‘Adrenaline junkie’: Pamela Rabe on the physical toll of acting

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Pamela Rabe. The Canadian-Australian actor, 65, has won Logie, AACTA, Helpmann and Green Room awards. In 2023, she received an AM for her service to the performing arts.

Pamela Rabe: “[When an acting job finishes] there’ll be a ton of grieving. You hope that something else comes along. Then you reset.”Credit: Louie Douvis

DEATH

You’ve died on screen, most memorably – spoiler alert – as Joan the Freak in Wentworth … Well, she didn’t technically die. She got buried alive and other people hoped that she was dead! [Laughs]

What was it like shooting that harrowing scene? We shot that sequence in the upper level of what was just a general gathering area of the production house. And every time I screamed or yelled, it reverberated through the building. Everybody – in production, in the editing suites – could hear these life-ending screams. [Smiles] I have to say, it was pretty special.

When you left Wentworth, did it feel like a death or were you ready to move on? I don’t think I was ready to move on, but I understood why it was necessary. I remember asking the producers quite specifically, “Is this really the end? I’m not going to survive this, am I?” They said, “Absolutely no chance of coming back.” I’d had four great seasons with a fabulous work family, so I felt very lucky. But then, two years later, I got a phone call saying, “How do you feel about coming back from that?” Like a cockroach, I got another life.

How have you avoided career death? For me, it’s my temperament and the training that I had. I was trained in Canada, in quite a small school, and was one of the few people in my year who didn’t get an agent. I dealt with unemployment from the start; it’s not a career path that has a lot of agency in it. But then I happened to fall in love with somebody whose path took me to Australia. I had another six months of unemployment when I arrived. But when I was finally given an opportunity to get on stage, that tiny little opportunity developed into more opportunities. But it was a very, very slow gestation.

I worked with Ruth Cracknell in the last decade of her life, and I remember a conversation with her about longevity. She said to me, “The thing is, if you stay in the game long enough and can survive, there’ll be a kind of attrition point where everybody else starts falling away. If you hang in long enough, you’ll be one of the few people left.” The only downside to that is, if you hang in that long, there’ll be a point where, with every role that you play, you’ll die.

How do you feel about that? [Shrugs] Well, it mirrors life, doesn’t it?

BODIES

Acting is so physical. How do you ensure your body is match-fit? Not very well, clearly. I should have thought about it more when I was younger. Now I’m paying the price.

In what ways? Bung knees. Brittle bum. But honestly, the biggest toll is how your body copes with adrenaline. Most actors – particularly actors who stay in the game – have to be adrenaline junkies. You’re in an experience that’s energetic, energising and exhausting, over 10 weeks or three months, then there’ll be a ton of grieving. You hope that something else comes along. Then you reset and have another adrenaline shot.

You’ve never been afraid to get naked for a role. Where do you get the courage to be nude in front of strangers? Is it courage? For the first few jobs that I did, it wasn’t courage: it was more a foolhardy fearlessness. Not that I thought I had a great body. It was more about unburdening oneself of baggage. And then, once you’ve taken your gear off, it’s kind of hard to make up excuses about why you shouldn’t do it again. [Laughs] But then you start to ask the questions and make people work a little harder to convince you why.

Is there a skill that you wish you could acquire? So very many. I wish I could sing better. I wish I could speak more languages. I wish I could be more patient.

What’s a skill you’re grateful to have? I’d like to think I have a capacity – or a curiosity – to see all sides of a situation, idea, ideology or viewpoint.

RELIGION

Were you raised with religion? Yes and no. Faith was very important to my mother. In fact, she even toyed with becoming a missionary, if not a nun. That obviously didn’t work: she had eight children. By the time I came along – number seven – she’d become somewhat disillusioned with organised religion.

Where did that leave you? Religion wasn’t a big part of my life. When I was about 14, I took myself to a church youth group, just to see what it was all about. But I realised that what I was really getting drawn to was the theatre of it.

Do you have any rituals or superstitions for before or after a show? Nothing to tip me over into OCD territory, but I still keep little mementoes from things that I’ve done so there’s a kind of accumulation of history.

You have to bring a lot of self-belief onto the stage and into a studio. What’s your advice for people who struggle with being in the spotlight? Again, it’s an adrenaline thing. It’s honestly about how your body processes a chemical and nothing to do with self-belief, I don’t think. It’s chemical.

What are your personal commandments for performing? Thou shalt learn thine lines. And thou shalt not be an arsehole.

Pamela Rabe stars in August: Osage County at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre from November 9 to December 15 and in Perth as part of the Perth Festival from February 27 to March 16.

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