Love My Way: articles


Claudia Karvan

Claudia Karvan stars in a new series on Foxtel.

Claudia Karvan

In her formative years, Claudia Karvan dabbled in recreational sex—“flings” as she calls it—and experimented with drugs as a pedestrian rite of passage.

But what really turned her on was the consciousness-expanding material of a good book. Tennessee Williams was a favourite, and when we discuss the focus often placed on her beauty she refers to his work.

“There is that archetypal figure that is present in his plays like Sweet Bird of Youth,” she says.

“That ageing beauty thing, I was always aware of it as a teenager. You don’t want to be some tragic person who is mourning their lost youth and looks. If you hang who you are on looks it’s a downward spiral. I consciously shirk the importance of looks. But I still moisturise daily, use eye cream and have facials.”

Reading is more difficult now that she is a 32-year-old mother pushing swings in the park. One of the reasons she had a child, she says, was because she was sick of being able to do everything she wanted to do.

“I wanted to take the focus off me.”

Karvan starred in the twentysomething The Secret Life of Us, which chronicled self-indulgent young lives in trendy St Kilda and now she has co-produced and starred in Love My Way, its thirtysomething companion piece (for Fox8) about the lives and responsibilities of extended families.

Karvan, who is also a stepmother, says she has friends in similar situations and wanted to explore the blending of families and the nature of their friendships and conflicts in this new series.

Is aloneness an issue with you?

Not aloneness but especially, living in the city, isolation can be pretty painful. (The film) Punch Drunk Love, about two loners finding each other is one of my favourite films. Magnolia is about a whole lot of separate lonely people but again it has this romantic overtone that loners really want to be with other people.

‘’I think shared experiences are certainly my lifeline. Most of my decisions are based on relationships. It’s one of the reasons I never went to America and tried to carve out a career over there. I’ve been in love with my partner since I was 22, I’ve been a stepmother since I was 22, I’ve had a daughter for the past three years, I’ve got close ties with my family and the other families that I’ve inherited. That defines who I am.’’

Karvan is very much a working mother.

“I am constantly adding more and more things to my plate in an ambitious way, which adds levels of stress.”

She says she works really hard so she can enjoy not working, and she envies people who can relax from day to day. I’m guessing she has developed a neurotic work ethic perhaps from childhood.

She was the conscientious daughter of unconventional parents who ran the ultra-cool Arthur’s nightclub in Sydney’s Kings Cross during the pleasure-seeking 1980s. Karvan’s mother wore Vivienne Westwood rubber zip tops and teased her dyed blonde hair.

You didn’t relate to your mother as a teenager. Will it worry you if Audrey doesn’t relate to you?

Hopefully it won’t. I’m sure she’ll be quite hard on me, like all kids are. I’m sure it will be heartbreaking. I’m nervous about the teenage years. I was always loyal to my parents but, yeah, I was a Saffy from Ab Fab. I watched that show and I thought, “Oh yeah, I can relate to that daughter.”

‘’My mother was, you know, the whole range of La Prairie, you know, sheep cells and caviar on your face, and designer clothes and out till six in the morning. But mum was also a big reader and a big thinker and passionate about issues.’’

Do you reflect your own childhood through your children?

The thing I would resist the most is, “Oh, I’d better act like a parent now that I have a child.” The thing I admired about my parents is that they continued to live the life that they wanted to lead. There was no negative impact on my brothers or me.’’

They still got you off to school on time.

I got myself off to school on time. I’ve got a life that I’m very happy with. I can’t go pointing the finger at them now. I did it in my early 20s because that’s what you do.’’

While we talk, Karvan makes statements and then qualifies them by saying, in various ways, that there is always another point of view. It is, she says, a legacy of acting because for every role you take you have to have empathy.

“You want to understand everyone’s point of view,” she says. “You are likely to change your opinions on something very easily. I do it all the time—it gives me the shits.”

Karvan is steadfast on one issue. She has spoken publicly, challenging the government’s line on asylum seekers and is a patron for A Just Australia, a group sympathetic to the cause. Tears well and her voice cracks as we discuss the topic.

Did you visit any detention centres?

No, I think my role is better to donate money and talk openly about how I feel about the issue. I’ve met lots of people who have been in detention.

Are you frightened of going to these places?

Yeah, look, I don’t know what I would say. I’m not very good in that situation. I played a woman who was a partial paraplegic and I went to spinal wards and I’m not very good at making social conversation in emotionally confronting situations. The (asylum seeker) issue is something I cry a lot about. I think I’d turn into a blubbering mess and say the wrong things.

I launched a book of writings from detention centres and gave readings. I f––d up then, too. Like, I read the poem in front of an audience and the person who had written it was bawling his eyes out and I had to be told to stop. I just thought, “You f––ing idiot, I have just gone and made his night that much more difficult.”

“He had lost his children and it was a devastating poem about how he doesn’t know where his children are.’’

By Chris Beck
November 25, 2004
The Age