16.11.2002
By Julie Middleton
You might have more in common with actress Danielle Cormack than you think. Okay, so your CV doesn't include performing
hilariously realistic orgasms on stage in front of hundreds (The Vagina Monologues) or swimming in vats of milk for the cameras
(The Price of Milk).
Cormack, 31, is one of 300,000 New Zealanders who are self-employed; like any engineer, consultant, artist or musician
working for themselves, she hopes there'll generally be more flow than ebb.
The prospect of slow times used to wind the West Auckland-based actress into knots of anxiety. It happens infrequently now.
Fretting and feeling "incredibly anxious about where your next job is going to come from doesn't do you any favours at all", says
Cormack over lunch at Auckland's Viaduct Harbour.
"It disables you creatively - it disabled me creatively [in the past]," she adds. "And it's not a very inviting kind of energy.
Desperate people get a very wide berth - it's human instinct."
She laughs. It's a throaty laugh, self-deprecating. Worry "didn't get me anywhere except further away from where I wanted to
be, which was relaxed and open enough to stumble across jobs - or open enough for people to approach me about work".
And when she is working, it's go hard or go home. "When I'm working now, I like to work bloody hard. It gives me satisfaction
to work hard. While I'm there I put my all into it - constantly thinking of the job, the role, the characters, the story as a whole,
not just my part in it.
"When I'm not working, I'm not working! Where does worry get you? It's never got me anywhere."
But Cormack - tawny hair tumbling down, wearing blue denim jeans and jacket - admits that despite a fairly unshakeable
self-belief, she does still have a plan B for the days when confidence takes a dive.
Then, she says, "I've gone back to myself and worked out what it is I really want, what I really need to have in my life.
"I know that I'm one of the luckiest people in the world - I have health and a roof to sleep under."
If finances demand it - she has a 6-year-old son, Ethan, and a mortgage - she can dig drains, she says.
"It's a matter of perspective - constantly adjusting your perspective to fit in with what is actually happening in the world.
"I know that I can act ... [but] if the work isn't there for me, I'll do something else until there is work."
For Cormack, something else has been about expanding her repertoire. To fill gaps between theatre and film, she's started doing
advertisements - she has to like the product and the plan before she'll assent - and voice-overs.
And she's just completed some "experimental" work - which means she won't give details - in Wellington with double
Oscar-winner Richard Taylor, boss of Lord of the Rings' special effects team, and Hercules and Xena producer Eric
Gruendemann.
Cormack workshops plays with Auckland Theatre Company's Second Unit, and next April stars in the company's production of
Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, based on the story of a male student and art gallery guard who becomes the unwitting
subject of an art student's project of transformation.
Cormack is not a graduate of the New Zealand Drama School, unlike many of her colleagues. She was a drama queen - "it was
just fun" - long before her first formal after-school drama class at the age of 9 or 10.
"Even at primary school I remember raiding my mother's wardrobe and taking all her pantyhose to school and dressing people up
- stuffing the pantyhose full with other things and giving people extra appendages, writing my own plays for them to perform at
school and directing my own plays.
"It's just my passion."
Cormack's first paid job was an in-house video - she can no longer remember who for - but doesn't recall ever making a
conscious decision to be an actor.
What she does recall is the acting-is-not-a-real-job line from those around her. "But [acting] has always been a natural part of
who I am and what I've done.
"It's constantly surprisingly to me ... that I've managed to stay employed thus far. And I don't mean that in a self-effacing way,
either - I'm really happy because I love it and I'm encouraged that people find me appealing to work with."
