Eyes wide open
Five minutes into meeting Gemma
Ward, I start measuring the centimetres between her eyes. It
could be five centimetres, it could be seven, but her eyes are so
wide set, it’s like being drawn into the twilight zone.
Her fame as the hot new covergirl of the world’s best-known
magazines (she’s appeared on 24 Vogue covers around the
world) has recently been overshadowed by her association with Heath
Ledger - the two Perth expats were seeing each other just before
the actor died.
Ward, 20, initially asked for no personal questions during the
interview - her grief about Ledger is still raw. Instead, Ward
wants to talk about her career shift into films and the Australian
movie The Black Balloon in which she stars. (It has
already won the Crystal Bear for best feature at the Berlin Film
Festival).
But it’s obvious that Ledger was a big influence on Ward’s
approach to her fledgling film career. Speaking directly of Ledger
for the first time since his death, Ward says: “I think he operated
from the heart.
“He really, really knew that if he was going to make a decision to
be in a film, then he needed to be really committed to it. He
wasn’t afraid to fight with people involved, he wasn’t afraid to
perhaps piss people off.
“He told me to always be a punk and ’stand up for yourself’,” says
Ward softly, her surprisingly deep, sleepy voice still holding firm
to an Australian accent.
Ward has relied on family to help pull her through a tough time.
Her older sister Sophie has now moved in to share her
multimillion-dollar triplex in New York. It’s not immediately
apparent, but across the room from where we are sitting (inside the
club lounge at Sydney’s Hotel InterContinental) a relaxed family of
four sits waiting for Gemma - very tall Perth GP Garry Ward,
elongated blonde mother Claire, and Oscar and Henry, two teenage
boys with strangely familiar eyes, playing games on their mobile
phones.
“Yeah, that’s them over there, they’re my brothers, they just
turned 17 (they’re twins),” she says. “Through my whole career,
that’s been a major thing - bringing my family with me.”
After appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair in November
2006 with George Clooney, Ward could have had her pick of “pretty
girlfriend” roles in Hollywood, but instead she took a role in an
Australian-made production, one which centres on a family living
with autism.
She certainly didn’t do it for the money, or the marquee value.
Her decision could have been influenced by old loyalties - director
Elissa Down cast Ward in a minor role in the short film Pink
Pyjamas when the future supermodel was 13, long before the
fashion world discovered her.
“It’s an incredibly touching film, you can tell it’s from the
heart,” says Ward of Black Balloon. “It’s not only a piece
of artwork, it’s a story that needs to be told.”
But then, Ward has never been mainstream. Her
multimillion-dollar modelling career is based on looking
beautifully weird.
Even her fans - the international fashion editors and designers
and photographers who clamour to work with her - call her an alien,
a bug, a creature from another dimension. Russell Marsh, the man
who launched her career when he cast the then-unknown 15-year-old
in a Prada ad campaign in October 2003, said that Ward “challenged
the concept of beauty. She’s quite strange-looking.”
Ward’s “alien” look may have come in handy at first, because
this shy Perth girl felt as if she were on another planet.
“It was the best and darkest of times, especially in the
beginning,” she says. “The day after my sixteenth birthday, I left
to go to New York and I ended up staying from then. Especially
because I was younger, it felt very much like I was learning a new
way of being.
“You don’t really question what’s happening because you’re just
soaking it in. So I kind of just accepted it, but it did take a
little while. It was hard to be alone at that age, coming from a
family that was very, very, very close.”
She might be a supermodel, but she has a refreshingly balanced
view of her image.
“I have felt it,” she says, of the pressures of fame and
recognition. “But it’s kind of dying now, because I realise you
can’t ever please everyone. Sometimes when people are constantly
wanting the fantasy or the illusion, you have to break it to them
that it’s not real, you know what I mean?” she says.
“It’s hard if you start believing that you should be really that
perfect fantasy ideal, that people start believing because of all
of the retouching.
