Toni Collette - Biography

Name: Toni Collette

Born: 1 November 1972 (Age: 37)

Where: Sydney, Australia

Height: 5'6"

Awards: 1 Oscar, 1 BAFTA and 2 Golden Globe nominations

Hot on the heels of Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett came another Australian thespian sensation, Toni Collette. Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that she does not share the extraordinary good looks of her glamorous peers - the term "jolie-laide" might have been invented for her - she is perhaps the most fascinating of today's top-line actresses. Onscreen she's absolutely magnetic, consistently compelling in a wild variety of roles, her emotional intelligence shining through even in brief supporting roles. She can so very human - funny, warm, decadent, hurt, sympathetic, neurotic - and consequently so very attractive. Unafraid to send herself up, to appear genuinely drab, dumb or even ugly, she is clearly one of us - a proper people's princess.

Toni Collette was born on the 1st of November, 1972, in western Sydney, Australia. Her father, Bob, was a truck driver, while mother Judy worked for a courier service as a customer service rep. The family would be completed by two younger brothers.

When Toni was 6, the Collettes moved out to the suburbs, where she found herself mercilessly teased for being a "westie". But she fell quickly into suburban life. The family kept cats, dogs, birds and rabbits and Toni, hanging with her brothers and very much a tom-boy, would climb trees, ride her bike, play basketball, basically lived an energetic Australian life. Aside from being a tom-boy, she's also admitted to being something of a liar. At one point, when she was very young, her mother told her that, when she (her mother) was 11, she'd had her appendix taken out. How did you know you had appendicitis, asked young Toni? Well, said mum, you know when the doctor pushes in and it doesn't hurt, but when he lets go it REALLY hurts. So, several years pass, Toni is 11, and she doesn't feel like going to school. She remembers this story and tells her mother she has pain. Off to the doctor's they go, he pushes in and Toni says nothing, he lets go and she yelps. She is rushed to ER, and has her appendix removed FOR NO GOOD REASON. Afterwards, the doctor said it was slightly infected. But then he HAD to, really, didn't he?

There was another little lie she would tell, too. Claiming she was having her period, she picked off a scab on her leg and... you get the picture.

The Collettes were not the most communicative of bunches, and Toni had a deep need to express herself. This explains the compulsive lying (or rather the sudden flights of imagination) and is what pushed her towards acting - in fact, she's said that if she had found acting she would definitely "have imploded". At 14, she was cast in a school performance of Godspell, and that was pretty much that, Toni being one of those lucky few who find their vocation early.

At 16, with the support of her parents, Toni decided to leave school and enrol at NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, on a three-year course. She never made it. Ever headstrong and keen to follow her instincts, she left after a mere 18 months to act for real in her feature film debut, Spotswood. This starred Anthony Hopkins as an efficiency expert brought into a moccasin factory to cut costs. Focusing on everyone else's business, he neglects his own home life and must change his attitudes sharpish. Amongst the oddball workers in the factory were the avaricious Kim, played by Russell Crowe. Toni played the sweet but plain Wendy, who loves the straight-up Ben Mendelsohn, who in turn has a crush on the boss's daughter.

Toni had a great time filming, particularly when hanging out with Crowe. "Russell took me out," she told Time Out New York, "got me drunk, gave me pot and wiped up the vomit when I couldn't handle it. He's really sweet". Even now, Collette will re-introduce herself to Crowe at prestigious awards ceremonies by slapping him on his superstar arse. It's unsurprising, because Spotswood was a great experience for a young actress who was barely 18. Better still, she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress by the Australian Film Institute.

Now, aside from nabbing a few minor TV roles, Toni concentrated on theatre. With the Sydney Theatre Company, she played Petra in A Little Night Music and Meg in Away. In 1992, she won a critics' circle award as Best Newcomer for her performance as Sonya in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. There would also be Aristophane's Frogs at the famous Belvoir Street Theatre (directed by Geoffrey Rush), Summer Of The Aliens, and she'd play Cordelia in King Lear.

Toni was poor, but learning fast, supporting herself by delivering pizzas. She did not have to wait long for this to change. In 1992, she went up for the role of Muriel Heslop in PJ Hogan's unruly comedy Muriel's Wedding. Enduring life with a cruel and dominating local politician father in Porpoise Spit, Muriel finds herself cast aside by her friends, so she steals some money and takes off on a exotic holiday, looking for love and marriage. A very special actress was needed, someone who could reveal the terrible torment and turmoil inside the outwardly cheery Muriel, someone who could really enjoy the extravagant highs of Muriel's holiday - including a storming rendition of Abba's Waterloo with Rachel Griffiths.

