australian television information archive

Emily Perry…

If it hadn't been for a bout of glandular fever at the age of 13, Emily might well have been a star athlete by now instead of an actor. The illness, however, meant she had to have so much time away from training, she went back to her first love of acting instead.

She signed up with an agent in Year 10 for some extra cash—"I didn't want to get a part-time job!" she explains—and soon found herself loving the work more than school. When she was then offered the role of Terri in Breakers, she had to decide whether to leave school before the last term of Year 11 or turn down the job.

"It wasn't a very hard decision at all!" she laughs. "I can go back to school in two years time and finish off. Jobs like this don't come around very often."

Emily adores the challenge of playing Terri, a girl she describes as only a year younger than herself, but many years less mature. "She's so noisy at times and can be a bit over the top. She likes to get involved in everyone's lives. I like to know what's going on around me too, but I like to think I know where to draw the line!"

…as Terri Simmons

Terri, at 16, rebels instinctively against the worlds of both her mother and her father. She finds her mother's drive and ambition daunting and her father's laid-back opportunism (and involvement in a modelling school) embarrassing. The one family trait Terri has inherited is her Aunt Kate's basic decency, which drives her to help out at the agency for homeless kids, but her natural curiosity and over-enthusiasm often leaves everyone in much more trouble than before she arrived to help.

Terri (short for Therese, which she hates) champions any number of causes from the environment to stray dogs and she is constantly writing to her mother's newspaper, arguing for anything she feels helps the area, and against anything she feels is going to change its character. She also has a pop music column which, after a run-in with her mother, is taken away from her. The run-in comes about because of Terry's unerring instinct for trouble and her "ends justifies the means" philosophy which inevitably lands her in hot water.

And while Terri sneers at the would-be models at BMS for being superficial and silly, she secretly envies their popularity and confidence. Her best friend is Maggie, who is the young journalist at The Breaker.