VIDEO: Taking the Lead | Heather Mitchell
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Hey, if you’ve lived in the vicinity of a television set during the last 40 years or so, you’ll recognise the face of Australian actress Heather Mitchell. She’ been working for a long time, not just in TV but in the theatre and in film as well. And in her 60s she’s having a bit of a moment, with a burst of career success. The thing is though, even if you recognise Heather Mitchell’s face you probably have no idea of her extraordinary path to get to where she is.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I certainly never became an actor to be recognised. For me it's about communicating that we're not alone, that we're all in it together and that life is big.
HUGO WEAVING, ACTOR AND FRIEND: Performing with Heather is always a joy. She is very playful, she's intuitive, she's smart.
(Heather Mitchell, Love Me)
Maybe we should just be friends.
HUGO WEAVING, ACTOR AND FRIEND: I’ve always loved working with her.
SAM NEILL, ACTOR AND FRIEND: There's very few actors that can convey feeling so readily and so accessibly like Heather does.
(Heather Mitchell, Proof)
I don’t want to leave you.
SAM NEILL, ACTOR AND FRIEND: And I think a lot of that comes from, just, she's been through so much, she's experienced so much.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: Her experience as a young woman working in this industry was really tough. She's lived that, and she doesn't want that to happen for the next generation.
HEATHER MITCHELL: When I first heard the term MeToo, and when it was a resounding number of women in particular, worldwide were speaking out, it really did shake me up.
It did bring up in me instances where not only did I feel uncomfortable and threatened but, there was abuse. I look back and I think, gosh, it is really changed.
(Heather Mitchell, Palm Beach)
I’m leaving.
HEATHER MITCHELL: Now you feel the impact and the input of incredible women. Many more female producers, many more female writers, better roles for women, stories about women.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: Heather has reached this incredible point in her 60s where she is in her absolute power. And I think all of the wisdom that she's collected over her lifetime, she's feeding into her work and creating incredible characters. And she's giving us some of the best work of her career.
TITLE: Taking the Lead
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: During COVID lockdown I decided I wanted to write this play about RBG — Ruth Bader Ginsburg — because I was extremely interested and inspired by her.
(Heather arriving at Suzie Miller’s house)
Suzie: Oh, so excited.
Heather: Hello.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: And it was so obvious it had to be Heather who played her.
(Heather arriving at Suzie Miller’s house)
Suzie Miller: So excited to see you.
HEATHER MITCHELL: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the second female to be appointed as a judge on the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg: All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.
HEATHER MITCHELL: She fought arduously and fervently and passionately for equality and the rights of women and social justice.
Suzie Miller: Someone said you look like her... then I looked at you and I went, ‘It's you, it’s you, I’m writing it for you’. And that was the last piece of the puzzle.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I would never say I’m anything like a Supreme Court judge, but there were so many things in Ruth's life that resonated with me. We both had a Jewish mother, my mother died on my last exam of school, so did her mother. This was an amazing opportunity.
(Heather and Suzie chat over tea)
Heather Mitchell: Do you know what? I feel most comfortable playing really young and really old.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: I think Heather embodied so much of her, she really owned being Ruth.
Heather as RBG on stage: The only way to make your own life is to stay independent.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: Even more surprising for me was how much she actually could lean in and own the roles of those three presidents that she played.
(Suzie and Heather chat)
Suzie: Do Clinton for me.
Heather: Clinton’s sort of on the porch, he talks in slogans he's sort of, like, got the whiskey and the bourbon in his hand.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: We knew when we embarked upon the process of creating this work that it was going to be a theatrical Everest of sorts.
Heather Mitchell as RBG: The next morning I wake up and Trump has tweeted – ‘Resign, she’s lost her mind, Justice Ginsburg's mind is shot, resign’.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: Heather has to play nearly 30 characters in the play. Her vocal transformations, her comedy, her pathos, it really required her to do everything.
Heather Mitchell on stage as RBG: Time out for Justice Ginsburg.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: There was something very cathartic, I think, for Heather to walk on that stage and tell this story about this incredible woman who had overcome injustice in her life and had triumphed and had changed the world.
(Heather Mitchell looking at photos displayed on wall via a projector)
Heather: We didn't have picture theatres, we didn't have a television so I’d beg my father to get the slides out, Mum would always watch them with me.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I grew up in a very a very gentle, quiet family. My father was probably one of the gentlest people I've ever met in my life. My mother was a very joyous woman, a very smart, intelligent woman with a great sense of humour.
