s mental health crisis.

Botanical’s angel hair pasta.Credit: Arsineh Houspian

Bracks orders angel hair pasta with spanner crab, tomato, garlic, fresh chilli and crispy toasted breadcrumbs – “It’s really good, thank you so much,” he says, disarming the waiters – and I have leek tarte tatin.

We both drink sparkling water. “I quit alcohol a couple of years ago and that’s made such a profound difference,” he says.

Bracks talks about how much he loves his father and how proud he is of him.

“I couldn’t ask for a better father – when he was premier he would make a point of coming home from work and just switching off and spending quality time with us,” he says.

“But we knew that if we made any mistakes publicly, that would be in the media. That does make you develop a bit of a sense of being guarded and trying to hold yourself back.”

Steve Bracks and Nick, then 14, before swimming training at Williamstown Beach in preparation for the Lorne Pier to Pub swim.Credit: Craig Abraham

On the podcast, Bracks and Brosnan delve into some of their shared experiences growing up in the shadow of their famous fathers: the comparisons, the battle to forge your own identity, the envy of friends, navigating childhood in the spotlight when there isn’t a playbook to follow.

“I find it so fascinating being able to connect with you,” Bracks tells Brosnan. “It’s such a unique and lonely and difficult thing to deal with because there’s no blueprint.”

Bracks started Move Your Mind during COVID-19, recording the podcast in a cupboard in his childhood home in Williamstown.

The former Neighbours actor had previously been living in Vancouver, colloquially known as Hollywood North due to its booming film and TV industry.

He was auditioning for acting roles and trying to nail an American accent when the pandemic forced him home for 11 months.

Modelling UnderBRACKS in 2011.Credit: Copyright: Photography by Simon Le

Bracks has always had a million things on the go. He’s an actor, a mental health advocate with more than 1000 speaking engagements and a couple of TED talks under his belt, a radio host, a former model, and an entrepreneur who released his own underwear label, underBRACKS.

But the pandemic presented him with a clean slate.

“I had always wanted to do a podcast, but never set aside the time to really focus and do it. COVID was amazing for that. Everything else was on hold.”

De-stigmatising mental health issues through storytelling is Bracks’ raison d’etre, and Move Your Mind explores topics such as preventing burnout, redefining masculinity, suicide, sleep, trauma, shame, addiction, building resilience and quitting alcohol.

Bracks sent thousands of DMs on Instagram inviting a range of people – from athletes to celebrities to psychologists – to be guests on his show. It’s “kind of crazy” how many agreed, he says. There are now almost 200 episodes. “Ironically, it’s often the bigger names that say yes.”

The first episode features former diver and Olympic gold medallist Matthew Mitcham – interviewed from that cupboard in Williamstown – who discusses overcoming addiction, re-inventing yourself and finding purpose.

Nick Bracks with his parents in 2006.Credit: Jim Eddie

Sports journeys resonate with Bracks. As a child, he was fixated on becoming an athlete. “That’s all I really cared about. I originally wanted to play AFL and idolised Gary Ablett senior as a kid.”

He competed in middle-distance running events as a teenager, achieving success at a national level. But his dream became an obsession. “I developed an addiction to exercise and training – it became out of control, where I was training six hours a day.”

Bracks’ parents became worried. He responded by hiding bricks under his bed that he used as weights. He would get up early and train in secret. “I was holding on to this guilt and shame and embarrassment … not really understanding why am I so obsessed by doing this? Why am I having to hide this from them?”

Over-training stunted his physical development, Bracks says. He still hadn’t hit puberty when he was 16.

Nick Bracks at Williamstown Festival in 2001Credit: Ken Irwin

“I had a close friend but didn’t really develop socially because I was isolating myself and felt, again, shame and embarrassment about why I was built like this 12-year-old kid when all my other friends were like men. That bled into the sport as well because I wasn’t physically developing, and then I couldn’t keep up, no matter how hard I pushed myself.”

Looking back, Bracks believes the compulsion to exercise was a coping mechanism to mask his anxiety and the belief he didn’t fit it. A way of switching off his mind. “But I didn’t know that at the time.”

