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How an Australian drama school helped shape talent flooding Hollywood
They may have perfected American accents, but some of the biggest names in Hollywood are Australian.
Many of the Australian actors, directors, writers and crew now working in Hollywood started learning their craft at NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Arts.
John Clark, NIDA’s director for 35 years, set a goal from the start: unlocking a distinct, Australian mode of acting that combined the theater of London with Hollywood gloss, but still allowed Australia’s national characteristics to shine through.
“They are playing characters with such conviction and with such truth,” Clark, now 92, said. “Without what Australians would call decoration.”
The who’s who of NIDA
Sarah Snook, fresh off her Emmy-winning breakthrough role as Shiv Roy in “Succession” and now playing all 26 roles in a staging of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” learned to mask her Australian accent at NIDA.
She was class of 2008, one of only 24 admitted that year. The acceptance rate at the school is barely 2% — Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts were among those declined. Graduates include Mel Gibson, Cate Blanchett, director Baz Luhrmann and his wife, four-time Oscar-winning costume and production designer Catherine Martin.
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Luhrmann still leans on his NIDA training.
“I do remember one thing. And I think it’s sort of an Australian attitude, which is, ‘Don’t wait for permission to be told that you can act,'” Luhrmann said.
The growth of the Australian acting and directing scene
Luhrmann was at NIDA when he devised “Strictly Ballroom.” Within a few years, he’d turned the play into a cult hit film with an all Aussie cast and crew. That was in 1992, and soon after, Australian talent started filtering out. Now Australians populate IMDB pages and call sheets, bringing heroes and villains to the big screen, earning top billings and top awards. Australians have become to Hollywood what Kenyans are to marathoning: wildly overrepresented.
“It’s got to a point where there are so many Australian performers and actors, behind the screen, I mean, screenplay writing and directing, but particularly with actors, that even I have to be told, ‘Oh, you know, X is Australian.’ I mean, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that,'” Luhrmann said. “Because they are really everywhere. Now, NIDA was a really big part of that because I think it kind of set the culture and set the attitude.”
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Luhrmann believes the “don’t wait for permission” attitude NIDA instilled in its initial graduates spilled out into the larger sense of what it is to be a performer in Australia.
“You know, just throwing yourself off the cliff and flying,” he said.
Other names out of Australia are Margot Robbie, Chris Hemsworth, Toni Collette and Geoffrey Rush.
Australian theater and soap operas have played a role in the surge, helping actors sharpen their skills and in some cases, launch their careers.
“Australia’s got great training grounds for international work,” Sarah Snook said. “There’s a way you can test yourself in Australia. And you can fail safely in a way.”
Bringing the Australian ethos to Hollywood
Snook grew up as a typical Aussie free range kid. She’d ride her bike around a national park in southern Australia that was home to kangaroos. Those experiences and the self-reliance it developed have helped her career.
“They build your character, so that you can play other characters,” she said.
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Australians are also known in the entertainment industry for taking the work more seriously than they take themselves.
“There is a bit of an understanding that…it’s all oftentimes smoke and mirrors. And it’s fun. And it’s a game,” Snook said. “It is profound in some ways, but it’s also silly. Like Chris Hemsworth has got a great tongue and cheek sort of attitude about it all…And also Baz Luhrmann, with all, you know, his films tend to have a bit of [a] little cheek or a wink to the audience.”
And, Luhrmann believes the remoteness of Australia is a blessing.
“The one thing everyone agrees about with Australia is that it’s far, far away,” he said. “And I think that we still think that the idea of being either in a movie or in a play on Broadway or in a television show in Hollywood is still a romantic notion. It’s still a privilege. It isn’t a job. It’s a dream.”
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Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, paid accuser to save job at Fox News, his lawyer says
Fox News host Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to serve as defense secretary, paid a confidential financial settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault out of concern that the allegation would lead to his firing from the cable news giant, his lawyer told CBS News.
Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Palatore, said the Army veteran reached a confidential settlement agreement to deter his accuser from going forward with a lawsuit, maintaining that he is innocent and the sexual encounter was consensual. Hegseth denies any wrongdoing.
“The reality is that, had they filed [a lawsuit], civil process takes quite a while, and so Fox News likely would have fired him based on the allegation,” said Palatore, adding that the woman and her attorney “knew that simply filing it would cause an immediate horror storm for [Hegseth].”