(Heather Mitchell looking at photos displayed on wall via a projector)
Heather: This is my parents.
HEATHER MITCHELL: We lived in a beautiful town called Camden, south-west of Sydney.
(Heather Mitchell looking at photos displayed on wall via a projector)
That’s in Camden with our cats, we always had lots and lots of animals.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I really loved school, but while I was in primary school I did notice that my mind wandered quite a lot. Reading was difficult, so I didn't realise I had a form of dyslexia.
JOANNE CORRIGAN, FRIEND: Heather spent a lot of time making up stories and acting out, you know, different characters in her bedroom. She had a chalkboard where she played school and she was the school teacher and that’s how she taught herself to read.
(Heather Mitchell looking at photos displayed on wall via a projector)
Heather: I loved dressing up — I dressed up any occasion I could. And I think that was the beginning of the character Miss Mumford, who I developed to help me get through school, she used to teach me in my bedroom.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I suppose playing a character, playing someone else was so freeing. It gave me a great feeling of confidence. It I was able to phrase things in the way that I understood them.
(Heather Mitchell looking at photos displayed on wall via a projector)
This is one of the only photos I have of my mother after she had been diagnosed.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I was 11 when my mother was diagnosed with leukaemia. She kept it an absolute secret. This is back in the late 60s early 70s, you didn’t talk about cancer, you didn’t talk about illness.
(Heather looking at family memories, holding a book)
Heather: This book, The Family of Man, was my favourite book when I was growing up…
HEATHER MITCHELL: When I realised my mother was getting a lot weaker the way I dealt with it, I would create characters in my bedroom. I was particularly attracted to photographs of women being held by other women crying. Or women with babies or women who are nurturing someone else. I would replicate those photographs in person.
(Heather looking at old family photographs)
Heather: There’s a photograph I’m looking for of a woman who was grieving. I sort of imagined I was her and I think I was doing that in preparation for my mother’s death, so that when that event happened that I would be prepared.
HUGO WEAVING, ACTOR AND FRIEND: That's what actors do, prepare for something in advance of it... I mean, acting's different from obviously from your real mother dying. But that sense of preparing for something that hasn't happened yet.
HEATHER MITCHELL: So, when I left school, I was in a bit of a quandary because mum had just died and I felt a little adrift so I decided I’d probably go to art school, but realised I wasn't going to be a solo artist. I missed working with a group of people. So then I decided I'd like to give NIDA a try.
HUGO WEAVING, ACTOR AND FRIEND: We met at NIDA, The National Institute of Dramatic Art and Heather was in the year above me. But it wasn't probably until we were at the Sydney Theatre Company when I really got to know her. It was a fantastic group of actors, too. Mel Gibson, Judy Davis, Colin Friels. Like, you know, it was incredible. And then people like me and Heather.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I just loved being in the rehearsal room. I loved working with different directors. I just was in heaven.
HUGO WEAVING, ACTOR AND FRIEND: In the second year out of NIDA, we were we were also working together, not just on stage but on screen.
HEATHER MITCHELL: My first big role out of NIDA was a TV series Bodyline which was about a famous cricket test series between Australia and England.
(Bodyline, 1984)
Oh, hello.
HEATHER MITCHELL: It was set in the 1930s.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I didn't know it was a great break. It just felt like a wonderful, exciting thing to be part of.
(Bodyline, 1984)
And what you do miss?
I work at the British Museum.
A secretary?
An Egyptologist. And you?
JOANNE CORRIGAN, FRIEND: She looked like a 1940s sort of movie star. She had that real old-worldy look.
(Bodyline, 1984)
Cricket is a metaphor for life.
Oh really.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I wanted to do more film and television and was finding it difficult to to get auditions. This particular casting agent told me that I didn't have IT, I didn't have IT, this elusive thing. So I was kind of stunned and shocked by that. When you deal with rejections in this industry resilience is your best friend. What actors put up with, particularly in that era of the 80s and 90s, it was horrendous.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: There was still a lot of big egos around, women were not treated well -particularly if you spoke up and Heather is one to speak up, so she would speak up in a television or film context and be not just shut down but sacked. You know, that's what they did.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I did one job where I was in a compromising situation which could be definitely called abusive. I did speak up and I was actually written out of a show.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: Those experiences, they sting.
