Heather Mitchell recently addressed a Dymocks Literary Luncheon to discuss her memoir EVERYTHING AND NOTHING.

Various aspects of her life were skilfully teased out by the Sydney Morning Herald Entertainment Reporter Garry Maddox.

Born in Shanghai to peripatetic parents who finally put down roots in Camden, she had what she described as an idyllic childhood. Although she did not describe her parents as hippies, they did lead a slightly alternative lifestyle.  She is proud of the fact that her father was a forester  who planted trees along the banks of the dams that supplied water to the Sydney basin.

At primary school she had learning difficulties which today is widely recognised as dyslexia.

To overcome her difficulties young Heather  put up a row of snow domes with the names of important characters in her life whose names were spelled out beneath  the snow domes. Her father  also painted the inside of her cupboard black, so that she could use it as a blackboard to revise  what she has learned that day.

In order to help her with her spelling, she adopted the persona of a teacher who was her own personal tutor.

Her mother was an intellectual who discussed books with other bright people in the Camden area. At the top of a pile of books Heather found a book with both italic and regular font and she was  fascinated by this book. In fact it was a play full of characters that once again sparked her imagination and facilitated her overcoming her dyslexia.

To boost her self confidence she was in her schools’ debating team and appeared in school plays. She loved to discuss the debating topics with her mother.

One of the topics was that ignorance is bliss. Her mother asked her whether if she knew some terrible truth about a person whether she would  expose that person to the dreadful truth. Heather said that she would not. It was then that Heather’s mother resolved that she would never reveal to her that she had  incurable leukaemia.

Heather’s mum lived long enough to see that Heather was undertaking her Higher School Certificate.

In a startling moment of candour, Heather revealed that she was romantically entangled with the boy across the road just prior to her exams whilst at the same time  her mother passed away.

She was devastated by the loss of her mother so a year after she died her compassionate father took her to Hawaii. He had always practiced transcendental meditation. Heather decided to try it and she found herself travelling out her hotel window and over the sea. She found the experience calming and destressing and has practiced it ever since, often before a performance.

In her twenties  she came to Sydney as a country girl who knew no boundaries, fell in to a group of girls that liked to party and as a result found herself in unfortunate circumstances. Prefacing this spiritual side of her life, Heather said, ‘you must think that I am a fruitcake.’

At the age of 29  as a gift from a girlfriend Heather attended  a clairvoyant. The clairvoyant revealed four predictions. She must take the next job she is offered. She will meet a man with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Her guardian angel will be revealed, and she will be surrounded by silver.

That night she got a message on her answering machine that she had a job in Broken Hill.

Despite the fact that there was an airline pilot strike Heather arrived in Broken Hill having hopped on a Neptune military aircraft.

On the set of the Broken Hill movie she met amongst a number of people a man with broad shoulders and narrow hips, the principal cinematographer Martin (Marty) McGrath.

Marty fancied Heather and contrived to meet her at a local restaurant. She found their conversation extremely charming. There was a downpour and as Marty’s  hotel room was nearby, she decided to spend the night with him. Whilst she lay awake Marty said I am going to be your guardian angel. She looked towards the window which silhouetted  his body as a landscape of hills and valleys.  Beyond this silhouette the teeming rain hit the window as a silvery sheet. All the clairvoyant’s predictions came true and Marty and Heather have been together ever since, for over three decades.

Ironically Heather was rejected  for a role as a cancer patient, whilst she  herself was undergoing treatment for breast cancer.  She decided to go public with her diagnosis in order to share her response to the illness . She acknowledged that many women had reactions that suited them. As with her snow domes her persona as a teacher and in her stellar acting career, she treated the  cancer as a character. She  listened to it,  strove to decipher the messages it was sending, and in the end  appeared to be successful with her approach.

Heather is a fierce advocate of the #MeToo movement. When she looked  back on her early acting career, unbeknownst to her at the time, she was a #M eToo victim. Accordingly she is fiercely protective of emerging young actors.

Many in the audience had been wowed by her performance in RBG at the Sydney Theatre Company.

There was a question as to whether she had difficulty in learning her lines. Heather replied that with a script as brilliant  as the one penned by Suzie Miller it was made easier to learn.  Also the rehearsal process helped to reinforce the lines. Backstage she would undertake transcendental meditation and peek through the curtains, zoom in on a woman’s face, and imagine her  backstory.  In addition, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she would ‘talk’ to her mother.

Addressing rumours about the play going to New York, Heather said that she had heard the rumours but doubted that she would travel with the show, when an overseas actress  would probably get the role as was the case with Suzie Miller’s  previous play ‘Prima Facie’.

She was  asked about whether she preferred acting in theatre or  in television and  the movies. Heather replied she loved both.  She  was always excited by the immediacy of live theatre, whilst when you are acting before the camera you can fluff your lines and you are relieved from the stress that hits every actor  before a live performance.

Heather was also quizzed about how her memoir came about. She replied  that the distinguished Sydney Morning Herald journalist Malcolm Knox was  seeking to compile a book of  essays by prominent actors. Heather’s initial contribution was so striking that he urged her to  expand her submission in to  a  memoir which he was sure would make for compelling reading. Naturally he was right.

There is much, much more in her book EVERYTHING AND NOTHING. These highlights were in response to Garry Maddox’s questions. They were  delivered in her lovely, mellifluous  voice, with a candour and honest self awareness,  that it seemed as if she was talking to a trusted friend and taking that friend in to her confidence.

Her warmth and humanity enveloped the audience who prior to her talk admired her, and now adored her.

That empathic willingness to be with her fans  was demonstrated in the subsequent book signing. She patiently posed for selfies, and took the time to chat with her prospective readers who universally told her that the life lessons she related had powerfully struck a chord with them.

I have had the privilege of attending  many Dymocks Literary Luncheon talks. They have all been universally excellent. Perhaps this was the most moving. Despite me being a  male, many of her rites of  passage  were almost exactly the same as  to what I had experienced.

Photos and text by Ben Apfelbaum