‘I'm glad I'm starting again': Eryn Jean Norvill on finding herself at 40

Sydney Morning Herald

4 days ago

This story is part of the July 27 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories.
Eryn Jean Norvill is no stranger to taking a stand. Throughout her stage career, she has advocated for actors' rights, especially women, and approached her roles with a depth that has earned her critical acclaim. Now, as she takes on her first major TV project, she's even advocating for a dead woman, albeit a fictional one.
'Playing a female victim is something I had a lot of queries about,' Norvill, 40, says of her role in The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer, the third season of thecrime drama series. 'I had all the questions. Is it nuanced? Is it smart? Is it saying the things we want it to say about victimhood in the world right now?'
In The Twelve, Norvill plays Amanda Taylor, an English teacher turned wannabe crime author who is murdered while researching a book about the alleged homicide of two young women in 1968. The Sydney-born actor was determined to get the part right, which included asking tough questions of director Madeleine Gottlieb and writer Sarah L. Walker.
'Madeleine and Sarah had all the answers for me, and were open to me having big opinions on what I needed the role to be in order to play a woman who is killed,' says Norvill. 'Playing Amanda gave me the opportunity to activate her agency every step of the way. She is an incredibly strong woman, but learning that a strong woman can be a victim as well is very confronting.'
Another drawcard for Norvill is her co-stars, who include Danielle Cormack and series lead Sam Neill. Norvill says Neill was great company on the four-month shoot in Perth, the pair debriefing over burger lunches and beach walks. 'I was grateful to have Sam knock on my door and ask me to get a bite to eat and check in while filming,' she says. 'He is a very generous person. It was a real highlight to hang with him and hear about his life.'
Switching mediums in midlife is an emerging theme for actors; Neill, for example, got his start in film. Norvill says she is relishing her break from the stage – 'I have loved coming into a new medium mid-career' – while acknowledging that it will inevitably call her back at some point. Before The Twelve, Norvill had only had a few small TV parts, including in Home and Away (2010), Preppers (2021) and It's Fine, I'm Fine (2022).
The switch to television is proving therapeutic for Norvill, whose theatre career was at times consumed as much by what happened off stage as on it. In 2017, she reluctantly became a household name when she made a private complaint about actor Geoffrey Rush to the Sydney Theatre Company, alleging he behaved inappropriately towards her during a 2015 production of King Lear. Details of the complaint, which Rush denied, leaked to Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper. He sued the paper for defamation and was awarded $2.87 million in damages (Norvill was subpoenaed to give evidence at the trial).
It's an episode she doesn't wish to relive, or discuss. However, it spurred her to join with her friend Sophie Ross to launch the not-for-profit organisation Safe Theatres Australia with the aim of highlighting sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying in the workplace, and making theatre and the arts a safe place.
Norvill says the organisation 'really activated my politics and made me aware of social activism and how that has always been a big part of my life. I got that side from both of my parents, and I was really proud of that achievement. It felt impossible to do, but it was successful.'
'Being in London is allowing me to be curious about what sort of person I am and what is meaningful to me again.'
Eryn Jean Norvill, actor
Norvill has since stepped back from the day-to-day running of Safe Theatres Australia 'because I felt I needed some space from that kind of work to do some personal healing and processing'.
Part of that stepping back – and moving on – has been a temporary shift to London, where she has been working through a process of finding out who she is again, making new friends and leaning into the unknown. 'I know I won't be here forever,' she says of the UK. 'Australia makes incredible art – we have a courage I don't recognise in many other places. But I didn't expect to be starting again at my age, essentially asking myself why, what for, and is it meaningful.
'I wish I was told more about this as a kid – that in this business there are lots of starts and ends, and it will never stop throughout your life.'
Norvill is Zooming from the London flat she shares with Australian musician Georgia Mooney (from Sydney outfit All Our Exes Live in Texas), the pair on a similar journey of seeing what might come their way. She is also dog-sitting, spinning her camera to show me a curled-up ball of fur by her side. 'We have a piano in the home and Georgia plays it a lot,' Norvill adds. 'And we go to a lot of gigs together.'
Born in Sydney, Norvill recalls her teen years in Malabar, a seaside suburb in Sydney's south-east, including snorkelling at nearby Long Bay, where the MV Malabar was shipwrecked in 1931. 'I'd find pieces of crockery that belonged to the ship all the time,' she says.
Unlike the gentrified suburb it is today, the Malabar of Norvill's childhood had a grittiness she holds dear. 'There's a sewage works, a rifle range, the beach, a golf course, cliffs and Long Bay Jail. The inmates would run a nursery every year, and we'd buy trees and play soccer with them.'
Her mother, Anita, taught child studies at TAFE, while her dad, Greg, was a marathon runner and engineer who also turned his hand to home renovation. She has an older brother, Ben, with both siblings equally drawn to the arts. 'Ben plays the five-string bass,' says Norvill. 'He is annoyingly talented and loves prog-rock.'
Despite growing up in Sydney, Norvill graduated from Melbourne's Victorian College of the Arts and built her name starring in productions for both the Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company, including The Picture of Dorian Gray (before Sarah Snook took over the role), Three Sisters, All My Sons, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.
Prior to the defamation saga, Norvill had co-written, co-directed and starred in Niche with her best friend Emily Tomlins, the sci-fi thriller garnering rave reviews for their company, Elbow Room. 'I am lucky to have my long-time collaborator and friend Emily with me in life,' Norvill says. 'We have always made things together, and Niche is something we spent five years creating. It was incredibly vulnerable and hard; a hyper-feminist piece in which I grew up a lot and got to trust myself as a female maker.'
Trusting other female makers is a large part of what drew Norvill to The Twelve. Still, arriving at a career juncture like this comes with plenty of self-doubt and big questions, but Norvill is learning to trust the process. The Twelve has helped her see things differently, too. 'I am actually glad that I am at the point in my life where I have to start again,' she says. 'I think it's because I have had a lot of stop-starts in my career.'
In 2019, Norvill went with her brother Ben to Download Festival in Sydney to see UK heavy metal band Judas Priest perform. 'Everyone I met there was so sweet and gentle,' she says. 'I had beautiful conversations, which I haven't had at a festival before. I felt like I got a warm hug from the crowd that day. Who would have thought a metal crowd is where I'd be?'
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Norvill's curiosity for life has seen her dabble in drawing cartoons, which she does to relax and distract herself from acting. 'Being in London is allowing me to be curious about what sort of person I am and what is meaningful to me again,' she says. 'Finding out what I'm like at 40 feels weird, but I'm reminded that I'm lucky to have deep friendships, a moral circumference, good taste and boundaries – because these people in my life reflect that back in me.'