HEATHER MITCHELL: The film sets in particular, and TV sets were very male-dominated, I would go so far as to say very testosterone, cocaine and alcohol fuelled places. Not all of them, obviously, but in my experience and not particularly pleasant places to be.
HEATHER MITCHELL: There was one instance when I was having a rest in my van and I heard the door open and found two men standing right next to me and one was kneeling and his tongue was in my mouth already and the other one was watching. That was, as you can imagine, not only a shock, but and my reaction was to laugh. I said, oh, don't be ridiculous. What are you doing? I did not know how to deal with a situation like that.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I think with so many of my experiences in life what I tended to do was file things away. I sort of put a title on them all, like, I remember there was one, I thought sad man did a sad thing. And I would think, well, that's an experience that I can draw on in my acting. It is a form of disassociation, but it's a form of almost putting off the event until you're ready to look at it.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I was reluctant to be on a film set for a while, most definitely. And so I threw myself into the theatre. I felt in the theatre there was much more of a camaraderie. There was much more of an equality, a feeling of family.
(The Fast Lane, 1986)
Heather: I’ll post the package to you.
SAM NEILL, ACTOR AND FRIEND: I can't remember the first thing I ever saw her in but we had the same agent and I remember meeting this gorgeous girl. She was my girlfriend for a few minutes. And until we decided sensibly that we were much better as friends
HEATHER MITCHELL: I was never looking for one person. I didn't even really imagine my life to be with one person. I thought it was kind of a strange thing, really being with one person your whole life.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: Heather and I met in in Broken Hill. I was doing a short film there. I picked her up from the airport because I think I was the only sober one on the crew at the time when she arrived at 11:00 at night and we just had an instant rapport.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I'd been to a clairvoyant. She said I was going to meet my guardian angel in life and it would make itself known to me. And within 24 hours I had met Martin.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: I remember walking back through Broken Hill and it started to rain, and we we took shelter under this awning and then we just kissed. And that was it. That was it, it was on.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: I think it was probably about 18 months to two years down the track that I proposed and Heather said, nah, I don't know about that.
HEATHER MITCHELL: Somewhere very subconsciously in me I thought that marriage meant ... getting married, having kids would be inevitable, and then I'd somehow get sick and die. But I thought no, I just I'll play the long game here. When we finally decided to get married, it all happened very quickly.
(Marty reception speech)
For all those people who’ve said you must look after this woman, I promise I will, she’s very special. Thank you.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I was nearly 42 when I had my first child, Finn.
Doesn’t he look tired. He’s had a big day.
HEATHER MITCHELL: And then two years later I had Seamus.
HEATHER MITCHELL: When Seamus was five weeks old, Martin was overseas. I woke up and Seamus was boiling hot, intensely hot. We got to hospital, they did lumbar punctures and said it was meningitis and he was critically ill, he was resuscitated a couple of times.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: He was lucky to live, very lucky to live. His brain was hammered for a period of time with meningitis.
HEATHER MITCHELL: That began a really intense and very distressing number of weeks in and out of hospital, then many, many, many, many months of trying to work out the effects that this had had on him and his development. It really did have a huge impact on all our lives.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I was so deeply tired and I assumed it was because of Seamus being sick. I had been to a doctor for three years running to check on a small lump that I had in my right breast, and she had said it was a cyst each time.
HEATHER MITCHELL: So I ended up having an ultrasound done and that's when they found that I had grade three breast cancer. And I just, there was almost a feeling of resignation Somehow it was inevitable that I’d have the children and now I was going to die.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: Yes, there was an ounce of, ‘Oh, my God, I'm repeating my mother's history’. We both cried for about 20 minutes outside the hospital. And then from that point on, she just jumped on the horse, grabbed the lance and rode into battle like Joan of Arc. She's … she's made of very, very tough stuff.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I began a two-year process of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy. I feel like those years were just an intense period of time, of family, of illness and I felt very stretched.
JOANNE CORRIGAN, FRIEND: The cancer really took her to within a whisper of life, like she was skeletal. There was a day when I went over to visit her where I honestly thought, you know, this is the last time I'm going to be with my friend, and she just slowly and surely came back to life.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I wanted so badly to work while I was doing chemo. I rang my agent and said, please, please send me for something, anything. So they sent me for a role playing a woman who was dying of cancer who was bald and I thought fantastic this is my role.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: And she didn't get the role. She said, I was never more prepared for a role in my life and I didn't get it.
