In just over a month’s time, Rebecca Gibney will be turning 60 and the esteemed actor has no plans to slow down. In fact, it’s the opposite.
She has most of 2025 already booked up, including returning to live theatre for the first time in 20 years. Not bad for a woman who, for the first half of her successful career, felt like she needed to have an alternative job ready to go on a moment’s notice.
“I kept thinking, ‘I’ll go back to my back-up plan, whatever that is, because people are going to find out I’m faking it,’” she reveals. “I felt convinced that people would work out that I had no idea what I was doing.”
Rebecca was reminded of this recently, when she found herself asking her son Zac, 20, if he had a plan B in place. Zac has been studying in Wellington’s drama school Toi Whakaari for the past three years and is about to graduate. “I kept saying to him, ‘Have you got a back-up plan?’ And he told me, ‘Mum, I don’t need a back-up plan!’” she says, laughing.
Rebecca says it took her almost a decade of acting before she eventually felt comfortable enough to think, “If I work really hard at this, I might be able to turn it into a career.”
The talent and work ethic that has made her a household name saw her awarded the highest possible prize for acting in Australia this year. After moving from her native New Zealand to Aussie in 1984, and then back again in 2017, Rebecca has worked steadily for almost 40 years. In August, she was given the Hall of Fame Logie, a lifetime achievement award honouring her work.
Rebecca became one of only four women to be inducted to the Logies Hall of Fame in its 40-year history.
It was a “humbling and overwhelming” event, she says, with her longtime friends and colleagues presenting the award, alongside Zac.
Watching her clearly adoring son speak about his mother, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house – including Rebecca. She delivered a typically warm, kind and authentic acceptance speech.
“If someone had told 16-year-old me, who suffered crippling anxiety and severe body dysmorphia, that one day I would be standing on this stage with this award, she wouldn’t have believed it,” was her opening line.
“It’s true,” Rebecca says of the anxious teenage girl she was back then. “My mum took me to see a psychic when I was about 15. The psychic said to me, ‘I see you crowned with success internationally…’ And I just sat there looking at her. I was thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t even get out of the car and walk into the dairy to get a bottle of milk. I’m so anxious!’”
The idea that there would be any kind of public-facing career in her future was “a joke”, Rebecca says. But once she learned how to apply make-up, she recalls, it was like being able to wear a mask. Suddenly, she was able to put on a different persona.
It’s this level of honesty that has made Rebecca such a beloved public figure as well. She wears her vulnerability proudly – whether it’s her make-up-free selfies she shares on Instagram or the candid gym videos she released after discussing some recent weight gain and joking she’s “harder to kidnap” now.
“I’m like everybody else. I still wake up in the morning and think, ‘God, where did that extra roll come from?’ and, ‘What about those lines?’” she says. “I’ve had Botox in the past and I’ve tried to make the best of it. But as I near 60, I want to be a positive role model for ageing.”
Rebecca and her husband of 23 years, Richard Bell, will be heading off to London for her big birthday, catching up with friends and former colleagues, including her Under the Vines co-star Charles Edwards, and taking in the festive atmosphere, before returning home to Marlborough. It’s their first Christmas in the area, since shifting from Dunedin earlier this year.
She describes their new house as “paradise”. It has a river running next to the property and vegetable gardens. Rebecca’s paradise is all tucked away in a remote spot between Blenheim and Nelson.
Rebecca is also aware that she has to make the most of her downtime when she can. From early next year, she has back-to-back projects, including her return to the stage at the Sydney Theatre Company, another potential crime show, plus the possible return of her iconic character in Halifax, and the “wait to see” if the popular series Under the Vines will be returning for another season.
Rebecca is aware this is not how she thought the second half of her career would go. It’s one of the reasons she started working behind the scenes in producing roles. She wanted to future-proof her career back when it was a different world for post-40 roles for women in acting.
“I’m turning 60 and then it never rains but it pours,” she laughs at all of the projects she has on the go. She’s about to return to our screens for two roles in the meantime – as the cold, brittle matriarch in the drama A Remarkable Place to Die, where she plays the mother of the lead character, a detective who returns to the picturesque but dangerous small town to investigate a series of deaths.
It’s a “cosy crime” series set in a small town with plenty of mysteries, Rebecca explains. It follows in the successful footsteps of local drama The Brokenwood Mysteries. She filmed it at the same time as the upcoming musical comedy series Happiness. The musical is about a community group performing a show in Tauranga – Rebecca plays the president of the theatre company. She campaigned hard for the role, she says. In her bid to get it, she messaged the creators and auditioned.
She describes Happiness as being unlike anything ever made in New Zealand before – creative, funny and, yes, a musical – meaning singing and choreography lessons. “It’s one of those shows that’s so joyous that when you finish it, you’ve got a giant smile on your face,” she tells.
Finding joy where you can has always been a big part of Rebecca’s work and home life. As a naturally anxious person, Rebecca recalls the life-changing advice given to her in her thirties by the therapist she saw following a nervous breakdown.
“She recognised that I was someone who was a people pleaser, always trying to fix everything. She said to me, ‘Who died and made you God? It’s not your responsibility to fix everybody’s problems; your responsibility is to look after yourself.’”
It’s advice Rebecca turns to both in picking her projects but also knowing when to retreat for a bit and concentrate more on what’s in front of her. That’s always going to be family – including her beloved mum Shirley.
Rebecca credits Shirley for her positive attitude and unfailing kindness, despite a difficult childhood of sexual abuse and living with domestic abuse from Rebecca’s father, when they were growing up.
At 89, Shirley is going through a rough health patch and has been in hospital for weeks. Rebecca sent her a basket of lollies and said to “hand them out to everyone that’s being nice to you”.
“She told me, ‘Well, there’s too many people being nice to me,” Rebecca laughs. Between the hospital staff and Rebecca’s own Instagram community, who are constantly sending well wishes to Shirley, there’s a lot of love to go around.
“I do really believe in the power of collective energy. Knowing that so many people love and admire her, I can’t thank people enough for doing that.”
Considering the love that also surrounds Rebecca, it’s very clearly a family trait.
A Remarkable Place to Die screens 8.30pm Sundays on TVNZ 1 and streams on TVNZ+.
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