july-2010

Otto was accepted in to medicin e an d excell ed at ball et ,
but ul tim at el y decided to pur sue her love of actin g
a relationship and misses out on having children. Even
though the fi lm is set on an isolated Tasmanian island in
1928, it’s a very modern syndrome.”
Meredith’s unlikely love interest is a returned soldier
suffering from shell-shock, played by the handsome
Hungarian/New Zealand actor Marton Csokas, who starred
in Romulus, My Father. Though the story is set in Tasmania,
fi lming took place on the southern Victorian coast.
“I loved going on location. Even though we were working
long, six-day weeks, you just throw yourself into the
project. I see dad a lot anyway, but of course it was lovely
to have him on set. We were in Portland last October and
hit a heat wave. But we were desperate for overcast days,
because the plot revolves around bad weather. So we’d
be hoping for rain and clouds, and the locals would be so
excited it was fi ne weather for us.”
Otto married Australian actor Peter O’Brien in 2003
in Sydney and soon after, starred in a Logie-winning role
opposite him in the Australian TV mini-series Through My
Eyes: The Lindy Chamberlain Story. O’Brien, together with
their daughter Darcey, were frequent visitors to the set.
28 JULY 2010
“My husband and fi ve-year-old daughter came back
and forth from Sydney, so Sunday was family day. I think
Darcey’s so used to seeing me dressed up, she doesn’t
think about it. When I was a kid I loved Ginger Rogers and
Fred Astaire — all those 1930s fi lms. I loved all the singing
and dancing. There’s a certain naïveté about those fi lms,
and as a kid it seemed like a beautiful world.”
Otto moved around in her early years, which may be why
she’s so comfortable fi lming on location. She was brought
up in Brisbane until she was seven, then lived briefl y in
Hong Kong with her mother, Lindsay, also an actress.
When her parents separated, she settled in Newcastle
with her mother, and visited her actor father in Sydney on
weekends and holidays, and put on plays with friends.
Otto was accepted into medicine and excelled in ballet,
but ultimately decided to pursue her love of acting. “When
we were at NIDA we used to leave these notes on the
noticeboards for each other saying, ‘Steven Spielberg
called’. So when I did get a call from him saying he wanted
me to be in War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, I couldn’t
believe it!”
Otto as her
character Meredith,
in a still from her
new Australian movie
South Solitary
Photo: Matt Nettheim