Justine Clarke: ‘New work is what I find exciting – scary exciting. I’m old enough and ugly enough to do that now’

Justine Clarke has already trekked from her home in Sydney’s inner-west to meet me, yet she’s still maintaining a formidable pace. Along on a 7km path for this interview she’s not remotely out of breath (unlike me) and doesn’t ask to sit on a bench once (I think about it, but crash on). The actor is as fit as a fiddle.

“I ran a half marathon just before I started rehearsal for Julia this time around,” says Clarke as we walk along the harbourside pathways of Drummoyne. It’s a mostly-flat pedestrian and cycle track known as The Bay Run. Clarke regularly runs here or walks her rescue dog, Benny. She points out the glimmering water in the coves. “It’s beautiful around here, there’s estuaries, beautiful cliffs and it has really rich Indigenous history as a significant meeting point and site for fishing.”

Clarke became a runner later in life, she says. “I didn’t really discover running until I was in my 40s. For me it’s a mental health thing, it clears my mind and helps me generate creative angles on things, which is something I didn’t expect,” she says.

“I find the motion quite a creative state for thought and it’s great for memorising lines. I’ve spent many, many a walk mumbling to myself, like a mad woman.”

We’re talking a few days into Julia’s return season at the Sydney Theatre Company, with Clarke embodying the titular character of the former prime minister Julia Gillard. The audience response has been as enthusiastic as it was first time around. If anything, it’s even more positive, says Clarke. “It was still being written when we first opened in Sydney [in April 2023],” Clarke says, , explaining minor tweaks to the script were made daily. And at that point, she hadn’t met Gillard in person.

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“I knew she had been very gracious with [playwright] Joanna Murray-Smith throughout the whole writing process. She basically said, ‘write what you want’. She was very trusting and open about that, which I think speaks to her character. As far as we knew on opening night, she hadn’t even read the play.”

A former child star, Clarke has carved a stellar career in television, theatre and the music industry, with five children’s albums under her belt. In conversation, she’s warm, thoughtful and softly-spoken with the occasional flash of fire in her eyes.

Today, she is wearing a Taylor Swift friendship bracelet that reads “Real Tough Kid”, a souvenir from the concert she went to with her daughter, Nina.

Clarke is passionate about positive stories told by women about women. “I felt very strongly that Julia was about all women, not just about her. It’s about what we sacrifice as women for our careers,” she said. “But it’s not a trauma story. It’s about a woman who stands her ground. And that’s a positive story. She’s not a victim.”

Gillard eventually caught up with the show that bears her name – in which Clarke performs an exceedingly deft impression of her distinctive voice and bearing – in Adelaide.

“I heard her voice before I saw her,” says Clarke, smiling. “I was getting changed and she was on her way backstage, talking to people in the hallway. Hearing that voice for the first time in person … that was something I’ll never forget.”

Gillard was very generous with her time afterwards, says Clarke. “That was great validation, in a way. I wanted her to feel what I feel every night on stage – that undeniable impact that the misogyny speech she delivered in parliament had, not just on our social history but on women at the personal level. I’m sure she gets a lot of accolades wherever she goes, and a lot of appreciation, but people want to hear that speech again, they want to feel what she felt in that moment. I think that’s why it’s a powerful night in the theatre.”

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Julia has been Clarke’s world for the better part of two years. Before that, she performed in the devastating one-woman show, Girls & Boys, about a smart, funny, potty-mouthed mum of two who survives horrific domestic violence. Both times she carried the entire play on her shoulders, something that is still relatively rare for women in Australian theatre. Rarer still for actors of “a certain age”.

“Honestly, I would never have imagined that this would be the kind work that I would be doing in my 50s,” she says taking a seat on a bench looking over the water. “You expect to get those ‘mum’ roles like Betty Heslop in Muriel’s Wedding the Musical; they are important characters sometimes but not the focus of the play. I could never have imagined doing something like Julia and it’s been incredible to be challenged like this, and to be terrified again by the work, to take a risk.”

Now, Clarke says she’s coming out of the intense parenting stage of her life – she has three adult or almost adult children – and wondering what might come next. “For the past 10 years I’ve been focused on mental health because it’s something you have to be vigilant with,” she says. “It’s a very chaotic, busy, kind of violent world out there, and you have to combat that by finding peace, finding stillness, being kind to yourself. You have to actively do that. It won’t happen unless you turn your mind to it.”

She says when you’re in the throes of parenthood you feel like you’re “lurching from one lunch to the next” just trying to get through. Her youngest is now three years away from finishing school and she says she’s quietly changing her outlook.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever consciously thought about what’s next, things have just arisen for me that I really wanted to do. But I now have time to make more considered decisions.”

After Julia ends, Clarke has no definite plans for more stage work. She’ll be stepping into her regular role in the new season of the Channel 7 drama series RFDS. “As an actor, I don’t have that need to play this role or that role.

“New work is what I find exciting, scary exciting. Maybe that’s just me at this point in my life. I’m old enough and ugly enough to do that now.”

She says the industry is changing. “My observation is the good roles for women over 50 are produced by women, and driven by the actor themselves, or the writer. You can’t sit around waiting for the phone to ring. You have to want to tell a story and fight hard for it.”

• Julia is playing in the Drama Theatre at Sydney Opera House until 19 October 2024, and will tour QPAC (Brisbane) and Merrigong Theatre Company (Wollongong) in 2025