Entertainment

Which of our favourite Australians is set to play Judy Garland?

There can be few things more daunting for an actor than to have to play another very well known actor, especially when the star they are portraying is one of the silver screen’s best loved legends.

So even someone as well known and loved in her own right as Sigrid Thornton must have approached the role of Judy Garland with some trepidation.

Thornton says playing Garland was all in the eyes for her  as she played the Wizard of Oz actress in the upcoming telemovie, Peter Allen: Not The Boy Next Door, Thornton said: “Seeing myself in the brown contacts was really the clincher. My eyes are quite light so making them dark really changed my face.”

The Daily Telegraph quotes Thornton, who’s a lifelong fan of Garland, saying it was both a “thrilling and daunting” task to play the tragic star.

 The two-part series, brought forward to resuscitate Channel 7’s schedule, follows Allen’s life from his boyhood in Australia to his 1992 death.
Of course Sigrid Thornton is an icon of the Australian screen in her own right and has starred in many of the films regarded as classics of the Australian cinema, amongst them George Miller’s box office hit The Man From Snowy River, The Lighthorsemen directed by Simon Wincer. On our TVs her career highlights include Seachange for the ABC, The Boy In The Bush for UK’s Channel 4 opposite Kenneth Brannagh and BBC – ABC Co Production of The Far Country opposite Michael York.
Recently Thornton has been working on the second season of the ABC’s political thriller The Code will also feature Anthony LaPaglia​. The two star signings are a major coup for the drama.
Are you looking forward to watching Peter Allen: Not The Boy Next Door? In the stage version of his life –The Boy from Oz the late Chrissy Amphlett played Garland, how do you think the performances of Amphlett and Thornton will compare?
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