Q&A: Barry Otto, actor, 80

Actor Barry Otto, 80, on his stage and screen legacy, his daughter’s new doco and his lifelong affair with art.

Barry Otto. Picture: Nick Cubbin

You’re a legend of Australian stage and screen, but you have a lesser-known side hustle… Acting is a very good career if you can exist in it for years, and I have. But even bigger than acting, finally, has been art. I’ve always loved to draw and I studied art seriously and I got better and better. It’s my first love and my big love, above everything.

The opening night of your exhibition Otto: An Artist’s Life coincided with a major birthday. How does 80 feel? My doctors gave me new shoulders and a new hip and they said, “Barry Otto, every morning after breakfast you walk four miles and you could live to be a f..king hundred”. I love walking and I do feel better for it.

Pre-Raphaelite muses rather dominate the exhibition… Oh yes, I get a bit carried away. My influences are painters like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lord Frederic Leighton and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Rossetti painted redheads a lot and I find it a very pleasing colour.

You are the subject of a documentary, Otto on Otto, by your filmmaker daughter Gracie. How do you hope to be portrayed? She’s been filming it for a few years, giving me quite some time to get older. So yes, she’ll have the full story. She’ll tell the real story of this homebody who paints all the time.

Do you remember when you first fell in love with painting? I was very happy as a little boy of four when I had a pencil. I would try to draw a fly if it settled or little things like that. I thought I was good and I loved it and then I started painting with oils. By the time I was 17 I was a fashion illustrator with Myer in Brisbane. I drew beautiful women in the dresses.

What made you switch careers? I discovered acting and I thought it was just the most wonderful thing, pretending to be somebody else. But I always painted when I had days off or between jobs. When I was doing a play I would always try to work in the time to do a small oil painting as an opening-night gift for everyone in the cast.

You won an AFI Award for Strictly Ballroom and have been nominated for Bliss, The More Things Change and Cosi. What are you most proud of? You get a lot back from acting, but more than money or awards it’s the camaraderie and the lasting friendships. You get the company of other wonderful actors and you become enormously close friends.

What’s best: screen or stage? If you get film or television, that pays well and is a very good experience in the hands of a good director. But the theatre is my deep, deep love. Anton Chekhov is my favourite writer in the world.

Daughter Miranda now belongs to Hollywood. Do you miss her? She went to America because the work was there; she took the risk and made a star of herself. We do miss her, but she loves coming home. I painted Miranda for the Archibald Prize [in 2009] and that portrait is still here, in the coach house. It’s a very big painting and when I look at it I think: that’s her in her full beauty.

Otto: An Artist’s Life is at Belle Epoque Antiques, Sydney, until February 22.