Toni won the part, working with a dietician and putting on 40 pounds for the role, in just seven weeks. And she was wonderful, winning Best Actress from the Australian Film Institute and, as the film slowly grew into a worldwide success, picking up a Golden Globe nomination. But there would be a price to pay for this. Toni would have to lose far more than the extra 40 pounds to appear in more glamorous roles, as in Velvet Goldmine, and her fluctuating weight seriously distorted her self-image, leading her to suffer from panic attacks and bulimia throughout her early twenties.

International success was beginning to beckon, but Toni remained in Australia for her next two projects, both challenging enough to interest this artistically ambitious young tyro. First came Lilian's Story, about a woman who leaves a mental institution after 40 years, with Toni playing the young Lilian, when she's first beaten down by her controlling and unspeakably un-encouraging father ("You're unstable, Lilian"), then finally sectioned for being "wild". Once more she was honoured by the AFI, this time as Best Supporting Actress.

After this came more nuttiness with Cosi, where a young theatre director tries to put on a performance of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte in a home for the rehabilitation of mental patients - a problem as none of the inmates speak Italian. Toni was here re-acquainted with director Mark Joffe, who'd helmed Spotswood, and Rachel Griffiths, who played the young director's girlfriend. Toni herself played an enthusiastic recovering drug addict. Again, she was tremendous, and also sang once more - performing Crowded House's Don't Dream It's Over over the credits.

Now came the Hollywood debut proper, with a minor role in The Pallbearer. Here geeky David Schwimmer is invited to the funeral of a high school classmate he can barely remember, then seduced by the dead guy's mum (Barbara Hershey). Meanwhile, he falls for his old crush Gwyneth Paltrow, who can barely remember HIM.

The Pallbearer was reasonably amusing, but too much like The Graduate for most people's taste. Toni's next movie, though, was far classier. Teaming up with Paltrow again in Jane Austen's Emma, she played the plain and unsophisticated Harriet Smith who's taken on as a project by Paltrow's compulsively matchmaking Emma Woodhouse. She's set up with Alan Cumming's horribly smarmy Reverend Elton, but the Rev has some romantic notions of his own...

Now came a strange run of movies, as 1997 saw no fewer than four Collette appearances. In Clockwatchers, she played a wallflower of a temp at a credit agency who falls in with bored workers Parker Posey and - continuing the Friends connection - Lisa Kudrow as they try anything to relieve the tedium. Then she departed the US for the UK and home. In The James Gang, she played obsessive cop Julie Armstrong, who's chasing down a family who've come to London looking for dad/husband John Hannah then robbed a jewellery store and taken off for Edinburgh.

After this came Diana And Me, where Toni played a Woolongong woman who shares the name and birthday of Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. Winning a competition, she travels to London with her dullard fiance, but ends up with the paparazzi as they chase Diana around the city. Unfortunately, what might have been a cheerful look at the media, delusional behaviour and the price of fame became an entirely different kettle when the real-life Spencer died in Paris, while engaging in a high-speed chase with photographers.

Toni moved on to The Boys, a really gritty drama where a psycho is released from jail into Sydney's western suburbs, meets up with his equally rough brothers, the three having no real power but rocketing levels of testosterone. Toni played Michelle, the main man's brassy blonde girlfriend who argues with him furiously, raising passions as, drinking and drugging himself, he gets more and more crazy, till there can only be a brutal outcome. Achieving an intensity she had not before reached onscreen, Toni became the AFI's Best Supporting Actress yet again.

Now came intensity of a different kind. In Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine, Toni was required to play Mandy Slade, ex-wife of Brian Slade, a glam rock star who went missing in the Seventies and is now being tracked by journalist and former fan Christian Bale. Mandy, based on Angie Bowie, is an American catwoman on the outskirts of the bisexual and jealous relationship between hubbie Brian/David and Curt Wild/Iggy Pop (here played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan McGregor respectively). Throughout, Haynes' attempted to portray the infinite decadence of the time, and the cast lived it for real, partying hard and harder still. Toni began a real-life relationship with screen husband Rhys Meyers which she later described as hedonistic, drunken and "probably dangerous". The couple would stay together for around a year, with Collette spending much time at Rhys Meyers' home in Cork, Ireland. Indeed, she'd be so enamoured of the Emerald Isle that she'd buy her own place in the Wicklow Mountains.

Oh, and as a treat for trivia-hounds: which movie connects Rhys Meyers with Toni's earlier co-stars, Anthony Hopkins and Alan Cumming? Answer: Titus, without doubt THE best Shakespeare adaptation of recent times, featuring a mindblowingly impressive performance by Harry J. Lennix.

