|
Loving this Yuk Saskia Burmeister takes to showbiz like an old pro, writes Des Partridge. IT'S THE most exciting time of Saskia Burmeister's young life, stomping Australia promoting the new movie which showcases her as a fresh Australian movie talent. Saskia who? Most of the pre-publicity for Hating Alison Ashley, the movie version of Robin Klein's widely read 1984 teenage novel (written for the screen by Christine Madafferi), has centred on Burmeister's co-star, pop queen Delta Goodrem, who makes her feature film debut in the role of the despised Alison Ashley. The 20-year-old Burmeister bears little resemblance to the adolescent character she plays on screen – Erica Yurken, known to her rough and ready fellow students at Barringa East High School as Yuk. Goodrem is suitably glamorous in Hating Alison Ashley, while Burmeister's character isn't someone who'd attract a second look. But today she is well-groomed, sleek and attractive, comfortably posing for photographs with the poise and confidence of more experienced talent, despite this being the biggest role of her still-brief acting career. Yes, she admits, she's probably several kilograms lighter than she was when she filmed the comedy last year, but she wouldn't have any idea of how much weight she has shed. She does know the name of the designer of her striking brown silk shirtdress, Nicola Finetti, and she's keeping a bottle of lavender oil beside her chair to help stay calm during the non-stop round of interviews with radio, television and newspapers. A dab of lavender goes on the back of her hands, and she reflects on what it was like working with Delta. "I can't wait to give her a big hug," she says of Goodrem, whom she hasn't seen since filming finished mid-last year. "We became great friends during the shoot," she says. "(Director) Geoff Bennett got us together before we started, and said: 'Right, you two, bond.' "So we did. We had lunch together, and read magazines together, and gossiped together. We had a lovely time together." In the movie, Burmeister's character, Yuk, is a melodramatic teen who excels among the uninspired students in a humdrum suburban world, but is upstaged by the new girl Alison Ashley. The rivalry that Yuk imagines comes to a head at a school camp where she writes a play in which she herself was to star before she's punished and excluded from the show. Later, she realises that Alison Ashley is as desperate for friendship as she is herself. Burmeister, now 20, loved her own school days, particularly her secondary years when she enrolled at a performing arts high school in Sydney's Mosman (which claims Naomi Watts among its former students). "I was first in line for everything that was put on at school. I knew from an early age that I wanted to act more than anything," she says.
She was just a couple of months short of completing her HEC studies at Mosman when the opportunity came to appear in Gregor Jordan's Ned Kelly, which starred Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush and Naomi Watts. Burmeister says she weighed up the pros and cons of dropping out of school early, and decided that the film with Jordan as director would mean something on her CV. She followed Ned Kelly with a role in Thunderstruck and was in Los Angeles meeting her agent, and sitting down to dinner, when the call came from Sydney to be on a plane in six hours to meet Geoff Bennett to discuss Hating Alison Ashley. Since completing the movie, she's filmed an SBS movie called Jewboy written and directed by Tony Krawitz which features Ewan Leslie, and is expected to be screened in the second half of the year. When she stopped off in Brisbane last week before the national premiere in Melbourne, Burmeister was excited about her first visit to Cairns the next day. "It doesn't get much better than this for a 20-year-old," she says. Even Yuk would likely agree with that. Go Back to Interviews & Reviews |