Aussie actor Rachel Griffiths receives Honorary Masters of Fine Arts from NIDA
In 1990, Rachel Griffiths tried out for NIDA alongside Cate Blanchett and 35 years after her audition fail she has a new achievement.
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In 1990, Rachel Griffiths tried out for NIDA alongside Cate Blanchett.
Griffiths though failed to make it through the audition, which came as a huge blow at the time but didn’t stop her becoming one of Australia’s most celebrated actors here and in Hollywood over the past few decades.
Now, 35 years later, Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art has presented Griffiths with an Honorary Masters of Fine Arts.
“I am a little bit chuffed,” Griffiths told The Daily Telegraph.
“It is actually unexpectedly quite delightful, especially from the institution that I didn’t get into. My path just made me more individual I think, more myself and I had to lean on my strengths and not kind of doubt them.
“I had to embrace the quirky little unit that I was and I don’t know if I had have gone to NIDA, I would have got Muriel’s Wedding, I don’t know if I would have been so confidently myself to do what I did then.”
Muriel’s Wedding, released in 1994, was the comparative low budget Aussie flick that catapulted Griffiths and Toni Collette, both fresh young faces, to Hollywood.
She won a Golden Globe for hit TV series, Six Feet Under, with her other credits including films Anyone But You, Hacksaw Ridge and My Best Friend’s Wedding.
Griffiths also starred in critically acclaimed TV shows here and abroad including Brothers & Sisters, Camp, Barracuda, Total Control, When We Rise and Bali 2002.
“There’s a lot of ways to skin a cat,” she said, receiving a standing ovation when she accepted her degree at NIDA’s Parade Theatre on Friday night.
“In a lot of ways it felt like a harder road to not have that kind of approval early on as someone going, ‘we think you’ve got it’, ‘we are backing you’, and that definitely made those early years feel so tormented of doubt and second guessing, wondering whether or not you’ve really got what it takes.”
Academy Award winner Blanchett meanwhile is one of NIDA’s most famous ever graduates. Essie Davis was also in that year of the 24 actors that graduated in 1992.
Griffiths, 56, grew up in Melbourne. The mother of three didn’t complete her Bachelor of Education but later received that honorary degree at Deakin University.
“I’ve got two honoraries but actually only a high school degree,” she said.
“It took me a long time to kind of get my craft, that was solid, that wasn’t just instinct, and I think that serves you really well in difficult processes.”
Other NIDA graduates include Sarah Snook, Catherine Martin, Baz Luhrmann, Justin Kurzel, Murray Bartlett, Hugo Weaving, Jacqueline McKenzie, Mel Gibson and Sophie Wilde.
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Originally published as Aussie actor Rachel Griffiths receives Honorary Masters of Fine Arts from NIDA
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