Toni began 1999 in the art-house with Peter Greenaway's 8' Women. Here, after the death of his wife, a middle-aged fellow, along with his son, organises a harem of thoroughly varied women, including one lady with no legs (she's the half of the title). Toni stood out as Griselda, a wannabe nun they save from prison but, despite the presence of Toni and Amanda Plummer, the film was little more than a cold erotic fantasy. Toni appeared with her head shaved - a repeat performance for her.

While visiting India and the Himalayas, in one day that neatly sums up her character, she had had a private audience with the Dalai Lama, then got so drunk on tequila she had her locks razored off. Dead earthy, is Toni. And spiritual too. She's visited India on several occasions, and practises yoga and vegetarianism. And she loves a binge drink or two.

. No worries, Toni's next movie was the surprise mega-hit of 1999. In M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense Toni played Lynn Sear, the desperate mother of Haley Joel Osment's Cole, working several jobs to keep him and worried sick by his belief that he can see dead people. As Osment works out a relationship with Bruce Willis's therapist, Toni provides the movie with an all-important mother's heart. "Look at my face!" she demands as she clutches Osment to her, comforting him but also confronting him, trying to break into his weird little world. She quite rightly won an Oscar nomination, if only because her refusal to shave her armpits caused such outrage in Hollywood.

After The Sixth Sense came a remake of Shaft, with Samuel L. Jackson and Vanessa Williams. Here Toni played Diane Palmieri, a waitress who witnesses a race-murder committed by old buddy Christian Bale but won't tell all she knows. Or so Shaft thinks. He must, naturally, get to her before the bad guys do. Immediately after this, Williams fell pregnant, meaning she could not fulfil her date at the Virginia Theatre on Broadway in The Wild Party. Sam Mendes, who'd earlier wanted Toni for Cabaret, suggested her, and she was hired. Based on the 1926 jazz poem by Joseph Moncure March, The Wild Party (co-starring Mandy Patinkin and Eartha Kitt) saw Toni as Queenie, a platinum-haired vaudeville dancer and raunchy hostess at a fiesta where lives are most definitely changed. There's heavy drinking and coke-snorting, partners are swapped, kids are raped, there's even a murder - as one character says "What's a party without a few casualties?" Toni, who'd of course been a singer and dancer right from her earliest days in theatre, was superb, picking up both a Theatre World award and a Tony nomination. But there was a serious downside to this success. Performing in The Wild Party caused her to forego the lead in Bridget Jones's Diary and, worse, Renee Zellweger's success as Jones saw her offered a part in Chicago that had been earmarked for Collette. Would her musical talents ever be utilized onscreen?

Next it was back to the movies with Hotel Splendide, a bizarre, Anglicized Delicatessen. Then, in Dinner With Friends, she announced she was leaving after 12 years with Greg Kinnear, forcing Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell to re-examine their relationship, too. Then came Changing Lanes, again with Samuel L. Jackson, where Jackson and Ben Affleck play two very different characters in New York who, after being inconvenienced by a minor accident, begin to exact small revenges on each other that grow steadily more grave.

Then came another big hit with About A Boy. Here Hugh Grant played a playboy in his late thirties, who's never had a job and never committed to anything. With his friends all married, he decides to pretend to be a single parent so he can meet single mothers - the safest prey of all, he believes. But he becomes attached to one troubled youngster, Marcus, the son of suicidal hippy Fiona (played by Collette). The film was Grant's best work in years, but he was certainly helped by Toni who, as ever, brought serious emotional depth to proceedings, preventing him from simply sounding flip.

After filming ended, Toni returned to Australia and found love. One afternoon, she was invited by a friend to attend a launch party for an EP by Sydney rock band Gelbison. She had intended to stay for ten minutes, but left at 2 in the morning, taking the band's drummer, Dave Galafassi, five years her junior, with her. Seemingly an ideal match, the couple would quickly bond, marrying in a Buddhist ceremony in 2003.

Now Toni moved on to The Hours, about Virginia Woolf and two lives that were touched by her writing. Here, as Kitty, a woman whose life is wrecked by childlessness, she formed part of an immensely strong female cast, alongside Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Eileen Atkins, Claire Danes and Miranda Richardson. Then came Japanese Story where she played a geologist named Sandy, out in the Australian wilderness with a Japanese businessman, checking out a mineral mine. She dislikes him, particularly when he gets them into danger and is too proud to call for help. But they draw closer and sleep together, causing real difficulties when he is accidentally killed and she must make sense of their brief encounter while facing up to the police, the coroner and his widow. It was a deep movie and a big Australian hit.

