Saskia Burmeister: Interview

Interview by Clint Morris

Interview with actor Saskia Burmeister
Starring in the movie Hating Alison Ashley.

Saskia Burmeister is quickly becoming one of Australia's new emerging talents

The support act - Delta Goodrem in this case - might be involuntarily stealing the attention from the headline act, but when all is said and done newcomer Saskia Burmeister couldn't care less -- if anything the rife media interest in her pop darling co-star only attracts more peepers to her film and lessens the workload of the Hating Alison Ashley promotional tour significantly.

"I actually really don't mind Delta's getting all the press…I kinda like it," smiles the attractive actress, who plays inmost drama queen Erica 'Yuk' Yurken in the film adaptation of Robin Klein's best selling novel.

"She's doing an amazing job of trying to go 'it's not my movie, it's Saskia's movie' anyway. She has been so gracious like that. She's a fantastic drawcard - because nobody knows who I am."

They soon will.

The daughter of a photographer father and photographer/producer mother, Burmeister decided as a youngster that she'd like to be a performer - inspired, in some respects, by an Oscar Winning great. "I was watching something with Meryl Streep in it, and that's when I decided that I wanted to be an actor.

"I started by being photographed, for ads and bits and pieces like that, by my father, and then, when I was ten, I turned around to him, my father, and told him I wanted an agent. I did this poem about a cockroach [for them] on camera, and ended up getting little bit parts," she explains.

In recent years, Burmeister's roles have got stouter, she starred opposite Sigrid Thornton and Peter O'Brien in the Australian thriller The Pact, had a leading role on TV's brilliant Wicked Science, and most notably, played the role of Jane Jones in the high-profile Ned Kelly.

"That [Ned Kelly] was the job that secured my place with the agency I'm with. It was actually a big thing to do that one - also because I had to leave school for that one," she confesses, adding that she dropped out only a couple months shy of completing her HSC.

"The industry doesn't wait for you, you wait for the industry, and it was saying 'get on board'. I loved school, I loved drama - I fully intended to go back, but I've worked essentially non-stop ever since. I worked back-to-back about eighteen months. People kept asking me if I wanted to go to an acting school, like NIDA, but I just thought well, I'm already doing it - why do I need to go train for it? I was learning on set, that was my training ground."

When Burmeister was offered the lead role in Hating Alison Ashley, she hadn't even - unlike most youngsters, who were forced to read it in school - read the book it was based upon. "I hadn't read it….I didn't even know it existed. Isn't that awful," she laughs. "I don't know where I was at the time - I wasn't a big reader. When I was younger I'd be more often reading plays, than books. So yeah, I read the script first. And I loved it, but I didn't know if I could do it, so I did as much preparation - as I could - on the part and just went in to my audition as Erica Yurken.

"A while back my producer asked me 'Question - always wanted to ask you this: Were you Erica Yurken when I met you? I said 'yes', he goes 'Well, it worked - because I just decided you were her," says Burmeister, adding that she was actually in L.A chasing work when she was given the part.

Saskia says whilst she can't relate fully to Yurken - she does share the same passion for plays, like her character does with "Romeo and Juliet" - she felt she had a good understanding of her, of who she is. "They originally wanted the character to be melodramatic and a bit of a hypochondriac, but I saw her differently. I saw her as very passionate, but mostly just a very troubled girl - someone who gets hurt very easily. She has this façade that's very dramatic but that's something that she puts on - that's not who she is. Erika, herself, is someone in need of acceptance."

Where Burmeister herself is looking for acceptance, in addition to being an actress, is as a screenwriter. She's written several scripts and says she has had some wonderful feedback from the U.S, but "I want to keep the work here. You ultimately want to simply get your movie made, and if that means it has to be made in England or America, then you go with that, but I'd really like to make something here," she says.

Whether it's in front of the camera, or behind, this is one pretty face definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

Hating Alison Ashley screens in Australian theatres from March 17th, 2005.
Click here for the movie review.

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