Packed To The Rafters: articles


Cameron Daddo and Rebecca Gibney get to know each other better in Packed to the Rafters.

Daddo still waiting for his starring role

Two decades ago, Cameron Daddo was a wide-eyed 20-something who packed up and moved to Los Angeles in the hope of being Hollywood's next big star.

After making a name for himself in Australia, particularly as the good-looking host of Perfect Match, Daddo never realised how hard searching for fame and fortune in the world's entertainment capital would be.

Roles didn't come as quickly as he had hoped and soon he was a 47-year-old married father of three, who had spent the last 20 years trying to get that one breakthrough part which would put his name on the map.

This year is already looking brighter for Daddo who says he won't give up on his dream of making it big in the US. He has landed a regular role on Australia's number one TV drama, Seven's Packed to the Rafters, and will appear in the coming weeks in Nine's blockbuster TV movie Beaconsfield.

"What keeps me hanging in there is that I keep getting work. And I get very close to big things," Daddo said from Los Angeles.

"If I was not in consideration for big roles, or wasn't able to sustain a life here, it would be a problem. I would say, 'Look, I think it is time to pack up.'

"But I am in consideration for things and I do get considered but, for whatever reason, some work and some don't. But I feel like I still have much to offer and maybe more to offer now that I am older and wiser."

Daddo said he couldn't resist the Rafters role and the chance to act alongside Rebecca Gibney.

In the series return next Tuesday, viewers will get their first look at Daddo's character, Adam Goldman, a well-travelled journalist who meets his match in budding online blogger, Julie Rafter (Gibney).

"He is a journalist who has spent his life overseas and he decides to move back to Australia to run a newspaper so he can find some form of semblance of a normal life," Daddo said.

"It's fantastic working with Rebecca. We have both been trained in the same way. We both learnt on the job as opposed to going through drama school.

"Our storyline is about two people sharing the same passion. A passion of writing and how exciting that journalistic world is. From Adam's perspective, he is now working with a woman and he finds her talent very attractive. Obviously, she is a very good-looking woman yet what she brings to the table is something so fresh. I feel that appeals to his jaded side."

Daddo signed for the Rafters role while shooting Beaconsfield, in which he plays mine manager Matthew Gill, who had the arduous task of deciding the best way to rescue two miners trapped in Tasmania's Beaconsfield gold mine in April 2006.

"It was pretty intense in terms of wanting to be respectful to the subject matter and the fact that lives were lost and families were deeply affected," he said.

"Those types of things need to be handled very sensitively and very carefully, which I feel that we did."

Inspired by the experience, Daddo penned a track, Sunshine, which is on his latest album, Ten Songs ... and Change.

"I was so taken and immersed with what I was doing on Beaconsfield, I ended up writing a song about the show," he said.

"It was a pleasure and an absolute honour to be part of that history-making time in Australia."

By Ross McRae
April 11, 2012
The West Australian