“You can delve into that fantasy world and play with it, but when
you walk away, that’s not you. Other people can’t really
differentiate sometimes - there are a lot of young girls that I’ll
meet on the street, that’ll know me, and they’ll say ‘oh, you don’t
seem at all like a famous model’. And I’m like ‘well, that’s the
job and this is me’. We can all play dress-ups, we can all make
ourselves look like that.”
Earning an estimated $US3.4 million ($A3.6 million) a year,
according to Forbes magazine, Ward has perfected her
jetset chic - immaculate skin, platinum blonde hair and a boho
outfit comprising jeans and a tie-dyed t-shirt (with a peace symbol
on it), a yellow scarf wrapped artfully around her neck.
“I’m not really sure how it has changed me,” she says of her
fortune. “The first thing might sound a little bit horrible, but I
don’t often ask how much I’m getting paid for certain things … I
know it might come back and slap me in the face when somebody rips
me off or something,” she says.
“I’m very aware of my spending, but I’m not very aware of my
income. There are certain times when I speak to my accountant, or
something will pop up, and I’ll be like ‘oh’ but it’s not really a
frontrunner in my head.”
At least her success as a model allows Ward to make a credible
shift into film, rather than just doing something to raise profile
or earn extra cash.
The film world hardly ever takes models seriously when they try to
enter the acting business. It was a stereotype that her director,
Down, had to fight when she screen-tested Ward for the role of
Jackie.
“Of course there were people who said ‘why would you want her?
She’s a model, not an actor’,” Down says. The director freely
admits that many models-turned-actors have crashed and burned, but
insists that Ward has the right stuff.
“She did exactly what I wanted. She knew the character and
really embodied it. It’s a film with Toni Collette in it, so it’s a
real performance piece. But Gemma more than holds her own.”
Casting Ward took just one phone call. “I just called her up and
said, ‘hey Gem, are you still interested in acting?’, because the
whole Gemma Ward bubble had blown
up,” Down says.
“She was like ‘of course’. She was really hoping that modelling
would lead to acting and so I sent her the script and she loved it,
and came on board from the beginning.”
For her own part, Ward is hoping to emulate the decisions - and
values - of some of our biggest acting stars.
“I’ve always admired Cate Blanchett and the roles she chooses,”
says Ward. “I think she’s got an incredible discipline in a way,
with choosing roles that are going to help her grow and bring
something interesting to the world.”
Collette, who also stars in The Black Balloon, left a
real impression on Ward - even before they shared the same film
set.
“I remember Toni Collette as being one of the people who first
made me want to be an actress, because I watched The Sixth
Sense and I was blown away by her performance. I remember it
was one of the first times I watched the Oscars because I was just
desperate for her to win,” says Ward. “She’s just so gentle and
supportive of all of us; she really did look after us all (on
The Black Balloon set).”
Behind the famous names, says Ward, there are people often
filled with insecurities, just like everyone else.
“I’ve learnt, through modelling as well, that we place a lot of
emphasis on not only celebrities, but designers and people that we
all admire. How fast you learn when you work with these people that
they can be just as self-conscious or shy or just as normal and
goofy as anyone. I mean, when I met George Clooney, same thing - he
was just such a goofy guy, not at all what you’d think,” says Ward,
laughing. So she wasn’t chatted up by Clooney, then? Does Ward, as
a supermodel, have rich and famous men chasing after her all the
time? Ward laughs uproariously, looking a touch embarrassed by the
topic.
“In New York, you do have certain guys that are like that. But I
don’t really dress up to that,” she says.
Ward, who attended the premiere for The Black Balloon
in Sydney last week, will continue to base herself in New York,
although it is clear she has a huge affection for Western
Australia.
She’s still a supermodel - she stars in Karl Lagerfeld’s spring
2008 campaign - but her long-term goal is a serious acting career.
“I definitely have gone through some ups and downs, and sometimes I
find the easiest way is not to ever think (about the scrutiny) …
you kind of feel embarrassed or ashamed if somebody else is
expecting something or watching you,” she says. “It’s about being
comfortable, however you are.”
The Black Balloon is out now.