Fox News did not respond to an inquiry about when the network found out about Hegseth’s settlement agreement.
Trump’s transition team spoke with Palatore after Hegseth was named as Trump’s nominee defense secretary, the attorney said. He said that he “explained this fully” to them but that he did not know what prior conversations Hegseth had with the transition team, or if they had been informed about the sexual assault allegation and settlement agreement before the announcement of his impending nomination for defense secretary.
“This should have nothing to do with the confirmation process,” he said.
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Trump has indicated that these revelations have not deterred him from Hegseth’s selection as defense secretary. After reports surfaced of the sexual assault accusation, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said, “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed.”
The alleged sexual assault took place after midnight on Oct. 8, 2017, at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa. The woman, whose identity has been kept confidential, filed a complaint with the Monterey Police Department four days later alleging that she had been sexually assaulted by Hegseth. The city of Monterey confirmed the 2017 investigation into Hegseth and said in a statement that investigators found the woman had “contusions” on her right thigh. No charges were filed, Palatore said.
The Washington Post, which first reported the financial payment, obtained what it referred to as a memo that it said was sent to the Trump transition team by a friend of the accuser alleging Hegseth raped a conservative group staffer in his room after drinking at the hotel bar. According to the Post, the memo states that the day after the incident, the accuser “had a moment of hazy memory of being raped the night before, and had a panic attack.”
CBS News has not seen the memo and cannot verify its contents.
Palatore told CBS News that there is eyewitness testimony and video surveillance footage that allegedly shows the accuser was the “aggressor” in a consensual sexual encounter. “[Hegseth] was intoxicated. She was sober. She was the one grabbing him by the arm and leading him out of the bar to take him upstairs,” he said.
When asked if CBS News could view the footage, Palatore said, “No.” He also declined to share the names of any eyewitnesses.
CNN reported that it spoke with the alleged victim last week, who “became visibly distraught at the mention of Hegseth’s name.” CNN says she declined to be interviewed at the time and then stopped responding.
Palatore would not share the exact timing of the settlement payment to the woman. He said it occurred “a couple years ago,” emphasizing that it was “well before Trump was even nominated [for the presidency], let alone had named Pete to this position.”
He also declined to disclose the amount of the settlement, only saying it was “far, far less than what she wanted.” He characterized it as “essentially an extortion and blackmail.”
Two years after the alleged incident, Palatore said that Hegseth was informed the woman was making what they called “false claims” against him and was threatening to sue him. Palatore said that she had lost her job and claimed she needed money. In February of 2020, he sent her a cease-and-desist letter. She went “quiet for a year” before he learned she had found an attorney for her case.
Trump’s selection of Hegseth has been plagued with controversy. The announcement that the Fox News personality was his choice for secretary of Defense took many in Washington by surprise. “Wow,” responded Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski upon learning he had been picked to lead the Defense Department. “I just said, wow,” she repeated when asked for her thoughts.
Even Hegseth’s tattoos have attracted scrutiny, specifically the “Deux Vult” tattoo on his inner bicep. The symbolism of that tattoo, which has been tied to extremist groups and the Christian Crusaders, alarmed a member of Hegseth’s National Guard unit, who warned superiors that Hegseth was a potential “insider threat” before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. He was removed from guarding the inauguration.
After The Associated Press reported Hegseth had been flagged as a threat, Vice President-elect JD Vance defended him on social media, accusing the outlet of “attacking Pete Hegseth for having a Christian motto tattooed on his arm.” Hegseth then shared Vance’s tweet, commenting, “They can target me — I don’t give a damn — but this type of targeting of Christians, conservatives, patriots and everyday Americans will stop on DAY ONE at DJT’s DoD.”
The news of Hegseth’s financial settlement agreement with a confidentiality clause may ring familiar to Trump. The president-elect’s own troubles related to a nondisclosure agreement with adult film star Stormy Daniels led to the New York trial in which he became a convicted felon, as well as the first former (and now future) president to be criminally prosecuted.
Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to an alleged cover-up of the payment to Daniels. He has argued that the verdict should be overturned and the indictment dismissed on the basis, among other things, of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling.
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