'Cast Mates is a group biography of Australian acting giants across the ages.
'Australia has a long cinema history - starting with the world's first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in Melbourne and released in 1906. Today, much of Australia's film talent goes to the United States, looking for bigger and more lucrative opportunities overseas. But what does this mean for both the history and future of Australian cinema?
'The larger-than-life personalities that form the heart of this book - Errol Flynn, Peter Finch, David Gulpilil AM and Nicole Kidman - have dominated cinema screens both locally and internationally and starred in some of the biggest films of their eras - including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Network, Crocodile Dundee and Eyes Wide Shut among others.
'From the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s to the streaming wars of today, the lives of these four actors, and their many cast mates, tell a story of how a nation's cinema was founded, then faltered, before finding itself again.' (Publication summary)
'How Errol Flynn, Peter Finch, David Gulpilil and Nicole Kidman crossed the psychic gangway between Sydney and Hollywood'
'A confession: I was a child actor. Never a child star, although certainly that was the intention. For years I endured the three-hour drive from Canberra to Sydney, preparing for my five-minute meeting with some Surry Hills casting director, whose first question would inevitably be ‘How’s your American accent?’ The zenith of my career was a thirty-second commercial for the orange-flavoured soft drink Mirinda, a merchandising tie-in with the release of Spider-Man 2, shot at Fox Studios on a full-sized replica of a New York subway carriage. On the soundstage next door, Baz Luhrmann was directing Nicole Kidman in their famously extravagant campaign for Chanel No. 5. There we all were: Australians in Australia, pretending to be Americans for America. Even at that early age, I sensed that Australian cinema existed in the long shadow of Hollywood, and that there has always been, as Sam Twyford-Moore expertly describes in his new book, ‘some kind of psychic gangway between Sydney and Los Angeles’.'(Introduction)
'When Sam Twyford-Moore visited Russell Crowe’s infamous 2018 “garage sale” of personal film memorabilia, he didn’t expect to score a book idea. But it’s where the cultural critic says he found inspiration for Cast Mates: Australian Actors in Hollywood and at Home, a sweeping biography of four local acting legends who each, in their respective careers, mark milestones in our movie-making relationship with the United States.' (Introduction)
'When Sam Twyford-Moore visited Russell Crowe’s infamous 2018 “garage sale” of personal film memorabilia, he didn’t expect to score a book idea. But it’s where the cultural critic says he found inspiration for Cast Mates: Australian Actors in Hollywood and at Home, a sweeping biography of four local acting legends who each, in their respective careers, mark milestones in our movie-making relationship with the United States.' (Introduction)
'A confession: I was a child actor. Never a child star, although certainly that was the intention. For years I endured the three-hour drive from Canberra to Sydney, preparing for my five-minute meeting with some Surry Hills casting director, whose first question would inevitably be ‘How’s your American accent?’ The zenith of my career was a thirty-second commercial for the orange-flavoured soft drink Mirinda, a merchandising tie-in with the release of Spider-Man 2, shot at Fox Studios on a full-sized replica of a New York subway carriage. On the soundstage next door, Baz Luhrmann was directing Nicole Kidman in their famously extravagant campaign for Chanel No. 5. There we all were: Australians in Australia, pretending to be Americans for America. Even at that early age, I sensed that Australian cinema existed in the long shadow of Hollywood, and that there has always been, as Sam Twyford-Moore expertly describes in his new book, ‘some kind of psychic gangway between Sydney and Los Angeles’.'(Introduction)
'How Errol Flynn, Peter Finch, David Gulpilil and Nicole Kidman crossed the psychic gangway between Sydney and Hollywood'