And then - happily, as she was suffering emotional exhaustion after the unremitting heaviness of her roles - came Dirty Deeds, a crime comedy set in Sixties' Sydney, where Aussie gangsters are making so much money from US troops on leave from Vietnam that they attract the attention of the American Mob. Bryan Brown co-starred, along with Sam Neill. She followed this with more fun in Connie And Carla, written by and starring Nia Vardalos, then riding high after My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Here Vardalos and Collette played childhood buddies who've always sung together but have climbed no higher than a spot performing in an airport lounge. Then, in a wacky twist on Some Like It Hot, they witness a mob murder and flee to Los Angeles where they hide out by pretending to be female impersonators in a drag bar. Naturally, their act is at last a hit and good-looking boys like David Duchovny come flocking. Their cover must surely soon be blown.

Next came the ensemble piece The Last Shot, based on a true story, where Matthew Broderick played a director-screenwriter who thinks he's found a financier in Alec Baldwin, whose only stipulation is that the production takes place in Providence, Rhode Island. Turns out Baldwin's an undercover FBI agent who's planning to reveal a connection between the unions and the Mob. Along with Calista Flockhart, Toni would play an actress working on Broderick's movie. But she'd soon be back in the glare of the limelight with In Her Shoes, Curtis Hanson's adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's hit novel. Here Cameron Diaz played the beautiful screw-up Maggie who, in an attempt to escape her ongoing problems with employment and men, goes to stay with her steadier sister Rose (Collette). Rose does not have Maggie's physical advantages and is lonely, but she is an up-and-coming lawyer. Sparks, of course, fly.

. Having left Gelbison to fully enjoy life with his new wife, Dave Galafassi had spent 2004 helping her build a home studio. Encouraging her to resurrect the songs she'd written throughout her film career and to pen new ones, in early 2005 he'd got a band together (including Gelbison bassist Pete Farley) and they recorded Collette's debut album, Beautiful Awkward Pictures, credited to Toni Collette and The Finish. Collette herself was keen to follow this path, having harboured dreams of a musical career from an early age. She was clearly no slouch, having been Grammy-nominated for the cast recording of The Wild Party, but this new career would demand time away from film work. Late 2006 would thus be devoted to a short tour of Australia.

Before this, Collette had been extremely busy in her screen career. After In Her Shoes came Armistead Maupin's The Night Listener where Robin Williams, host of a late night radio show, forms a telephone friendship with a young kid who claims to've been horribly abused by his parents, Collette playing the foster mother who reports on the AIDS-afflicted boy's deterioration. Eventually Williams begins to suspect that the horror being described may be fake, some bleak, fetishistic fantasy, and seeks out Collette and the boy to discover the truth. Far more cheery would be Little Miss Sunshine where a nutty family, including an obsessively bullshitting dad, a junkie granddad and a deliberately mute, Nietzshe-fixated son, drive from New Mexico to California to take young sis to a beauty pageant. Collette, as the beaten-down but still loving mother, would do her understated best to hold it all together, and audiences would lap it up. After making a splash at Sundance, the film would benefit from tremendous word of mouth support and wind up taking $53 million on an $8 million budget.

Collette's next release of 2006 would be Like Minds. Here rich schoolkid Eddie Redmayne has blown his best friend away with a shotgun, Collette being the forensic psychologist brought in to see if he's fit to face charges.

To her gradually increasing dismay, as she delves into the boys' involvement in secret societies and dangerous mind games she wonders if this isn't some horrible case of possession. More controversial (as it came so soon after the real-life events) would be The Aftermath, a TV special attempting to explore the human aspects of the Asian tsunami of 2004 - how we deal with nature, with disaster, with each other. Also featuring Tim Roth and Sophie Okonedo, the film would see Collette as a Christian missionary in Thailand, running an education programme for fishing village kids and facing the destruction of 11 years' work.

. With her music now taking much of her time, Collette would now deliberately choose briefer roles. 2007 would see her in The Dead Girl, a 5-story piece covering different people's reaction to a murder, featuring Brittany Murphy, Giovanni Ribisi and Mary Steenburgen. Then would come another Australian feature - Hey, Hey It's Esther Blueburger - a comedy where a 13-year-old Jewish girl, unhappy with her privileged lot, sneaks into a local school and reinvents herself, Collette playing her long-suffering mother. And then there'd be Evening, a drama with a scorching female cast including Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep (again), Glenn Close and Natasha Richardson. Here Redgrave would play a dying woman looking back on a weekend where she found and lost her one true love amidst terrible tragedy. Collette and Richardson would play her daughters, both discovering their mother's real nature and attempting to cope with her imminent death.

It's to be expected that Toni Collette will continue to mix Hollywood blockbusters with meaningful Australian flicks, having made it clear that she intends to support her home industry and encourage the wannabe actors of her nation. She has a production company (formed with a friend), named Figurehead Films and has several projects on the go. She'll also certainly push forward in her musical career, partly because this was such an early ambition, and partly because it will keep her that much closer to her husband. It really is looking good.

Dominc Wills