‘I did die’: Rachel Griffiths on one of her kids’ births

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 Rachel Griffiths. The actor and director, 56 – best known for her roles in Muriel’s Wedding, Six Feet Under and Hilary and Jackie – has won AACTA Awards, a Golden Globe and been nominated for an Oscar. Her latest show is Madam.

Rachel Griffiths: “I didn’t go to drama school – I got a teaching degree … I’d do everything I could to build some kind of solid [financial] base.”Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

POLITICS

What are your personal values? I’m pretty Catholic in that I seek stories of redemption and triumph. I’m interested in how people keep their humanity after going through trials and tribulations. And I don’t really like seeing evil people win.

You’ve played a fictional Australian prime minister in three seasons of Total Control. Did that change your attitude towards politicians or politics? I made that show because I knew that it’s a very difficult job. We’re in an age of performative gestures being valued over boring, diligent work. The many conversations required – to listen, to consult – is [considered] too tedious and slow to feed a news cycle voracious for drama. I think Total Control confirmed for me how most people who go into politics really do want to make a difference.

Have you ever been approached to run for office? No, and I don’t think I would. I’m ADHD as f--- and politics requires diligence. I’ve got so much admiration for someone like Helen Haines [independent federal MP for Indi]: someone doing the goddamn work, who builds conversation. That’s probably not my natural disposition.

Can you be friends with someone who doesn’t share your politics? One hundred per cent. I get a bit of shit sometimes, loving the track.

The racehorse track? [Nods] It’s the only place I meet a lot of people whose lives are very different from my own. It’s where the country and the city meet. You meet a lot of people from the country who don’t live in the left-wing, creative-industry bubble. Really good people leading very different lives. And I’m always trying to be curious: “Why do you think that?” I’m a contrarian thinker. Perhaps that’s why I’m interested in other people.

MONEY

Did you grow up with money? Well, it was this weird kind of a sham, really …

Oh, what do you mean by that? There’s a unique feeling of economic vertigo that belongs to the middle class – the feeling of [potentially] falling through.

Tell me the story. Well, my father abandoned his family financially. My mother, at the time, didn’t have a professional qualification, which left her with a mortgage she couldn’t pay on the wrong side of the tracks [in Brighton, Victoria]. Honestly, if it weren’t for Gough Whitlam’s free university education and the nuns who educated her then allowing her to come and teach art without a qualification – because she’s very talented – we wouldn’t have survived economically. As a child, I was catastrophically aware of every single interest-rate rise. If it came on the news, I’d clock my mother flinching.

So why acting? There’s no guarantee of financial safety. I will say that I didn’t go to drama school – I got a teaching degree – so I wasn’t stupid about it. I was determined that I wouldn’t stay poor, that I’d do everything I could to build some kind of solid base. I grew up with a very low tolerance for risk and entrepreneurialism. I was just determined to work. If I stopped acting – or couldn’t act – I’d still work.

What do you consider when weighing up a role? How far away from my family am I going to be? How much am I going to be paid to offset the [distance]? I’ve turned down insane-paying jobs that would’ve taken me very far away for too long. They’re just the decisions you make. I don’t grieve those outcomes.

Say I give you a hundred bucks and you have to spend it on yourself within the next hour, what would you buy? My fetish is linen. I blew the pay cheque for my first acting job on a new duvet and pillows. That night, I remember lying in bed thinking I’d f---ing made it.

DEATH

Have you ever had a near-death experience? I did die giving birth to [teenage daughter] Clementine.

Oh geez, Rachel. You mean you medically died? Yeah, I had a spontaneous uterine rupture; I was in surgery for three days. But I was extremely lucky to be cared for by, arguably, the world’s best trauma team, who’d often dealt with gunshots. And they saved my life. My husband literally went grey that weekend.

How do you reflect on that experience now? I was just so grateful that I didn’t die. I grew up hearing stories about my grandfather JJ and his brothers, Jack and Charles. Their mother died giving birth to Jack, and it left this terrible wound: Jack’s birthday was his mother’s death day. They never celebrated it and Charles drank himself to death in his early 30s. My grandfather became - I’m sure by no coincidence - an obstetrician. For me, staying alive was a gift for no other reason than it spared Clementine and her siblings the burden of my death. Can you imagine the day of your birth being the day of your mother’s death?

And carrying that with you always … And it used to happen all the time.

If you were to die today, what would you be most proud of having done? Creating – and I’m only 50 per cent of this equation – a stable and loving family unit. And, hopefully, leaving every member of that unit knowing that I saw them clearly and loved them while seeing them clearly. And dying with their knowing that they were loved by me.

Madam premieres on Nine on February 4.

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