THE man who made singlets rad, kick-started ballroom into '90s vogue,
risked all to follow a dream and has just lobbed on a throbbing,
purple mean speed machine, is talking fear.
Paul Mercurio ~ actor, dancer, husband, dad of three, risk-taker and self-confessed homebody ~ is back from Woop Woop, the mythical town of Stephan Elliott's The Big Red, just wrapped up on location in Alice Springs.
The mercurial one plays a cameo role as a mute hairdresser in the movie ~ Elliott's long-awaited latest offering after the worldwide smash Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ~ hence the shock of bleached blond locks that spring from the Suzuki bike helmet.
Paul Mercurio, blade runner, bike burner will try his hand at anything. He's a risk-taker and thrives on it. He also sometimes wakes in fright.
He felt fear when he stepped out in 1991 into Strictly Ballroom and catapulted from dancer-choreographer to celluloid hero ~ and the hottest thing since sliced bread.
He's spent the past five years on a roller coaster of fear and fortune. He's in for the long haul as an actor ~ a career he now knows to be one of soaring confidence and low ego blows.
Paul Mercurio, a Perth-born boy who gives thanks to the Salvos for making family Christmases happen as a lad, has changed. Not in the ego department; he's still the down-to-earth bloke he's always been. He can, and does, knock himself.
Mercurio got flak when the US film, Exit to Eden, and the Aussie effort, Back of Beyond, turned out to be duds.
``A film is a team effort,'' he says. ``You deal with all the problems that come on the set. As long as you give it everything and do your best that's all you can do.
``Strictly was terrific. It set me up but it was my first film. My first try.
``In a sense I've had to spend the past five years clawing back.
``I went from there,'' he grins, reaching to the sky, ``right back down to the bottom. And ever since I've been slowly working my way back up.''
Eight feature films, six leads, two short films, three television dramas and television work under his belt and Paul Mercurio is only now feeling like an actor.
He first felt that way, he says, after doing Joseph with Ben Kingsley, the telemovie that won the 1995 Emmy Award for Best Mini-series.
He may be unemployed in the acting sense right now, but he's steeping himself into strictly fun stuff.
Next year he'll try his hand at theatre, workshopping his own play with the Sydney Theatre Company.
It's a work loosely based on himself and classic ballet dancer Stephen Heathcote ~ two Perth boys who left on the Indian Pacific to go to a Melbourne ballet school.
``It's about dancers, coping with loss of youth, stardom, ego. Two close friends whose careers go different ways,'' he said.
``They get back together to choreograph a workshop piece, find out how they've grown apart but eventually find out how they've missed and need each other.
``It's a story of the journey of a friendship, loosely Stephen and myself, but a lot more interesting in theatre.''
But all is tempered by the anchor of family and home ~ his wife, dancer Andrea Toy, daughters Elise, 7, Emily, 4, and Erin, nine months.
Paul Mercurio ~ actor, dancer, husband, dad of three, risk-taker and self-confessed homebody ~ is back from Woop Woop, the mythical town of Stephan Elliott's The Big Red, just wrapped up on location in Alice Springs.
The mercurial one plays a cameo role as a mute hairdresser in the movie ~ Elliott's long-awaited latest offering after the worldwide smash Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ~ hence the shock of bleached blond locks that spring from the Suzuki bike helmet.
Paul Mercurio, blade runner, bike burner will try his hand at anything. He's a risk-taker and thrives on it. He also sometimes wakes in fright.
He felt fear when he stepped out in 1991 into Strictly Ballroom and catapulted from dancer-choreographer to celluloid hero ~ and the hottest thing since sliced bread.
He's spent the past five years on a roller coaster of fear and fortune. He's in for the long haul as an actor ~ a career he now knows to be one of soaring confidence and low ego blows.
Paul Mercurio, a Perth-born boy who gives thanks to the Salvos for making family Christmases happen as a lad, has changed. Not in the ego department; he's still the down-to-earth bloke he's always been. He can, and does, knock himself.
Mercurio got flak when the US film, Exit to Eden, and the Aussie effort, Back of Beyond, turned out to be duds.
``A film is a team effort,'' he says. ``You deal with all the problems that come on the set. As long as you give it everything and do your best that's all you can do.
``Strictly was terrific. It set me up but it was my first film. My first try.
``In a sense I've had to spend the past five years clawing back.
``I went from there,'' he grins, reaching to the sky, ``right back down to the bottom. And ever since I've been slowly working my way back up.''
Eight feature films, six leads, two short films, three television dramas and television work under his belt and Paul Mercurio is only now feeling like an actor.
He first felt that way, he says, after doing Joseph with Ben Kingsley, the telemovie that won the 1995 Emmy Award for Best Mini-series.
He may be unemployed in the acting sense right now, but he's steeping himself into strictly fun stuff.
Next year he'll try his hand at theatre, workshopping his own play with the Sydney Theatre Company.
It's a work loosely based on himself and classic ballet dancer Stephen Heathcote ~ two Perth boys who left on the Indian Pacific to go to a Melbourne ballet school.
``It's about dancers, coping with loss of youth, stardom, ego. Two close friends whose careers go different ways,'' he said.
``They get back together to choreograph a workshop piece, find out how they've grown apart but eventually find out how they've missed and need each other.
``It's a story of the journey of a friendship, loosely Stephen and myself, but a lot more interesting in theatre.''
But all is tempered by the anchor of family and home ~ his wife, dancer Andrea Toy, daughters Elise, 7, Emily, 4, and Erin, nine months.
By Sally MacMillan
Sunday Mail
8 December 1996
