‘Rake’ star has some amazing life advice and a new career

When Leigh Sales sits down to interview someone on ABC’s The 7:30 Report you know that you are going to get information that you might not know about the subject before.

This week Leigh interviewed the wonderfully talented Richard Roxburgh as he talked about starring in the hit show Rake as well as being a new children’s book author!

While most would know Richard as his tawdry character of Cleaver Greene on Rake, he is currently not a lot like his character. However, in school that wasn’t always the case. When talking about how he got into acting, Richard said that his life almost took another path. He told Leigh, “I wanted to go to university because all my brothers and sisters had. But I think I knew in my heart of hearts that what I really wanted to do was something creative but I couldn’t”. He continued that acting “was really the only thing that gave me insuperable pleasure while I was at university, and the rest of the time I was variously drunk and irresponsible and missing lectures all over the place. And a terribly lazy student.

“But then, you know, when I was involved in the university theatre productions, suddenly there was something that came to life. Suddenly there was something that I could devote myself to and I did.”

Learning a lot of lessons along the way, Richard has a great understanding of failure. Richard said “The most important thing my failures have taught me is that you have to go back to your own voice, to your own inner mechanics. To the voices that were beckoning you to do the thing in the first place. Which is why I will always go back to do theatre because it’s a little but very, very important thing in my life. It’s my home, my creative home if you like.”

The children’s book Artie and the Grime Wave was written and illustrated by Richard is available on Wednesday (12 October 2016) from publishers Allen & Unwin. When asked why he wanted to write a children’s book Richard said, “I started to muse on the possibility of writing something myself to that age range — my own level of maturity if you like.”

Rake season five will premiere early 2017.