‘It’s like he’s trying to remember who he is’: Barry Otto’s daughters share heartbreaking update on Australian screen legend’s health

Although she grew up with a famous surname, Gracie Otto found her creative calling as a director. Now, she has embarked on a race against time to document her father’s incredible life, in the wake of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

Gracie Otto for Stellar. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

When Gracie Otto grew tired of “sitting around waiting for someone to give me a job”, she tells Stellar, the actor refocused her energy behind the camera.

That choice made her a much sought-out director, one who trained her eye on breakthrough series such as Bump and Deadloch as well as her equally accomplished sister, Miranda Otto, in her roles on shows like The Clearing and the upcoming Ladies In Black.

On her other projects, the Netflix reboot of Heartbreak High and 2023 Disney+ series The Artful Dodger, Otto could have imagined roles for her father Barry, the Australian screen and theatre legend who’s perhaps best known for his award-winning performance as Doug Hastings in the 1992 hit Strictly Ballroom.

Those eye-catching series may well have appealed to the stylish Barry, who worked in fashion advertising in the 1960s and would no doubt approve of his daughter’s photo shoot with Stellar.

“I’m a big fan of Prada and Adidas,” Otto, 37, says of her own aesthetic. “I wear a lot of track pants on set, I like structured pieces and clean lines.”

Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

Instead of featuring her father in a comedy or drama, Otto decided to chronicle Barry’s life in a documentary, hoping to lift his spirits after a series of health setbacks; she wanted to capture him on camera as he prepared to front a one-man show in 2018, when he was in his mid-70s. Soon, however, it became apparent that would not be possible. So the tenor of the film changed, and it turned into a bittersweet time capsule of precious family videos and interviews with Barry, as well as with those who know him best.

“There’s often so much you don’t know about your family until it’s too late,” Otto tells Stellar of working against the clock to preserve her father’s memories as the effects

of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis grew stronger. “I was asking him a lot of things – and then it got to be a huge rush to ask him while he was still alive. And he is still alive, but barely.”

The result is Revealed: Otto On Otto, a love letter to her father that she doubts she will ever show him.

“Dad doesn’t really watch things anymore, that’s the sad part,” she says.

“I’ll show him some things. When I put Strictly Ballroom on, I kept pointing at him onscreen; I don’t think [he understood] until the end, and I turned around to see him clapping when his character was on, and he had tears in his eyes when they played ‘Love Is In The Air’ as the curtain came down.”

While Miranda Otto tells Stellar the documentary was a confronting experience for the family, she says it “brought us closer together. Gracie grew up with Dad when he was very much this highly creative, comic clown. He played a lot of those parts during that period.”

She adds, “I grew up with my dad playing serious, virile dramas in theatre. So I’ve seen this other side of my dad as a performer. I’ve seen his strength and masculinity that I think sometimes people forget.”

‘It was obvious I’d go into something creative, because that was all I knew.’ Gracie Otto with her father, Barry Otto, pictured in 2018. Picture: Supplied

Now, the family is choosing to revel in moments of joy rather than despair. Take Christmas Day. As Otto recalls, Barry set the table with eclectic decorations, giving some guests nine forks and others a heap of cups.

“It was out there, but what he did was amazing,” she says with a laugh, adding that he’s taken a similarly creative approach to dressing.

One day, he wore five fedoras atop his head; on another, he emerged for breakfast sporting a pair of neon shorts.

Barry, who is now 82, happily remains at home in Sydney with his wife, Sue Hill; the family’s two cats, Bluebelle and Bogart; and his ramshackle collection of antiques and art. Otto says Sue – her mother and Barry’s second wife – has always been the unsung hero of the household, quietly looking after parenting and housekeeping practicalities so Barry could thrive as a performer and amateur artist.

“Dad would not have known what subjects I was doing at school,” Otto says with a smile. “Not because he wasn’t interested. He would just be like, ‘OK, do what you love.’”

He did, however, take an interest when her high school principal banned her from performing a monologue from Steven Berkoff’s play East due to a scene with masturbation.

“I saw him coming down the corridor, all his chest hair out in this amazing linen suit, and I was like, ‘What is he doing?’ But he was adamant: ‘My daughter is doing this!’” And she did – with expert advice from Barry, of course.

Read the full interview with Gracie Otto inside the latest issue of Stellar. Picture: Georges Antoni for Stellar

“It was obvious I’d go into something creative, because that was all I knew,” she says.

It was a similar story for Miranda, 56, the daughter of Barry and his first wife, actor Lindsay Otto. While their peers saw the latest blockbuster in the cinema, the sisters watched art house movies or plays at Belvoir St Theatre (the theatre company co-founded by Sue Hill). And though they grew up a generation apart, neither found it unusual to see stars such as Toni Collette or Cate Blanchett at a family dinner.

“Yes, it was a creative household, but it wasn’t like people were painting every day or reading poetry,” Otto says with a laugh.

She cherishes those memories and, now, the time she has left with Barry, even if he no longer recognises her. “He has moments of absolute clarity that happen very rarely and are usually about someone or something from the past,” she says. “It’s like he’s trying to remember who he is, and that’s quite beautiful in a way.”

Revealed: Otto By Otto premieres June 16 on Stan. See the full interview and shoot with Gracie Otto inside Stellar. For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as ‘It’s like he’s trying to remember who he is’: Barry Otto’s daughters share heartbreaking update on Australian screen legend’s health