AustLit

'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)