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. 

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.”

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. 

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.”

Jon Wertheim

L. Jon Wertheim is an accomplished journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent.