focusinterview.
Out to Lunch
with Susie Boswell
lydia Sarks Stand by for a star in the making, a home-grown talent now making a solid debut on our TV screens. Years of climbing the ladder to an acting career are starting to pay off for a familiar local face aiming to make it in LA. Susie treats her to lunch.
he’s one of the most prominent faces on Australian free-to-air and pay-TV at the moment, seen nightly in commercials for national brand Toyota from Darwin to Devonport, Perth to ... Port Macquarie, her home town. She’s “Zoe”, the receptionist, or concierge, at a typical Toyota showroom, welcoming customers looking for new vehicles, subtly spruiking a positive dealership experience. The customers range from a dad and his schoolgirl daughter looking for her first car to a handsome Hugh Jackman-hot tradie seeking a workhorse. She’s already outpaced AAMI’s Kath ‘n’ Kim-style “Rhonda”, recognisable in a series so far of 12 different Toyota scenarios with more, recorded before Christmas, now scheduled this new year. In her neat red cardigan and sleek hair bob, Zoe is efficient, friendly, personable: a break from the hardsell, a wholesome image the car maker wants to portray in marketing its Corollas, Aurions, HiLux and so on. Zoe sends a message that Toyota cares not just about hawking vehicles but helping clients into a range of models to fit their needs. Her job description - in advertising, a “brand ambassador” - puts her in the same category as Nespresso’s George Clooney, albeit in a vastly different salary range. But, finally, it’s a well-paying gig for the actor and, more importantly, a stepping stone to becoming better known, maybe snagging that elusive, lucrative, TV series or film contract she and her peers long for. She’s also known, along with her father, as our own “face of Ricardoes”: 27-year-old Lydia Sarks, seen with dad Anthony in another familiar commercial (TVC), promoting a day out at the family’s Ricardoes tomato and strawberry farm. Born and bred here, she’s familiar too to the many locals she went to school with at St Joseph’s in the 1990s, before
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boarding in Years 10 to 12 at PLC Pymble, a school with good facilities for the arts, close to the leading Sydney ballet institute, Ecole Classique, she’d gone to for summer schools and was keen to attend regularly. The creative streak probably comes from mother Carole, “front of house” personality at Ricardoes farm, a talented artist and former visual arts teacher at Port High. Her outgoing dad’s quite a thespian himself, appearing regularly for Ricardoes on NBN-TV and Prime, g It’s a well-payin in Holiday Coast ng pi ep st a d an g gi and training in the g Credit Union comin stone to becom ng gi ag sn full gamut of theatre mercials and an better known, ative TV functionalities. “I NBN promo, as that elusive lucr learned so much presenter of Ricarseries or film. ” about the craft, a lot does’ farm tours, of acting methods and and voicing catchy techniques: you really radio spots. hone those skills; and I did a “When I was a kid I lot of playwriting and directing, knew I wanted to be a ballet so when you graduate you can do all dancer or an actor,” Sarks recalls, the ‘bits’.” visiting from her base in Sydney. “At first, balFresh from uni, and armed with additional let [training locally at La Vive Classique] domidrama diploma, six years ago, “a few of us nated. But then I had a series of knee injuries formed a little company putting on indepenand [four] surgeries.” Just as she was about dent shows around Sydney, which, starting to take her final ballet exam, she was forced out, is a great way to get seen and keep to quit, a bitter disappointment it seems. But busy. We did various plays and original works along with dance she’d learned acting from at Carriageworks, the Wharf, in Newtown. a young age with local drama coach Sandra Everyone was willing to work for free and Thompson, a teacher at St Joseph’s. “A group we’d profit-share at the end: pay the venue of us competed in every eisteddfod in the and anything we owed, pay the actors a bit, area, and in Sydney. Mum was a director of and then ourselves. But our earnings would speech and drama for the Eisteddfod Society. go into funding the next show.” She was a ballet mum: with all the other The overseas travel bug bit for the best part mums, making costumes, doing hair, driving of a year, although Sarks’ visits to London, us around.” The more time Sarks took off Paris, Greece, Croatia and the US all seem ballet with injury, the more dedication she to have had an actor’s bias. She worked as put into drama. At CSU Bathurst for a BA in producer of an Edinburgh Festival show and Theatre and Media, she enjoyed “an all-round crammed in seeing dozens of other shows degree”: producing up to 10 shows a year
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playing there. There were summer schools, voice classes and one-off workshops in London, on the Continent and in Los Angeles, even in comedy and clowning. In LA and New York she met agents and saw even more shows. Back at home, for several years she followed the aspiring actor’s time-honoured path of working for a crust largely behind the scenes in the industry, also seeing countless rehearsals and shows - while nurturing, growing and selling her performing arts talent. Her comprehensive back-of-house training and experience was valuable in production work, in stage management, for a big outdoors event at Sydney Opera House, in wardrobe, as a dresser, and other backstage jobs, for familiar titles and venues: The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Cats, The Wiggles, at the Belvoir. More recently now, her time’s been divided between the non-paying task of the auditions round for jobs in film, TV, TVCs (“an actor’s bread and butter”) and Opera Australia’s each new production - and working professionally when she’s chosen for a role, as she concentrates more fully on progressing her acting career. As they say in the trade, it’s a marathon not a sprint. Child stars often burn out and there are prodigies like James Dean, but many household names make a similar tortu-