Watch This Face - Laura Gordon
The Age
Friday July 28, 2006
Prostitute and junkie today, sex addict tomorrow - this 23-year-old actor certainly doesn't shy from gritty roles.
Playing a heroin-addicted prostitute in the new Australian film Em 4 Jay, Laura Gordon learned how to shoot up, spent time with a St Kilda street walker and lived on the set - a grungy flat in Alma Road, St Kilda - for the 17-day shoot, rolling out of bed each morning when the crew arrived. Under the direction of Alkinos Tsilimidos, Gordon and her co-star (and real-life boyfriend) Nick Barkla immersed themselves in the lives of their characters, a pair of heroin-injecting lovers whose addiction drives them into a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime spree. This included rehearsing scenes in character in pubs, restaurants and on the streets of St Kilda in full view of passers-by. "We'd sit on Fitzroy Street and the only people that would come up to us were other junkies and other people that were 'on the street'," says Gordon. "It was very interesting making that transition and seeing how everyone suddenly looks at you totally differently. They (either) look past you or they kind of look, 'Oh, poor thing', or they just look a bit scared." Gordon grew up in Canberra, the daughter of two teachers, coming to Melbourne four years ago, when she became a founding member of the Red Stich Theatre ensemble. She has since performed in nine Red Stitch productions (including Black Milk, for which she received a Green Room Award nomination in 2003), a "handful" of short films, an episode of Blue Heelers and she had a bit-part in Tom White, Tsilimidos' 2004 film about a middle-class man who breaks down and ends up living on the streets as a hobo, which starred Colin Friels. Gordon was in a Red Stitch play when Tsilimidos first considered her for a starring role. "There was something loose about her that was different," Tsilimidos says, "a quality about her that was filmic." At one point Barkla approached a prostitute on Grey Street in St Kilda and offered her $50 to tell her story. "She was very frank and willing to talk about everything," says Gordon. Fiona, 28, came from a "middle-class" background and had been introduced to heroin in her early 20s by a boyfriend. She turned to prostitution to pay for her habit. "She was super-friendly," says Gordon, "but it was also, like, when the hour's up, the hour's up. She had her handbag and said, 'This is a hooker's handbag': mobile phone, little black book with all her numbers, condoms, make-up and some spare stockings." They arranged to watch Fiona shooting up in a flat in Carlton, then drove her back to St Kilda. "It was pretty eye-opening," says Gordon. "It was something about the way she just looked like me and her history is not dissimilar to my history. We got along really well. We'd be, like, talking about hair or something and I just thought, 'You're not different from me, you could be my sister, or me, and you're just going through something that I'm not." During filming the actors actually injected themselves with real (saline-filled) syringes. "I loved donating blood when I was in high school so it wasn't a problem for me," Gordon says. "Mostly it was Nick (Barkla) injecting me because that's what we decided the dynamic of the relationship would be, but you had to also practise a little bit before hand so you didn't look like a first-timer." After the shoot, Gordon went back to her job in a St Kilda homewares shop and began researching for her role in another Tsilimidos-directed feature, Till Hell Freezes, in which she plays a nymphomaniac going out with an alcoholic. She has contacted a sex addicts organisation and has met a "love-addict" who would "obsess" over her lovers. "It's an addiction as full-on and full-blown as any other," says Gordon. "It's not the kind of 'fun' (thing) people make it out to be. It ruins these people's lives. In the case studies, these people lose their jobs, their family, their riches ... I can't talk about it too much because I'm no expert (but) I've read about one woman who'd been a drug addict and a sex addict. To her, sex addiction was far worse." Em 4 Jay screens August 5 at the Forum and August 12 at ACMI as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival.
© 2006 The Age