Gemma Ward: Model on a roll

The article is from Herald Sun.

by Billy Rule
From: Sunday Mail (SA) 

February 06, 2011 12:00AM

SHE'S been a virtual recluse since friend Heath Ledger's death. But now supermodel Gemma Ward is back. 
 
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BACK in 1997 when the school play was being cast, the most beautiful girl in the class waited for her name to be called. The play was Hansel and Gretel , and she would be Gretel. Of course.

No one else could play Gretel like she could and everyone knew she desperately wanted the part.

But when the most beautiful girl was given her role, it was as if she'd been handed a poisoned apple. "You," said the teacher, "will be the witch."

The most beautiful girl flew into a rage. How could this happen? If you're beautiful, you're good, if you're ugly, you're bad. It's as simple as that when you're a child.

Behind every beautiful face there is always a story. And the girl with some of the most delicately mesmerising features in the world today is peeking out again after three years inside a self-imposed tower. It is time to step out from behind the magazine cover and write the next chapter.

Gemma Ward is a model - a supermodel - and it's a career she hugs with pride. But her true passion was born in a school play in Perth in 1997 - a clumsy production in which she learned it's the person inside the costume who counts, not just what they're wearing. And to be that person you have to act, and that's when young Gemma fell in love with the magic of make-believe.

"I got on stage for the first time when I was seven," she recalls. "From seven until I was about nine it was probably more to do with just being on stage and having the attention.

"But when I was nine, I did the Hansel and Gretel  play with a very wacky teacher who, when I look back now, really did steer me in the right direction.

"Anyway, I had been acting for a couple of years and it was something I decided I wanted to do with my life. But she didn't cast me as Gretel and I was devastated.

"So I approached her and said, `I don't really know why you didn't give me Gretel. It was the role I wanted and everybody else in the class didn't - there was nobody who wanted it as much as me'."

"I was very precocious about it. It was life or death for me, but she gave me the role as the witch and she said to me `Gemma, I gave you this role because I knew it would be the most challenging and also the most rewarding.' She was right. I immersed myself in the whole character.

"I got the voice right and the cackle, and it became a character study. And for the first time I realised it wasn't me being on stage getting the attention, it was really getting absorbed in somebody who wasn't me and losing myself.

"So that was the moment when I said, `Ok, now I know what acting is; now I know what this is really about.' Yes, that was quite exciting."

Gemma Ward's is quite a Cinderella story. Discovered by a modelling agent in 2002, the 14-year-old soon had the fashion world in a spin with her ethereal, wide-eyed look and gangly grace. Within a year she was in Italy meeting Prada creator Miuccia Prada. At 16, she was on the covers of US Vogue  and Time  magazine, and at 17 she was the face of Calvin Klein's Obsession Night perfume.

In 2006, she was earning $25,000 to stride the catwalk and a year later Forbes  magazine named her in the US Top 10 money models with an annual haul of $3.5 million. The glass slipper was obviously a perfect fit.

But as she sits in her New York apartment rugged up against a cold winter's night and gazing at a giant map of the world that dominates one wall, she is the first to admit that a fairytale can fracture. And Gemma's clock struck midnight with the untimely death of fellow Perth actor Heath Ledger, whom she had met in New York in November 2007, just before her 20th birthday.

"We were both struggling with things that I won't get into, and we bonded over that," she says.

"He said, `You know, let's just be there for each other through these hard times we're both going through.' And we developed a relationship and started seeing each other."

That Christmas they returned to WA and met each other's families. But less than a month later, on January 22, 2008, Ledger was dead from an accidental prescription drug overdose. Gemma mourned in private, returning to Perth for Ledger's funeral.

"I have taken a break from the spotlight for the last few years and it was something spurred by Heath's death," she says pensively.

"So it was a retreat from many things in my life. I didn't know how long it would take, I didn't know if it would solve anything but I set out to really focus inside myself."

During most of our conversation, the striking supermodel laughs. And laughs. Giggling and gorgeous. But when talking about Ledger, she is solemn and wistful.

"He was an incredible person, unlike anybody I've ever met," she says. "He was one of a kind - extremely sensitive, extremely honest, extremely generous. He was somebody who gave his all to everything - no matter if it was the person in front of him serving coffee or the role he had immersed himself into - down to the finest detail of his character.

"He was a devoted father. I will never forget seeing him with Matilda and the way she looked at him and the way they were together - she was his whole life and he loved her so much.

"He was not only somebody I greatly admired and who was fun to hang out with but someone who really did change my life. He got me to reassess and look deeply at things and focus on things that really mattered."

So when the catwalk princess returned to Perth for Christmas, it was as if a fairy godmother was hovering nearby when Melissa Cantwell from the Perth Theatre Company came calling.

The award-winning artistic director had long been a fan of the supermodel's creative side and believed she was a perfect fit for the play, The Ugly One,  a contemporary drama which centres on society's fascination with physical beauty.

Gemma read the script in an hour and was smitten.

"It's something I've dreamed of for many years," she says. "Melissa talked to me a little bit about the script but she kind of left it up to me to read and see if I liked it.

"So I drove home very fast and sat down and started reading the script. Mum was like `So, how did the meeting go?' and I was like `Hold on two seconds. I have to read this straight away' and I got through it in, like, an hour or less.

"I was laughing hysterically the entire way through it. I called Melissa up and said I loved it and would die to be a part of it."

With rehearsals and performances, she'll be in Perth for almost three months, back among family where the seduction of the stage began.

Her father, Gary, is a doctor. Her mum, Claire, is a nurse. Older sister Sophie models and writes, and she has younger twin brothers, Oscar and Henry. "I have a very, very creative family," she says. Getting lost in a book or the fiction of fairytales was a hobby for Gemma as a child. And her knowledge of Hans Christian Andersen resonated when she was offered the role of Tamara, Queen of the Mermaids, alongside Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides , which comes out in May.

"As a child, I was a clown," she says. "I didn't hesitate to make a fool of myself and I would love to completely take on wacky characters.

"To make my brothers and my sister laugh was the greatest joy to me in my life. I like people who can make fun of themselves a lot.

"I think if you can make fun of yourself, it's a great thing and I find that very appealing."

And maybe that's why she's so comfortable in her own skin. During her early modelling days, international fashion news was dominated by the Italian campaign to banish schoolgirls and skeletal waifs from Milan's catwalks.

Today, debate bubbles along about what actually is the perfect size for a photo shoot. Ward looks on comfortably.

"I wasn't a child when I started out. I was a teenager," she says. "I wasn't all that innocent, either. I wasn't taken advantage of; I knew what I was doing.

"I'm definitely not regretful of anything. I look back with pride on everything I've done."
And what about the future - in, say, 10 years? Will she still be in New York, or back in Australia?

"Gosh, 10 years," she says. "I'll be 33. I would like to have started a family by then. My mother is my greatest inspiration - my father, too - and one day I'd love to have a family and raise them just like we've been raised."

And, of course, they'd all live happily ever after.


http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/gemma-ward-model-on-a-roll/story-fn6br97j-1226000788861