Hey all. Here we are with the star of Beneath Hill 60. Brendan Cowell. The 33 year old Australian actor has created a reputation for hard hitting emotional roles whilst somehow avoiding being the thug role. In Beneath Hill 60 he plays Capt Oliver Woodward who is brought into the war as a civilian miner. In my opinion , this is the best I have seen him (review here) and he was very cool to speak with as well. So here is Brendan Cowell;
PJ- How did you become involved with the film?
BC- I ……um (Brendan looks toward the open door, he hears directors Jeremy Sims talking in an interview in the next room, so he gets up to close the door) sorry, the directors voice it creeps me out….. Well Jeremy started whispering to me about this war movie and he said that I think there is something in this for you and I said “Yeah mate.” So we just kept having emails about it but I never really knew what it was and then a physical script arrived and I read it. I didn’t know how I’d react . I found the story really interesting .
The character I initially thought would be quite a challenge and the time. Also the idea of the dark . These men spending all that time in the dark. What would that do to a man? The idea of working with Jeremy, all those factors were enough for me to say, alright I’m in let’s go. I was offered the role.
PJ- So when it came to Capt Woodward , did you feel a big sense of responsibility?
BC- A little. I didn’t take that on too much. I didn’t want to get involved in all that. I read the diaries and I discovered this man of incredible integrity. This is a man who probably never told a lie in his life and had a good sense of humour. But he was a scientist in a lot of ways. He was an engineer, a right brain thinker, very different to me and a lot more logical to me. Haha Well behaved and that was the challenge to me in a lot of ways. I had to bring a bit of me to him.
He’s got a bit of mongrel to him as well. He’s a guy who says “Get the fuck out of the way, I’m gonna do it and do it my own way”. He’s really a unique individual but at the same time I had to fictionalise him. I had to make him mine. I didn’t want to look at videos and do “him”. It has to be me. There has to be a part of me in there. My truth inside him. So it’s kinda like a fusion of the research and my instincts that ended up becoming him.
PJ- Technically, So how do you research for a role like this?
BC- I basically just read the diaries and I looked at photos. I looked at the way he stood with his friends and how he stood when he was around Corporals and Captains and you get a sense of who he respected. And the way he grinned and the way he tilted to the side. I listened to a lot of cricket commentary of the time to try and get that voice. That kind of (he starts to add the accent) 1916 voice. Just to get that ingrained in me. Their sense of humour and how dry they were. How they stood and how much self respect they had and how they valued family. Then I just read a hell of a lot of stuff about war, tunnelling, engineering and mining. Just trying to know as much as I could. As simple as that.
PJ- You bring a lot on yourself. Is it hard to let go of a character when your finished? Do you find that part of your personality start working like him?
BC- Absolutely. You start thinking in those ways. I think if the character doesn’t leave a trace then there’s a worry. It’s like you were never there. Every character opens up a different way of seeing the world. It’s about getting inside that way of seeing the world so once you do, you kind of get attracted to that. The beauty of acting is that it kind of opens up a part of you and you’ll have it for the rest of your life. You become a more well rounded person. It was wonderful playing him. He was a true leader and a really dignified man. A beautiful strong man who had to make a very bold decision in life, in war. He wasn’t even a fucken soldier, he was a miner but he behaved like a soldier. He only had 8 days training.
PJ- So what lesson did you learn from being this character?
BC-As a man?
PJ- Yeah
BC- I guess those true things like the possibility of believing in yourself. Because everyone kept telling him that he knew how to do it and he didn’t know how to do it. He just started believing in what everyone else was believing in and he just did it.
Which is kind of a way of approaching life. To have any kind of success in the world I think you have to do something extreme and you have to put yourself out there. You can’t just hedge your bets. I think that just living a simple and good life can bring more joy than anything else. Over there that was all he missed. These simple amazing things like being on a horse overlooking Queensland.
PJ- So what was one of your favourite memories from filming? No crazy nights down at Flinders street mall?
BC- There was a couple of those. But we only had one day off really so we had a lot of steam to blow off. You know so we’d do a little bit of karaoke, watched a lot of rugby league together as Townsville was such a big rugby league town. It was great as we were treated quite well in Townsville. It can be a rough town in parts but we were loved by everyone because the whole town was involved in the making of the movie. So that was a bit of a thrill having everybody there.
One night we shot this scene with these incredible amputees from the local area who came in and they were the most interesting people and they just loved being there, sharing there experience with the movie. Things like that. A lot of amazing moments where you go “WOW”
PJ- So what was it like being in the mud 90 % of the time? Was it hard onset?
BC- Yeah, it was immensely difficult . It was brutal because if you were inside you were crouching inside of tunnels and for outside you were getting pummelled with rain and mud so there was no real middle ground. There was like only one or two scenes in the officer’s dugout where you could sit down and have a brandy and they were pretty short lived. Other than that I was getting hammered wherever I went. But I like that. Down and dirty filmmaking, its fucken great.
PJ- So why acting? What attracts you to it?
BC- Who knows? I think because I can do it. I am not really intellectualised by it. I just kind always was, always will and always could. So I just kind of …do. It feels good and I can control the audience and I can get to them as well. I also like the high stakes of it. Especially in theatre, you can really fail in there. Where everyone could tell you are lying but you can do amazing things to people. Walking out of a theatre with people who have tears in their eyes or they laughed for 2 hours or now their thinking about something . You can send people a little magic in there lives. A kind of a nice gesture.
PJ- So what do you think of the current Australian film industry and where would you like to see it?
BC- Well I think this year, and I am not being positive for the sake of it, we are starting to turn things around. I think there is going to films that people go and see. A lot of very commercial films that people go and see. I think it’s good that we’re back to making more genre films. Its really exciting. I think there’s a language across the world with genre films . People know if there is a Jennifer Aniston romcom and if that is a Bruce Willis movie and they go because they know they are going to get those experiences.
I think communicating with an Australian audience, saying these are the movies that are like the other ones you go and see and then putting our own spin on it , is a really great idea. We’re are doing more of that and targeting our audiences more and hopefully I think we’ll start collecting a bigger movie going audience . We just got to string 3 or 4 good movies together and we’ll be on a roll. Things move in cycles. We’ve had a little dead patch and I hope with Animal kingdom doing so well and this movie hopefully doing well we might come back to life a little bit and that can give us enough investment to take us to the next level.
PJ- And lucky last, If you were able to ask Capt Woodward one question what would it be?
BC- That’s good mate, I haven’t been asked that one , That’s a good one. I would ask him who would you have play Oliver Woodward? Haha
PJ- Cool, thank you very much
NEXT INTERVIEW WILL BE WITH BENEATH HILL 60'S DIRECTOR JEREMY SIMS, SO STAY TUNED!!