But when Pamela Rabe steps away from the stage and the screen, the prolific and highly awarded actor and theatre director enjoys a somewhat simpler existence at home in Tasmania’s Channel region.

The 66-year-old says her home, on the outskirts of Hobart, is the perfect escape after many years of living and working in big cities.

The Canadian-born performer came to Australia in 1983 with her then-partner, Tasmanian-born director Roger Hodgman. They married the following year and were primarily based in Melbourne until about 10 years ago when they decided to buy property in Tasmania.

They’d visited the state many times over the years, for holidays and to visit Hodgman’s extended family, but the more Rabe saw of the state the more she felt compelled to move here.

“We lived in Melbourne for a very, very long time, but we started to fantasise about having a place in Tasmania,’’ she explains.

“I’ve been coming to Tasmania off and on (since first arriving in Australia) … it’s my favourite place in the world, really.’’

They initially started looking at property on Tasmania’s East Coast, namely Nine Mile Beach, at Dolphin Sands, which Rabe describes as her “absolute favourite place” due to the “great memories and very happy times spent in that part of the world”.

However, property prices were higher than anticipated and Rabe also deemed the area a bit too far from Hobart.

“Most of my work is elsewhere so I wanted to be somewhere with reasonable access to the airport,’’ she says.

Their search then took them south of Hobart, where they settled on a semi-rural property that was “perfect” and was still only about half an hour from the CBD.

They initially split their time between Hobart and Melbourne but when the pandemic hit they spent more and more time in Tasmania and decided to settle here full-time, going away now only for work.

And Rabe says it’s a decision she’s never regretted as she loves being close to nature in Tasmania.

“My husband and I have always lived smack bang in the middle of a city,’’ she explains.

“But here we really feel in touch with the world.’’

She is not the only high-profile performer finding solace through a quieter life in Tasmania, with familiar faces like Marta Dusseldorp (who is married to Tasmanian director Ben Winspear) and Essie Davis (who was born and raised in Tasmania and lives here with her director husband Justin Kurzel) also among those enjoying lives in Tassie that are largely out of the spotlight.

“There are lots of artists and writers and directors who sit gently on this land,’’ Rabe says.

“That was something I loved about Tasmania … you could be quiet. There’s kind of a healthy separation between work and life and just living in nature and being able to appreciate all the gifts Tasmania gives.’’

She says even those without any existing Tasmanian connections are wising up to all the great things Tassie has to offer, due largely to the “Mona effect”.

Rabe says Tasmania has “always been a place of extraordinary produce and food and wine and tourism” but it has only been in recent years that people from interstate and overseas are waking up to the state’s offerings and have kept the state thriving year-round.

“I was really glad that we purchased when we did,’’ Rabe says.

“Everyone is waking up to all the bounty and beauty of Tasmania, it has become a very popular place for mainlanders to settle in.’’

And of course being able to pick up work in her adopted home state is also a bonus. Rabe has starred in popular TV shows filmed in Tasmania, including Rosehaven and Deadloch, and most recently reprised the role of Magda, in season two of Bay of Fires which is set to hit screens on Sunday, June 15.

Eight new episodes of the Australian drama series were filmed here – primarily on the West Coast – following on from season one which was also filmed in the state.

Season 1 centred around Stella Heikkinen (Marta Dusseldorp), a single mother forced into witness protection who relocated with her two children to the remote fictional Tassie town of Mystery Bay. She quickly discovered life in the town would be far from quiet, with the series exploring themes of betrayal, danger and the complexities of a small community with secrets.

Fast forward to the start of season 2, and things are looking up for Stella. No one has tried to kill her for some months, she has Thursday date-night with Jeremiah, and Mystery Bay is prospering under her guidance – albeit in a somewhat chaotic fiscal manner. But such joys are short-lived when she and her kids find themselves sandwiched between an unhinged apiarist drug lord, a maniacal millenarian doomsday cult, the resurrection of her nemesis, Russia, and a growing civil war in the town.

Reprising their roles for season 2 are Toby Leonard Moore (Billions), Nicholas Bell (Scrublands), Bob Franklin (Please Like Me), Kim Ko (Utopia), Matt Nable (Plum), Roz Hammond (Irreverent), Kerry Fox (The Dressmaker) Andre de Vanny (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries), Ilai Swindells (Retrograde), Imi Mbedla (Australia’s Got Talent), Ava Caryofyllis (The Twelve), Emily Milledge (Fires), Elle Mandalis (The Twelve) and Ben Knight (White Fever), as well as Dusseldorp and Rabe.

Meanwhile new cast members include Benedict Hardie (Total Control), Alex Dimitriades (Strife), Darren Gilshenan (Colin from Accounts), Katie Robertson (Rosehaven), Helana Sawires (Stateless) and Mabel Li (Safe Home).

Produced by Archipelago Productions and Fremantle Australia for the ABC, with support from Screen Australia, Screen Tasmania and VicScreen, the series screens to an international audience and is one of the major TV productions filmed in Tasmania in recent years.

