NADINE’S DILEMMA
Television
RACHEL LOOS
18 December 1988
Sun Herald
LIKE many television actresses, Nadine Garner has tried sunglasses and even different hairstyles to disguise herself-but none of them has worked. People recognise her just the same.
But the 17-year-old, who appears in Channel Two’s Sunday night drama series, House Rules, with Jacki Weaver and Gil Tucker, has learned to live with her sudden acclaim. She won this year’s Australian Film Institute award for best actress in the unreleased film, Mullaway.
“It usually doesn’t worry me unless I really don’t want to be recognised and all of a sudden there’s a classroom of screaming 10-year-olds,” she said. “That can be a bit off-putting.”
Nadine started acting when she was 13, as Tamara Henderson in Channel Ten’s The Henderson Kids II. Since then she has made two feature films, Bushfire Moon and Mullaway.
Her TV credits include appearances in Neighbours, The Flying Doctors, and A Country Practice. Nadine’s role in House Rules is as Sophie, the teenager daughter of Jacki Weaver.
Although similar in age to the character, Nadine feels they have little in common. “Sophie definitely represents one type of teenager that I haven’t had much contact with,” she said. “She is very intelligent but she has a little more living to do before she understands a few things. There were times when I didn’t really like her at all. She wasn’t the nicest person I’d ever met.”
House Rules will be on air until early February.
“Six months as the one character in the one show was enough for me. So it was nice to get out of it,” she said.