Actors Wanted!
World War II is coming to Melbourne in the form of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and their 10-part mini-series production Pacific War - filming over the next year.
Spielberg and Hanks were clearly heavily influenced by Ava Gardner’s comment that Melbourne would be a good place to make a film about the end of the world. (She starred in with Gregory Peck in On the Beach, an epic about that very topic made in Bleak City in 1959).
Would they have chosen Sydney instead if they had known she didn’t actually make her famous comment and that it was the invention of a naughty journalist? We'll never know.
More to the point, however, is that over the next three months the producers are auditioning young male Australian actors willing to play cannon fodder. They're looking for 200+, apparently, to play the many thousands who fought in the Pacific - something like the 123 sheep that were shepherded around in a circle behind the camera to impersonate the huge flocks seen on screen in The Thornbirds.
Unlike the sheep, however you’re going to need a rock-solid American accent. So you might like to know that experienced help is at hand in the form of Lynette Sheldon and John Higgins. They’re conducting dialect and something called "American technique scene study" masterclasses in Balmain over the weekends: March 24-26 and March 31-April 2.
Higgins and Sheldon have worked with more stars than there are in heaven - just about - and their aim is that "by the end of the course actors will have two American accents, an audition scene and a monologue from a 40s-style war movie."
Costs are: first Master Class - $400. Advanced: $250. Discount for signing up for both weekends: $625. Classes are in the Presbyterian Church Hall, Campbell Street, Balmain. For more info: Lynette Sheldon Actor Studio on (02) 8230 0445 or 0421 939 795 or John Higgins on (02) 9871 4938 or email: classinfo@LSActorstudio.com and websites: www.lsactorstudio.com and www.professorjohnhiggins.com.