Two years ago Bracks was diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), a chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. His girlfriend – a neuroscience student who also has ADHD – suggested he get tested three months into their relationship.

“It’s been game-changing for me, getting that diagnosis and learning how to manage that. It explained everything – this compulsion, this always chasing dopamine, not being able to focus on boring things. It’s been the through-line of how I’ve run my life.”

It was a knee injury that killed Bracks’ dream of becoming an elite athlete. “When I finished up in high school I had to stop because I had literally just run myself into the ground. And that’s really when my mental health issues took off.”

Nick Bracks’ car after the accident.Credit: Andrew De La Rue

His life reached a nadir on a cold, rainy night in July 2007. Bracks, who had been drinking with friends at the nightclub Seven, crashed the family Saab after drink-driving .He would write about it later in his book Move Your Mind: How to build a Healthy Mindset for Life, which was also written during the pandemic.

“The police said they’d never seen an accident that severe where everyone had survived. I was lucky to be alive,” he wrote.

Steve Bracks told the media he felt “pretty close to the worst I’ve felt in my life” and stood down as premier a short time later.

“I became infamous in Melbourne,” the younger Bracks says.

“It was a very odd situation because I was getting attention for doing something negative and not achieving anything, but as a 20-year-old, naive kid with no self-esteem, who doesn’t know who he is, it almost felt like a false validation.”

Bracks began abusing alcohol. “I got to a point where I just was doing nothing. I didn’t see a future for myself, I was severely depressed.”

Bracks’ mother, Terry, encouraged him to see a psychologist. He also enrolled in a business entrepreneurship degree at RMIT. The course made him face his “biggest fear in the world” – speaking in front of people. “This was a small course – there would only be like five, 10 people – but I’d be vomiting before I did these talks. I was just terrified. But I stayed because I knew that I had to do something to get my life on track.”

Bracks would stand in front of the class, mumbling, and reading off a sheet of paper. Half the time he says people probably couldn’t understand what he was talking about.

“It was the best thing that could have happened. Looking back it was exposure therapy. And I gradually built confidence and built a really good group of friends around me – they’re still my best friends to this day. And then I became passionate about how I really want to help in mental health, because I realised how low I was and how I am doing these different things to help.”

At the end of his degree, Bracks was invited to appear on reality TV show Dancing with the Stars.

“That was the other most terrifying thing I could think of doing because I just couldn’t imagine dancing on live TV – I wouldn’t even do that when I’m out with my friends.”

He nearly pulled out of the show. But the thought of uni and overcoming his fear of public speaking made him stay the course. “I was a shocking dancer, still am, [but] somehow survived for I think seven out of the 10 weeks. They got me to take my top off on one of them, so I think that helped. Got a few extra votes in.”

It’s funny, he muses, that a reality show could become one of the most pivotal things he’s done in his life because, once again, it showed that he could do things that scared him. It also gave him a platform to talk about mental health. A newspaper story at the time headlined “My Battle with Booze” led to hundreds of public speaking gigs, including talking to high school students about depression and anxiety.

After the pandemic, Bracks moved to New York. He missed acting but was frustrated by the soul-destroying experience of endless auditions with no callbacks. “You have no control over it.”

Nick Bracks is working on a darkly comic TV series about mental health set in New York.Credit: Arsineh Houspian

And so he started working on his own dark comedy TV show, Amiss. It’s a fish-out-of-water story about an Australian living in New York, loosely based on his own life. (Bonus: if he plays himself, he doesn’t have to worry about an American accent.)

“I’ve just loved trying to bring a story that I actually care about to life, rather than just having to audition for other people’s roles and wait for permission to do something.”

The series, which centres around four main characters, explores themes of mental health.

Bracks has teamed up with executive producers Jim Klever-Weiss, the co-executive producer of HBO series Silicon Valley, and Disturbia’s Alonzo Nezarez, and the show is now being pitched to actors and networks.

“It’s an ongoing process, but I can’t believe I even got to this point where I’ve got this producer who’s done all that stuff behind it,” Bracks says.

“The ultimate goal for me is doing things in film and TV that have that a mental health angle – combining the two things that I am most passionate about. I said to myself when I was 24 I want to dedicate my life to raising awareness about mental health.”

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