Award-winning Kiwi actress Sara Wiseman, 53, has starred in Under the Vines and One Lane Bridge. Beyond our shores, she has won lead roles in A Place to Call Home, High Country and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Sara also finds time to teach at Auckland’s The Actors Program, the drama school she co-founded.
I had to be creative with my play as a kid as I’m a fair bit younger than my brother and sister, so I’d mostly be free-ranging around our quarter-acre section in [Auckland’s] Howick.
We had lots of trees, which I loved to climb. I also loved climbing into shelves and cupboards, and out windows. Sometimes I’d do laps out my bedroom window around the house and in through another window. I even jumped off the roof with an umbrella once. I landed more heavily than I expected.
I was pretty ambitious at primary school.
I joined all the groups, from choir to instrumental – proud to represent the woodblock – gymnastics, dance and athletics. I was second at padder tennis, but the really big thing was getting there early to play elastics. All play and lunchtime, we’d jump until the bell rang.
Our school plays had crazy titles like Space Age Cinderella.
I’d try out for lead roles, then get cast as the mute servant who just walked on, got given an order, bowed and walked off. That was the beginning of the push/pull of acting, but not getting the roles meant I focused on other things instead.
I was above average in height.
When puberty came early, that led to teasing from boys and I was very self-conscious. Adults would also comment. I was about 11 or 12 when one of my parents’ mates made an offhand comment about me being ‘a big girl’ for my age. Looking back, I was completely normal, but I thought they meant I must be ginormous or that something was wrong with me. That really affected my self-esteem and body image.
My brother went to Outward Bound when I was 13.
There was such a transformation in him when he returned, I knew I had to do it too. When I was 18, I did the Classic Course, which was 24 days and it totally changed me. I went back at 26, after drama school and Jackson’s Wharf, when I needed a reboot. Then at 32, I upped the ante and went in winter. They still run and swim every morning! I might be the only person to have done that course three times.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I left school, but I was good at art and tech drawing, so I started an architecture degree.
A month in, I knew it wasn’t for me, so the next year, while teaching aerobics, I studied Sport and Recreation Management. That didn’t fit either, so I went on my OE, aged 19, and worked and skied in Colorado, and taught swimming at an LA summer camp. When I came home for my sister’s wedding, unsure what to do next, I went to a clairvoyant. All I remember from our conversation is that she could see me in film and on stage at a casino. It was pretty vague, but that was the nudge I needed to apply to film school in Christchurch.
I was 20 when the film course led to an internship on Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures.
I did a bit of everything… art department, runner, production, costume. One day, I was on traffic control, standing in the bush, stopping walkers on the forest path while they filmed the climactic murder scene, with the brick in the stocking. Just Sarah Peirse, Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey were on set, and I could hear them through the trees, but I couldn’t see them. When they called wrap, I walked up the trail and saw Peter Jackson with his arms around both girls. He was holding them as they sobbed, releasing it all. It was profound to witness and I ached for that kind of experience.
It’s an extraordinary feeling to want something so much, but not believe you have the ability to do it.
It took me a good couple of years to build my courage and start taking lessons. Thanks to encouragement from [theatre director] Raymond Hawthorne, I applied for Unitec’s School of Performing and Screen Arts degree, and I made lifelong friends on that three-year course.
We were just coming out of Covid when I was asked to audition for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
The casting brief said don’t be too ape-y, but still use gestures and some sort of ape voice. I started to play around with this one-page scene, but I felt so self-conscious that I told my agent I couldn’t do it. Then I caught up with a dear friend who said she was auditioning and I said I’d decided not to. She was perplexed, and told me they weren’t seeing that many people and I realised I was scared of looking foolish. The next day, I asked my agent if it was too late to put down a tape.
I did the audition in about 20 minutes, and just gave myself permission to fully lean in and be an ape.
But I never expected to hear anything, then I got the call that I was their pick for Dar, the mother of the lead ape. It’s a really big Disney franchise, so it was one of those pinch-me dream gigs.
I love animals, but because I live in apartments in Auckland and Sydney, and I travel a lot for work, I can’t have any.
I’ve done some fostering for the SPCA, which is quite practical in an apartment. Cats are the most wonderful time wasters and they’re great for bringing you into the present moment, although saying good- bye to my fosters is always emotional.
I never expected to be divorced, but that’s how it turned out and I’ve had to re-learn how to make my way in the world.
No longer looking through a shared vision of that union, but looking out at the world through my own eyes… who I am now, as just me, after half a life shared with another. This new chapter has revealed to me that grief is not linear. But flying solo has also gifted me many insights that I could only ever have arrived at by going through this.
I am looking forward to sharing my life again, but dating is so different in midlife as compared to the last time when I was dating in my mid-twenties.
You are meeting people with fully formed lives, routines, careers, families and ways of being. I’ve met some really lovely people along the way, but for whatever reason, there hasn’t been a mutual right fit. One valuable piece of advice my counsellor gave me is to see people for who they are, not how you want them to be. Like Maya Angelou says, ‘When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.’
A year into being single, I wanted to fill the gap as quickly as possible…
to rush into my next relationship, to convince myself and my mates I was back on track or maybe because I’d not yet learned to feel comfortable on my own? And I love hanging out with friends, and all my life I’ve been incredibly social, but these past couple of years, I’ve had this precious time to get to know me – just me– at this stage in my life. I now cherish my own company because chosen solitude is precious. I also know there’s no rush, that good things take time.”
Sara Wiseman stars in Crackhead, currently streaming on ThreeNow.
Sara also stars in Macbeth by William Shakespeare, from July 28 to August 22, at the ASB Waterfront Theatre. Visit atc.co.nz for tickets.
