Robyn Malcom: I refuse to be told what’s attractive

She is the award-winning actress who made it cool to be a “Westie”. Robyn Malcolm undeniably brought a certain feistiness and swagger to the role of Cheryl West in the hit Kiwi TV series Outrageous Fortune.

Some of Cheryl’s traits are part of Robyn’s personality, so self-confidence is not something you’d expect Robyn to have struggled with. But then we don’t often glimpse insecurities behind a public façade. And the young Robyn certainly faced some demons.

Robyn is the eldest and, as she laughingly says, “most immature” of the four Malcolm sisters. There are 10 years between Robyn and her youngest sister Jen, a lawyer. In between come Jo, a journalist, and Suze, a clinical psychologist. Theirs is a close-knit family of high achievers.

Robyn remembers having a “golden” childhood. Although she was born in Christchurch, the family soon moved to Motueka and she remembers running barefoot through fields of hops.

“I don’t ever remember wearing shoes.” The family would go on “magical mystery tours” at the weekends, into the bush, up rivers and out to the beach.

This love of nature and the outdoors, instilled in her from a very early age, has led to her vocal support of the Green Party, which has often seen her the victim of online trolls and anonymous threats. But those convictions remain deeply held.

She vividly remembers one childhood family excursion to Kaiteriteri Beach. The Malcolms were there with a big group of friends and Robyn was playing in the sand, so happily engrossed that her parents forgot about her when it came time to go home.

“They hopped in the car and left me there,” she laughs. “I was so secure, perfectly happy pottering about in the sand. I was still there when they came back.”

Her dad, Peter, was a teacher, her mother, Anne, a dietitian, although she stayed at home to raise her daughters while they were little. Anne was heavily involved in the community.

“She was on every board that was going – kindy, Asthma, The Heart Foundation. Eventually she became a guidance counsellor.”

(Anne was working on the fifth floor of the CTV building in Christchurch when it collapsed during the February 2011 earthquake. She was one of the few to survive, spending months in recovery.)

When Robyn was young, the family moved to Ashburton, where Peter took a job as associate principal of Ashburton College. Her own college days were not happy ones.

“I was miserable through secondary school. There was a lot of self-hatred. I considered myself very unattractive and fat. I suppose I had an eating disorder. I’d wake at 2am and binge. I’d sit there and eat and cry. I used food for comfort. I grew up at a time when no one talked about their feelings. I was more sensitive than I let on.”

Outwardly, she was “a shocking teen, rebellious, outspoken, kooky”.

“I was an angry young hothead. Dad would say to me, ‘Anger is a negative, destructive emotion. Find another way to express yourself.’ Life had real challenges for me as a young woman; I was very thin-skinned emotionally. As you grow, though, you develop the armour you need.”

Dark days at college were leavened by an obsession with Shakespeare – “I loved the passion of the language. There was something big, impolite and monstrously wonderful about it” – and with music. She sang, played in a quartet, debated and painted. Those passions have stayed with her. The walls of her villa in Auckland’s Kingsland are filled with bold contemporary art.

Robyn’s turning point as a teen happened as she marched against the 1981 Springbok tour in Ashburton.

“A clod of dirt hit me in the head. I thought, ‘I have to get out of here or I’ll die.’ I was in a fury with the world. I told my parents, ‘I’m leaving.’ They said, ‘Yes, that’s a good idea.'”

Looking back, she tells me wryly, “They’d probably had enough of my stroppy behaviour.”

It turned out to be a good decision.

“I hope I trust my own kids enough at 17 to let them go.”

She was duly sent off to complete her 7th form year in Wellington, staying with her paternal grandmother, Winifred. In her grandmother she found a kindred spirit.

“She was awesome. Everyone wore red at her funeral.”

In the capital Robyn found the freedom, with Winifred’s encouragement, to be herself.

“I shaved my head, then dyed my hair black. I wore op-shop clothes, ripped tights and torn lycra.”

She found work for a while as an insurance clerk to fund her university studies and began a double major in literature and music.

Then she went to see a production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, starring Kiwi actors Stuart Devenie and Peter Elliott, and thought, “I want to do that.”

She applied for what was then the New Zealand Drama School, now Toi Whakaari, and was devastated to be turned down. The next year she applied again and was accepted.

Two months before she graduated from Drama School, Colin McColl, the legendary director of Wellington’s Downstage Theatre, offered her three plays. That was the beginning of three years of non-stop work at Downstage.

“I really got to grips with the business.”

Robyn’s early career focused on theatre.

“I never considered myself a screen actress. I thought I was too fat, too big, too OTT, too noisy, unkempt and uncouth.”

