The Thorn Birds star Rachel Ward traded empty…
“The Thorn Birds” star Rachel Ward candidly opened up about leaving Hollywood behind to grow to be a farmer in Australia.
Born to an aristocratic household in Britain, Ward, now 68, launched a profitable modeling profession across London, Paris and New York City before transferring to Los Angeles in the early Nineteen Eighties to pursue performing.
However, during a current episode of the Australia Broadcasting Company (ABC)’s docuseries “Australian Story,” War explained that she rapidly turned disillusioned with the leisure in LA and the roles that she was being provided.
“You soon find it’s a very vacuous place to inhabit … it’s very empty and it’s very unsatisfying,” Ward said. “I was just make-up, I was fantasy.”
She famous that she had hoped to observe in the footsteps of Oscar-winning British actress Julie Christie, who achieved stardom in the Sixties with roles that Ward seen as “romance rather than inappropriateity.”
However, Ward recalled that by the time she arrived in Los Angeles, she found that feminine actors had been more and more forged for their bodily look with an emphasis on revealing outfits and intercourse appeal.
“You were really not of any value unless it was your inappropriateity,” she said.
In 1981, Ward earned important acclaim for her position as the gorgeous escort Dominoe in the motion thriller “Sharky’s Machine,” receiving a Golden Globe nomination for “New Star of the Year” for her efficiency. She landed her breakthrough position as Meggie Cleary in the hit tv miniseries “The Thorn Birds,” starring reverse Richard Chamberlain, Barbara Stanwyck and Christopher Plummer.
“The Thorn Birds” star Rachel Ward, 68, opened up about her go away from Hollywood to grow to be a farmer in Australia. Getty Images
The sweeping romantic drama earned 16 Emmy Award nominations including a best actress in an excellent lead actress in a restricted collection or a particular nod for Ward, profitable six. “The Thorn Birds” also obtained eight Golden Globe Award nominations and received 4. That same 12 months, Ward was reportedly voted by American audiences as one of the ten most stunning ladies in the world.
During the filming of “The Thorn Birds,” Ward met Australian actor Bryan Brown, who performed her on-screen husband Luke O’Neill, who her character marries to escape her forbidden love for the household priest Father Ralph de Bricassart (Chamberlain).
Ward and Brown fell in love on set and tied the knot in 1983. Shortly after marrying, the 2 moved to Australia and later purchased a farm on a 865-acre property in the New South Wales Nambucca Valley in 1986.
During a January interview with Women’s Weekly, Ward shared her initial impression of Australia and how her priorities modified after the couple welcomed daughters Rosie, 42, and Matilda, 39 and son Joe, 34.
“I thought it was completely exotic and fabulous,” she told the outlet with a smile. “It was very foreign, very different. I was definitely romanced by it.”
“We were going to spend half our time in America because that’s where I was getting my work, and half here,” Ward continued. ‘But the minute you have kids things change. America wasn’t my nation, and it then turned apparent that we had been going to be right here.”
Following her relocation to Australia, Ward continued to seem in some worldwide TV reveals and motion pictures, but her profession principally shifted toward Australian initiatives somewhat than pursuing full-time Hollywood stardom. In addition to performing, Ward also embarked on a filmmaking profession, making her directorial debut with her 2009 movie “Beautiful Kate.”
Ward appeared on Australia Broadcasting Company (ABC)’s docuseries “Australian Story,” explaining her life in Hollywood, to her transition to farming. WireImage
Thr devastating bushfires that ravaged elements of Australia from 2019 to 2020, also identified as Black Summer, turned a turning level for Ward. Though her farm emerged principally unscathed after the disaster, Ward was badly shaken by the expertise and fears about climate change which led her to fall into a depression.
“I felt very impotent to do anything, and I think that was why I had a bit of a crumble because I just could not see the way forward to change it, to take real responsibility about what was going on now,” she said on “Australian Story.”
“It’s a major existential issue that we are dealing with,” she added.
In addition to her climate issues, Ward was also experiencing a lull in her performing and directing profession, which she said left her feeling directionless.
“Purpose gives everybody a sense of life, doesn’t it? And a passion,” Rachel says. “I definitely went through stages when I just didn’t really feel I had any kind of purpose, any reason for getting up in the mornings.”