HEATHER MITCHELL: Which I was just floored by. I thought, how can they not think of all the money they'll save on makeup? And like, really?
JOANNE CORRIGAN, FRIEND: Work dried up for both of them pretty much for a couple of years. Their theory is, you know, that people really don't know what to do when you're really sick. And yeah, I think as a consequence, they had to sell their house.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: It was a very confronting, confronting time. But in the middle of all that we received this letter.
Heather reads letter: Dear Miss Mitchell, I am writing to you because over the years I have so much enjoyed your performances. It gives me pleasure to say thank you in a tangible way to artists whose work I have admired. Yours faithfully, Mrs. Anon. And inside was a bank cheque for $30,000.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: We still don't know who it was that sent us this money. But it was a godsend. It didn't save us from having to sell the house, but it meant that it kept us alive for a year.
(Rake)
Heather in Rake: We’re going to fight this thing and you’re going to be acquitted, now come back to bed you’re being silly.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: All she could think about once she got through the chemo was I'm going to be either back on the stage or I'm going to be in front of a camera. I want to act.
(Heather chats while doing ‘toast art’)
I was doing a play at the Sydney Theatre company, a play called True West which was being directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and at the end of the play there was just toast littering the stage. And I just felt it was such a waste seeing all this toast being thrown out.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: And Heather being the sort of creative, ingenious individual that she is used that toast to start creating these portraits as closing night gifts.
(Heather chats while doing ‘toast art’)
Originally it was Vegemite and then developed weevils and moths started growing inside the toasts. So then I've transferred to using paint and just a fine paintbrush.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: It is now a thing in the industry that you await the moment where you will work with Heather and get your piece of Toast Art.
(Heather chats while doing ‘toast art’)
There we are, we've got one of Finn here with shorter hair. There he is and that's on a nice white. But sometimes we use sourdough. I've tried a crumpet even, but that made the skin look a bit pockmarked, you know?
HEATHER MITCHELL: My son Finn is a very talented visual artist. And Seamus is a brilliant basketball coach, and he has worked so hard.
SEAMUS MCGRATH: Growing up was very tough. Starting off with meningitis and then learning, like, learning all the basics of like the mental side of things. And got to that point where I actually developed the knowledge and the strength to be where I am today.
I’m trying to teach people that anything's possible and all that.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: He's a resilient kid and he's as tough as his mother. He's the only one in the family with a proper job.
HEATHER MITCHELL: They're certainly not theatre people. But they come to all the things I do
FINN MCGRATH: I love a few of her series. I think her role as Ashka in Spellbinder. Yeah, that's a personal favourite.
(Spellbinder, 1995 Telewizja Polska, Film Australia)
Heather Mitchell, Spellbinder: Let’s find our way out of this place. We’ll come back later and destroy these marauders.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: It was very early 2020 I think we were in the kind of early rumblings of the pandemic. And Suzie Miller emailed me and said I want to write a play about RBG, and I want Heather Mitchell to play that role. And it’s one of those rare moments as an artistic director where you get a pitch and you go no brainer we’re doing this thing.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of those legal icons for me. I did become mildly obsessed and read everything I could get my hands on. I think having Heather's voice in my head made it much easier to write. And then of course Heather read it and she had such a lovely response.
(Voice coaching session on Zoom)
Heather: It’s like a thriller, so many secrets, so much unknown.
Coach: So many secrets. So much unknown.
Heather: So much unknown.
Coach: And she does it with a light touch, but it is a darker vowel.
(Heather Mitchell as RBG)
I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough women on the Supreme Court? And I say, when there are nine.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: We were, I think, only weeks away from announcing the season and Heather called to tell me about her diagnosis, and I was devastated.
MARTY MCGRATH, HUSBAND: Pretty quickly we realised it was a dire situation and this was the return that everyone dreads.
HEATHER MITCHELL: Bizarrely, in the same area, another lump and I got it quickly. I had a mastectomy with reconstruction. I was so thrilled I didn't have to do chemo.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: She was very clear that she didn't want a repeat of what had happened the previous time where people were so careful about her that they didn't employ her.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: She pitched moving it by six months and that she said that she would be able to do that. You know this whole project had been conceived around Heather and we weren't going to do it without her.
(Heather Mitchell as RBG)
Death looms at 3am. I feel strong arms about me. Marty’s eyes looking right into me.
