Sarah Peirse: award-winning actor…

Interview – 2013

Award-winning actor Sarah Peirse is best known for her portrayals of two very different mothers — the ill-fated Honorah Rieper in Heavenly Creatures, and the disaffected sophisticate in Rain. Peirse’s first film was 1980s short Queen Street, followed by tele-feature A Woman of Good Character (aka It's Lizzie to those Close). She was nominated for her work in tele-movies Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield and Aftershock.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Peirse talks about:

The intense acting journey in A Woman of Good Character
Playing the gloriously named Vivienne Wallop in Sylvia
Being heavily pregnant on the set of The Navigator
Her experience of working with director Vincent Ward
Being told not to watch Peter Jackson’s previous films prior to working with him on Heavenly Creatures
Dreaming about the character she played in the film
Finding the story in the feature film Rain compelling
Perspectives on her character’s grief and self-destruction
Playing a "constrained and compromised" mother in Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield
Not knowing whether or not her work on the The Hobbit films would make the final cut
Feeling blessed to have been able to do roles integral to many films

This video was first uploaded on 4 February 2013, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

I feel very pleased that I've managed to kind of cover the range that I have: . . . a young-ish mother who got things wrong, a middle-aged woman who goes of the rails and is an alchoholic. I think that for many actresses the role scales become much shallower and smaller, and you become peripheral to the action, and you're an adjunct to the story. I feel especially pleased about doing roles that are integral to the story, that are central.
– Sarah Peirse on being pleased at the range of roles she has played over the course of her career

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