Ward had beforehand battled depression on and off over the years. At instances, she struggled with homesickness for Britain and struggling to discover a sense of belonging in Australia.
She recalled that first major expertise with depression got here when she was a younger mom raising her kids far from home in a international nation.
“Changes are confronting and hard … and then you get right to the bottom, and then you just have to change, and that’s what happened to me just around when the fires hit,” she said.
“My film career had really not delivered quite as I had hoped it would,” Ward continued. “I probably thought I was better than I really was, and I questioned why I wasn’t working more.”
Ward said that her lowest level got here when she stopped taking her antidepressants too abruptly and was hospitalized after a car accident.
“That was a pretty big moment,” her daughter Matilda said on “Australian Story.” “I think she scared herself.”
Following the fires, Ward turned satisfied that standard farming was no longer sustainable. Though Ward and Brown had managed the farm conventionally for many years, they determined to make the shift to regenerative farming.
“We started to talk about how we could change the management of the farm,” Ward recalled.
She explained that she threw herself into studying about regenerative farming practices, which she started implementing.
“It was exciting because it was new,” she says. “The fires were the catalyst to go, ‘We have to change, we have to start doing things differently.’”
Over the past few years, Ward has turned her full consideration to the transition and embraced the life of a full-time farmer.
In 2023, she determined to share her ardour with others, making the documentary “Rachel’s Farm” about sustainable agriculture and soil restoration.
Ward said, “You soon find it’s a very vacuous place to inhabit … it’s very empty and it’s very unsatisfying,” when speaking about her experiences farming. WireImage
While showing on “Australian Story,” Brown said that his spouse, who turned the farm’s supervisor three years in the past, is “very hands-on.”
“She’s bloody loving it and fully involved,” he said. “I can’t get over how much she does, but she loves it. That’s all that counts.”
“She got onto this regenerating of the land and in doing so, regenerated herself and came back to life,” Matilda said.
“The farm is this place where she’s powerful and she’s in control and she’s calling the shots and she’s busy and challenged,” she explained.
“It’s her without all the chatter and noise and all the stuff that she’s contended with,” Matilda continued. “She doesn’t change her clothes for a week. She swims in the dam.”
“She’s free at the farm.”
However, Ward confronted ageist backlash last December when she shared a glimpse at her life on her Australian farm. In a video she posted on Instagram, the actress appeared makeup-free and sporting short grey hair while driving an ATV.
In the clip, she thanked her neighbors, one of whom was seen serving to repair a water pump on her farm and also expressed gratitude to people who had shopped at her “paddock-to-plate” grocery community FarmThru.
While Ward’s post was met with many supportive feedback from followers, a number of critics left unfavourable remarks about her look.
“Omg!! What the hell happened to her. Wow!! She has aged really really bad,” one social media person wrote.
“Oh my goodness I am in shock..did not recognize you until you said your name,” another detractor added.
“NO LOVE NO WHAT HAPPENED TO U DEAR GOD SHOCKING,” one critic chimed in.
While talking to “Australian Story,” Ward admitted that she was shocked by the response to her post but dismissed the online criticism.
“A few trolls were a bit shocked about my grey hair, who maybe hadn’t seen me since I was 24, and then went, ‘Oh my God, that’s what you end up looking like,’” she joked.
“I was a catalyst for a conversation that I think people had been challenged by,” Ward explained. “Women weren’t allowed to have a wrinkle, weren’t allowed to go gray. Why do we feel we’ve got to pretend that we’re still 40 when we’re 68?”
“That whole harping … that we still have to be inappropriate beings is terrifying,” Ward continued. “To have to have our bums lifted and our breasts lifted and our faces drawn back. It just becomes grotesque.”
“All I can say is that it’s great to put that behind you, how you should look and be.”
Joking about the eye that she had obtained following her post, Ward said, “The more wretched I looked, the more followers I have.”
“How ironic that my going grey actually garnered me more attention than if I’d taken my top off?” she said.
At another level in her “Australian Story” interview, Ward explained that her priorities had shifted since her youthful years.
“I’m so past caring about what people think about one’s appearance or age,” she said. “All I want to hear is, ‘Actually, Rachel’s cows are looking pretty good.’”
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