‘You’re strong’, he says. ‘Stronger than anyone I have ever known’.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: I don't know how she did it. Performing that role eight times a week for several months.
(Heather Mitchell as RBG)
It’s the year 2000, a new millennium.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: It's a huge feat of memory. It's a huge feat of physical endurance, of vocal endurance.
(Heather Mitchell as RBG)
The sun has come out.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: For Heather to bring that story to life just months after overcoming cancer herself was sort of a once in a lifetime thing.
(Heather Mitchell in RBG play)
Obama is ordering tea. He thinks, then speaks.
Obama ‘Of course, should you retire, I would want to reassure you that it would be a woman. Any judge I appoint’.
This is supposed to placate me
I have not intention of dying.
He hurries in.
‘I should hope not Ruth’.
SAM NEILL, ACTOR AND FRIEND: I watched Heather in RBG with my jaw on the floor really. At the end of it, I was found myself not just on my feet, but in floods of tears. And I thought all those struggles, all those adversities, all the health issues, all the rest of it kind of paid off tonight in a way that I could never have dreamt was possible.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I had no idea that so many people would not only enjoy the show but feel such affection for her. And that was incredible.
(Writer’s Room conversation)
How are you darling? Those notes were brilliant.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I've just recently been in a writer's room for the first time and it was so exciting. It was a group of women with different experiences brainstorming and just throwing ideas around for a TV series. I felt like I had quite a lot to offer.
(Writer’s Room conversation)
Heather: We’re starting to think about these women and the voice that they need to find deep within them.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I always knew on some level that society, in a way the social structure had let me down.
(Writer’s Room conversation) What is she fighting here, what is she overcoming…
HEATHER MITCHELL: The Me Too movement really prompted me to reflect on the experiences I had, and by articulating them now as a woman in my 60s I was shocked at how I had silenced myself.
(Writer’s Room conversation)
Heather: Maybe she went to the prison because she needs to get permission.
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: The fact that she could speak up in her memoir about her experiences and actually just claim that this is what happened. I think that actually allows other women to speak as well. So it's an invitation for a conversation.
KIP WILLIAMS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STC: Heather is a very powerful voice in our industry, and she uses that power to advocate for other young women.
HEATHER MITCHELL: I have spoken to a number of actresses who have felt very compromised. It's very much about listening and trying to ascertain what they want done about it. I think fortunately young people feel like they do have agency, they can speak up, they’re encouraged to unlike we were.
(Heather brings tea and cake for group of friends)
Heather: I’ve got some tea.
Thank you.
Last year was such a big year for All of us, really. But I really wanted to say thank you.
I’d be still in bed complaining.
Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?!
SUZIE MILLER, FRIEND AND PLAYWRIGHT: It's quite a beautiful thing to have an actor that actually ages before us and actually embraces that and says I can bring this to older women characters// I mean, what she did with Love Me was so beautiful.
(Love Me, 2021)
I’m Anita.
I’m Glen.
One size fits all, apparently.
HEATHER MITCHELL: Love Me was just a gift, partly because I got to work with Hugo, who I love.
HUGO WEAVING, ACTOR AND FRIEND: Because of our shared experience going over for so many years, we were able to bring all of those things that we had as friends into that falling in love experience and it was really delightful.
(Love Me, 2021)
Heather: I’m going to take a dip...come in, oh, it’s fantastic.
and funny as well, because we had these sex scenes. And so that was hilarious in a good way, you know....
(Love Me, 2021)
Guard: Excuse me, sir
HEATHER MITCHELL: I love acting more than ever now. I love it more than ever. It's given me so much in my life.
(Love Me, 2021)
Hugo: This isn’t my wife.
Heather: I’m his mistress.
HEATHER MITCHELL: Getting old is fantastic. Everything gets kind of more rarefied and exciting and tangible and I don't know, just more possible.
(Love Me, 2021)
Hugo: Keep the seniors happy.
At 64, acclaimed actor Heather Mitchell is enjoying some of the biggest roles of her career.
She recently reunited with friend and long-time collaborator Hugo Weaving in the successful TV series Love Me.
Mitchell's performance as the late US Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in the play RBG: Of Many, One was a sell out and won her standing ovations.
But behind the scenes, as Australian Story found out, Heather's life has taken many dramatic twists and turns.
Related links
Stream Taking the Lead on ABC iview and YouTube
ABC news feature article | How Heather Mitchell survived a 'testosterone, cocaine and alcohol-fuelled' workplace