The whole eating disorder thing came to a head when she was 22.

“I’d been starving myself miserable, when I came across a book called The Dieter’s Dilemma. It maintains that dieting can’t reduce weight permanently and that for some people moderate fatness is both comfortable and inevitable. The book coincided with a feeling within me. I’d become bored with myself. I’m never going back there [to obsessing about weight] ever. I refuse to be told what’s attractive. I’m going to be dead a really long time, why not eat great food?”

It wasn’t long before the small screen beckoned and she scored a part as Nurse Ellen Crozier on the Kiwi soap hit Shortland Street in 1994. She played Nurse Crozier for six years before leaving. Further roles followed.

Perhaps her most challenging, though, was becoming a mother. Robyn came to motherhood relatively late in life.

She had suffered two miscarriages. “It was the hardest thing in the world, huge grief.” And then at the age of 39 her son Charlie came along.

“I loved everything about it. My body was the biggest it’d been in years and I felt fabulous because it was doing what it was meant to do – give birth and feed a baby. One of the great casualties of early feminism was the mother. But I feel that we’re about to experience, over the next 20 years, the next huge wave of feminism. I have a sense that motherhood is making a comeback.

“When Charlie was born, I felt overwhelming love but also fear and isolation. I was highly emotional and fearful that I’d be doing the wrong thing. I also remember thinking, ‘I’m never going to work again.'”

Then, when Charlie was nearly one, a call came from South Pacific Pictures. They were making a show called Outrageous Fortune; would she consider the part of Cheryl?

There was an immediate connection to the character. “I tapped into angry Robyn; I knew (since becoming a mother) I would die for someone and I would kill for someone.”

The part was hers.

Another baby was on the way during the second season. “The entire crew drank ginger tea with me in sympathy,” she laughs.

She was breastfeeding her youngest son, Pete, while she was making Outrageous. She’d feed him while she was sitting in make-up, then he’d be handed around the set and would sleep in the dressing room. Robyn was employing two nannies at the time. She made that decision very early on.

“I wanted to have the boys with me, so I decided two-thirds of my income would have to go on childcare. We have been blessed with wonderful nannies.” The boys tend not to travel with Robyn when she’s working overseas. “I’d rather complicate my life and keep theirs simple,” she explains.

“I’ll fly home to them. I accept I have to spend a lot on travel and nannies. My life is utterly chaotic. I keep waking up in the morning expecting my children to be insane.”

They’re not, of course, they sound like delightful, well balanced kids. Charlie is 13, Pete 11.

Robyn had a short-lived relationship with the boys’ father. He is still part of their lives. She is now happily in the “most wonderful long-distance relationship”.

It’s tricky living in different countries but it’s a decision they’ve both made for the good of their families. “We made a decision to always put the kids front and centre. So we live where our kids are. We see each other regularly and it works.”

Robyn turned 52 earlier this year. “I’ve been thinking about getting older. My simple notion is that it works out okay in the end. Mistakes happen. Things that you thought might be major disasters are just part of life. I have more faith now, I’m less white-knuckled, less intense.

“Menopause teaches you a lot. I’m crazy, emotional, losing sleep, I’ve lost my memory, I’m walking into walls.”

She is intentionally open about her menopause experience, saying, “I’ll be f***ed if I’m not going to talk about it. Where did this spare tyre come from? We’re all on the same journey, there’s no point in being overly self-judgemental.”

Robyn’s career is now busier than ever. She’s currently shooting a series about a forensic pathologist in Brisbane, called Harrow, and has just finished a movie, Hostiles, with Hollywood heart-throb, Christian Bale.

It’s a western about a cavalry officer who escorts a dying Cheyenne chief home to tribal lands, and was released in the US just before Christmas.

She’s also working on projects with two separate New Zealand writers. One will be made here and one in Australia. Both are stories about older women.

“Women, when they get through the end of their breeding life – we’re really bloody interesting, right now. We’re in the second act, a complete chaotic shambles. There’s something about being in the trenches that gives women a wonderful naughty sense of humour. Why aren’t we telling those stories? They’re much more interesting.”

For would-be actors out there, she has these wise words: “If you have any doubts, don’t do it. If you have no doubts, put your foot down and don’t think twice. If ever someone asks you to do something that feels wrong, say no. That’s the most powerful word as an actor. ‘No.’ You can’t be cautious about it. You will be on the most bizarre journey and you have to be okay with that. The rewards are great but they’re not financial.

“We need our storytellers. We need to be able to look into a story and see we’re okay, see hope. It’s a privilege to be able to do that. I love to get into the trenches with life.”