Self confessed “Durban theatre girl” Josette Eales might have felt a bit like a fish out of water when she moved up to Joburg, but landing a lead role in the M-Net series The Wild and being cast in the new Leon Schuster movie that is set to be released in June next year brings her that much closer to realising her dreams of Hollywood.
Soon after returning from a training session at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK, Eales was cast in the pilot shooting of The Wild. The pilot got the go-ahead and as of next month, Eales will appear on South African television screens as Sara van Reenen, daughter of Karel van Reenen (played by Ian Roberts) and member of one of three families who are tied together by a stretch of land and a five-star game lodge.
Sara is a sun loving landscaper, which is pretty much the complete opposite of the pale Eales who lathers herself in sunscreen and avoids the sun at all costs, but layers and layers of spray tan every morning before the shooting begins is good training for the “chameleoning” that Eales believes all good actors should be adept at.
“I want to be that actress where people say ‘gosh, she’s amazing, what’s her name again?’” Eales explains. “I want to be the actor that is so changeable and versatile that they can chameleon into different roles and almost not be recognisable. I think that those are the actors that are the most interesting to watch. Take Philip Seymour Hoffman, for example. For years nobody knew his name, we all only learnt his name after he won an Oscar. But he’s incredible, and those are the kind of actors that inspire me.”
Even though the transition from the stage to the screen has been a “scary” and rather steep learning curve, Eales knows what she wants and is prepared to go the extra mile to get there. When she lived in New York, she fought to get into a highly sought after class with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s method acting coach. Now, adjusting to the fast pace with which her Schuster and The Wild shoots have been advancing is just one more step in the direction of Tinseltown.
Whether she’s playing Sara van Reenen or an uptight, pearl-wearing British PA in Schuster’s latest movie, Eales measures her performance and that of her peers on credibility alone.
“Essentially, if I watch an actor and I don’t believe them, they’ve failed at their job. Acting is acting, if you’re able to deliver a truth and a character and you’re able to deliver that to an audience, then you’ve won.” Eales is probably her own toughest critic, but she has a contagious charm and admirable determination that should be fuel enough to propel her straight to stardom.
This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Wednesday 5 October 2011.
The Wild is on M-Net Mondays to Thursdays at 6pm. Eales’s character Sara van Reenen will be introduced from November.
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