Susie Porter On Endings
When actor Susie Porter can’t sleep at night, she has one solution: she indulges in her love of true crime. “Oh my god, I’m obsessed with murders,” she admits, before adding, “Hopefully I don’t get murdered. But I’m really obsessed with death. We live our life as if we’re not going to die … but knowing that we’re all going to die frees us up in some way. To think about death is to think about life more deeply.”
Her current penchant for departings could be because she, and the rest of Australia, are about to farewell the long-running prison drama, Wentworth, in which Susie plays crime matriarch Marie Winter.
“It’s weird to say goodbye to Marie. [The show] gives us such three-dimensional characters to work with, and equal storylines, so it’s sad to say goodbye. But it’s come full circle and things have to end.”
It makes sense that Susie is unafraid of endings, given her lack of fear about ageing. In fact, she embraces the positives of getting older. “I see a lot of older women who seem to be really happy in their lives. They worry less about things … as you get older, you don’t seem to put up with as much stuff.
“Also, as you get older you become less self-centred, which is always a good thing. You’ll [hopefully] be thinking of others rather than, ‘What’s happening with my career, what’s happening with the future?’
“You [aren’t as much] attached to externals, so it becomes an inside job, and more about having peace of mind and acceptance.”
Not that she’s going to go down that path without fighting – at least, without being fighting fit. “I want to be an 80-year-old who’s running. I do F45 [training] and feel stronger than I ever have. I’d like to be fit and healthy and be able to do lots of things at that age.”
““The greatest villain can live between our ears. Your mind can be very negative. You have to work on it, don’t you?””
Susie’s acting career began after she graduated from NIDA in 1995. Her movie debut was in 1996’s Idiot Box; the next year she landed a part in a big Hollywood feature directed by Bruce Beresford, Paradise Road, alongside heavyweights such as Glenn Close, Frances McDormand and Cate Blanchett. But success wasn’t instant; her next flick, Welcome to Woop Woop (1997), did so badly that she wound up doing odd jobs including ironing shirts, selling perfume and sweeping floors.
Still, she’s worked steadily with almost no breaks, appearing in movies such as Two Hands (1999), The Monkey’s Mask (2000) and more recently Ladies in Black (2018), as well as almost 40 episodes of Wentworth. She says the role of Marie has challenged her on a deep, psychological level.
It reminded her of “the powerlessness, at times, I’ve felt in my life … of being invisible, of not being seen, of being unimportant. It’s like the universe gives you this lesson [because] it’s time to deal with this now. I deal with those things by journaling about it, being with nature, with animals, exercise, meditation. And you realise they’re only thoughts.”
While her life is full – she juggles work, marriage and her passion for animal welfare – her questioning mindset means that the important stuff gets done alone. “Doing work on yourself is really important. The thing to do is examine, unpack and re-look at stuff from your childhood because I reckon we all have it. Carl Jung said something lik, until that unconscious is dealt with, it will play out in our life and we’ll call it fate. So, I’ll really look at it because I don’t want that to be driving me or getting in the way of my relationships with friends, or in my marriage.”
As for her secret to success, “I think the key to all of it is to just be in the moment, to be as present as much as you can and not be bombarded or thrown around my external events. The greatest villain can live between our ears. Your mind can be very negative. You have to work on it, don’t you?”
Wentworth The Final Sentence is screening on FOXTEL.