Being able to work on a production filmed in Tasmania was enticing for Rabe, however, she also had a more personal interest in working on the show.

“To be honest, the attraction of Bay of Fires was that my very good friend Marta Dusseldorp was producing and starring in it,’’ she says.

The two of them have worked together many times over the years – Dusseldorp got her first big break in 1996, fresh from completing her acting studies at Victorian College of the Arts, on Australian war drama Paradise Road, directed by Bruce Beresford.

The film – which tells the story of a group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women imprisoned by the Japanese, in Sumatra during World War II – also starred Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett and Rabe, which is how she and Dusseldorp first met.

They have worked together many times since, most notably on Australian prison drama Wentworth, a 21st century reimagining of the classic Network Ten soap opera Prisoner.

Rabe’s performance across five seasons of Wentworth not only earned her an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama in 2015 but also a Silver Logie for Most Outstanding Actress in 2018.

Rabe’s television work also includes The Secret Life Of Us, A Country Practice, Mercury, Ocean Girl, The Bite, Stingers, F***ing Adelaide and The Hunting. She has also appeared in several feature films including romantic comedy Sirens (with Hugh Grant and Sam Neill), Cosi (with Ben Mendelsohn, Barry Otto and Toni Collette), Vacant Possession, and The Well, for which she won the 1997 Australian Film Institute, Stockholm Film Festival and Variety Club awards for Best Actress.

For her work in theatre and musicals, Rabe has been awarded three Helpmann Awards for Best Actress in The Children, The Glass Menagerie and Grey Gardens, plus eight Green Room awards, a Sydney Critics’ Circle Award and a “Mo” Award. Other notable credits include The Dance Of Death, Ghosts, The Cherry Orchard, The Wizard Of Oz, The War Of The Roses, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Hamlet, The Season At Sarsaparilla, Mother Courage and her Children, and The Lost Echo.

Rabe has also directed plays for the Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company and the Malthouse Theatre.

Bay of Fires season 2 was filmed during winter last year, and Rabe has also spent time in the past couple of years working on stage in Europe. She is currently starring in the Sydney Theatre Company production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, which she is also
co-directing.

She will perform in a Melbourne Theatre Company production of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier later this year (from late September until early November) and Rabe says she’s also got plans for some theatre-making in Tasmania.

Born in Canada, the seventh of eight children, Rabe grew up playing musical instruments and performed as part of youth orchestras. There were no actors or artists in her family but Rabe was a lover of movies and radio drama and eventually found herself graduating from the Playhouse Acting School in Vancouver.

Rabe says what she loved about performing back then, is still the same thing that keeps drawing her back to the stage and screen now.

“It’s the element of play,’’ she says.

“And it’s about collaboration – I come from a big family … part of the idea is you’re always creating work with a group of people.’’

She says being able to work with a great ensemble of actors, coming together as the eclectic mix of residents in Mystery Bay, in Queenstown – which she describes as an “extraordinary” part of Tasmania – ensured Bay of Fires was “a great joy to make”.

“The tone of it is incredibly entertaining,’’ Rabe says of the series. “And there’s a great team of people pulling it together.’’

She says series 2 brings more depth – with audiences now familiar with the characters, writers have been able to “really concentrate on letting the story play out” through a “clever” storyline that ensures Magda has “quite a bit to do” this season.

Rabe says it’s great to see a growing number of major film and television projects being filmed in Tasmania.

“It’s obviously because I moved here,’’ she jokes.

“I think it’s great, it’s long overdue. It’s a growing and evolving thing and I look forward to more and more production happening here.

“One of the big problems in the past was there was no shortage in interest in filming in Tasmania, but there weren’t necessarily the crews and the personnel to make that happen.’’

And while that has certainly changed, with a wealth of talented local crew now working on major productions that film here, there’s “still a way to go” – Rabe says it would be good to see greater investment in post-production facilities in Tasmania so entire projects could be started and finished in the state.

Regardless of whether she’s working in Tasmania or elsewhere, Rabe says it’s the quality of the projects she’s most interested in.

“I like to work and I like to do good work, so it’s wherever it happens,’’ she says.

“I’m getting older now so I like to work with good people, collaborating on good projects.’’

There’s also that buzz of performing that never goes away, no matter how many times she steps on stage in front of a live audience or records a scene in front of the camera.

“It’s also the adrenaline,’’ Rabe says.

“I’ve always said people who have longevity in a performance career actually have a pathology which is predisposed to enjoy the highs and lows of the adrenaline kick, it’s a chemical thing.’’

And having a rolling feast of complex characters to play means her work life is never dull.

“Characters with some complexity – some that are a great joy to play – somehow seem to be the ones I get offered,’’ Rabe admits.

But, she says, that’s OK because “I like the unexpected”.

“I love the constant piquing of my curiosity … that you’re constantly being asked to deep dive into areas of interest … it means you’re constantly being stimulated.’’•

Season 2 of Bay of Fires airs on ABC TV on Sunday, June 15, at 8pm, with episodes also available to stream on iview. iview.abc.net.au