Roy Billing is currently appearing in Auckland Theatre Company's encore season of Grand Horizons, May 17-29 at ASB Waterfront Theatre. Photo / Alex Burton
Roy Billing is an award-winning actor whose stellar career has seen him work solidly, both here and in Australia, for over 45 years. His face is familiar from lead roles in Gliding On, Underbelly, Sea Urchins, Rake, The Dish, Jack Irish, and Rabbit Proof Fence. Billing is currently appearing in Auckland Theatre Company's encore season of Grand Horizons, May 17-29 at ASB Waterfront Theatre.
I grew up in Ruawai, where my father was the local panel beater and the volunteer fire chief. It was a typical country kid's upbringing. The days of walking to school or riding your bike everywhere and playing till night fell. When mothers would ring around, trying to corral everyone to come home for dinner. We had a free run and were certainly not as protected as kids are today.
I went to Ruawai Primary and Ruawai District High, but not many people stayed for sixth form in Ruawai, so for my last years of high school, I went to Mt Roskill Grammar and stayed with my aunt and grandmother. This is back when there was no harbour bridge, and you had to get a car ferry from Birkenhead or drive around the top of the harbour.
I was ready to move to the big smoke by then and, once at university I got enthusiastically involved in the whole 60s vibe. I played bass in a rock band called Ministry of Fog, playing the university circuit. We did Hendrix covers, that sort of thing, and developed a small but enthusiastic following. Eventually, we disbanded, I got married - my first marriage - and we had a daughter. Back then I worked for the IRD, which was incredibly boring so I moved into advertising which I enjoyed and did very well in.
In 1976 I did a couple of amateur plays, and also started doing classes with Raymond Hawthorne at Theatre Corporate. In 1977, around the time my marriage was breaking up, I was offered a job in Theatre in Education, and I took the plunge. Everyone said I was mad to leave a well-paid advertising job to join a theatre company, but I had the bug.
Doing back-to-back plays with Theatre Corporate gave me such a good grounding, then TV came along and I never looked back and I've been a professional actor since I was 30. I'm 75 this year, so that's 45 years of constant work. Of course, there have been times I've worried where the next job was coming from, it's still a very precarious profession, but looking back, it's been a dream run.
I really enjoyed playing rugby, until I was badly concussed in my late 20s. I've always followed rugby, and I played Tupper in the first performance of Greg McGee's play Foreskins Lament. I did five productions of it, plus the telemovie. That was such a confronting, groundbreaking play for New Zealand, as it dealt with themes of rugby and violence and family. But everywhere it played we got huge houses because it was a play Kiwis could relate to and it brought in new audiences everywhere it played.
I was heavily involved in the Springbok protests. I have a photo of me and Greg McGee outside Eden Park. Greg had stuffed his junior All Blacks jersey with straw, put it on a cross and lit it on fire on the day of the match at Eden Park. That same day the Red Squad beat up a bunch of kids who were dressed as clowns. That night I had to do a performance of Middle Age Spread at the Mercury Theatre, a play with middle-class themes and a middle-class audience. Going on stage that night, having seen people storming the barricades at Eden Park, there was so much chaos, that was a very strange day.
I used to love coming to Auckland when I was young, just being in the city was exciting. Going to Farmers was always a big thing for families visiting Auckland, the play area at the top of the department store, but that building came to have very sad connotations for me. In 1995 my son Simon was having problems, some of them relating to alcohol and drugs, and he developed schizophrenic symptoms. We tried to look after him, but you can't watch someone 24 hours a day, and he [took his own life]. It was a terrible tragedy for our family. So traumatic. As a parent, of course, you blame yourself but I have since learnt you can only do so much. When I got back to Australia - I was living there then – I became a spokesperson, speaking to bereaved parents for youth suicide prevention groups. It was cathartic but, after a few years someone asked me to do something and I said 'no, I've done enough now'. It is every parent's worst nightmare and while you never get over it, you do learn to live with it.
I've played lots of famous Australian characters, and people are always quite surprised to find out I'm a New Zealander. I was the patron of the Winton Outback Film Festival, where they have an Australian film festival every year in an open-air cinema. I have a plaque on their walk of fame on the main street, as well as one outside Sydney's Randwick Ritz Cinema. I've been given the Order of Australia medal for services to performing arts, and won various other awards, and been in some really good shows there. I played Bob Trimbole in Underbelly. Trimbole was a mafia drug dealer who never got caught. He got away from the cops and died overseas. Australians love their villains. When that series opened with a double episode, 20 per cent of the country were watching. That was huge. It means I am quite recognisable in Australia, and here, but fans are usually pretty good. They just want a selfie - no autographs now. Although at big things, like footie matches or race meetings, a lot of people are under the influence and they all want to be your best mate, so you learn to be careful in those sorts of places.
Of course, Covid has affected things. I did three jobs in Australia in 2019, flying back and forth, then for the last few years, there's been next to nothing over there. Although I still do Oz voiceovers from my studio at home. And I've been getting enough work in New Zealand to keep me happy. Over the last wee while, I've done Brokenwood, My Life Is Murder, I played Muldoon in Panthers, that was fun. Also Mean Mums, Nude Tuesday, that's going to be great when it comes out.
As for Grand Horizons, I'd stopped doing stage work a long time ago, then Jennifer Ward-Lealand rang and asked if I could be tempted to return to theatre and I said yes. Especially working with Annie Whittle – we joke we have 150 years between us - and such a great cast. For the original season, it was very strange to perform in that big theatre to an audience of just 100 people, all of them wearing masks, but the audiences loved it. We sold out too, which is why I'm so pleased to be doing a return run. Hopefully, the theatre company will make some money and we'll all have a great time. It's such a great play.
I regard myself as semi-retired these days, although I like to keep my hand in. I'd been working in Australia for 30 years, but now I'm settled back in New Zealand, and I love living on Waiheke. I do the occasional nice job. Maybe some voice over work, some gardening or fishing. Catching up with friends. I couldn't really want for more. I appreciate it, but I'm also good at what I do. I'm a good networker, I keep in touch, I'm a good friend, not only to actors, but
to producers, directors and crew people, because this profession is built on networks. I also behave myself on set. I don't pull rank or be a diva, and I work hard and I work well.
Like everybody, I'm very distressed about Ukraine, with people being killed and buildings smashed, while here I am, so lucky, on Waiheke Island. I thought the pandemic, being worldwide, would bring people together, which to a certain extent it did. All of us suffering the same thing at the same time. Which means the last thing we need is for some poor country to be hammered by bombs by a maniac. Yet at the same time, I'll go and perform onstage in Grand Horizons, we'll listen to the audience laugh, maybe go out and have a drink afterwards while people in Ukraine have no homes to go to, let alone entertainment. Which means I will never forget how blessed I am to be right here, right now, in this part of the world.
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Broadcaster has written a new book about the joys of getting older.