AustLit

'Reg Livermore has received three lifetime achievement awards in the last three years – he hopes they aren’t trying to tell him something. Now on the eve of his eightieth birthday, one of Australia’s most acclaimed stage actors looks back on some of the relationships, triumphs and tragedies that have defined both the person and performer he has become.

'Reg revolutionised the Australian theatre industry in a pair of high-heels in the original Rocky Horror Show production; he’s sung with Julie Andrews, watched the curtain call from backstage at the Covent Garden opera, and starred in Wicked and The Producers. But he’s lived a full and fascinating life bigger than any stage. He grew up in conservative 1950s Sydney, when boys who danced or acted were 'not like other boys'. He's had a restaurant – and relationship – with a volatile French chef in rural New South Wales, experienced an epiphany on an Italian mountainside, and felt the unrivalled heartbreak of watching a parent decline.