THE QUIET ACHIEVER

From satirical revue through TV comedy to award-winning drama, for more than 60 years Judi Farr was never far from the craft she loved. Yet her aversion to the limelight meant she was constantly being ‘discovered’ by appreciative audiences, writes Tony Sheldon.

Judi Farr 1938–2023
Described by her friend and mentor, the late Gordon Chater, as “one of the most underestimated actresses in the country”, actor and director Judi Farr died of respiratory failure in Sydney on June 29, aged 84. She became a household name for her comic television portrayals of long-suffering housewives Rita Stiller in My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours? and Kingswood Country’s Thelma Bullpitt.

Celebrated by critics and public alike for the extraordinary range and power of her work, Judi eschewed the limelight. Perhaps her inclination to fade into the background stemmed from her childhood. Judith Mary Stuart Farr was the first child of Phyllis and Herbert ‘Bert’ Farr. Born in Cairns, she had little memory of her father, whose death in Borneo during World War II prompted Phyllis to move the family to Sydney, where Judi and her brother Michael grew up in their grandmother’s small flat in Bondi. The beach across the road became Judi’s playground while her mother worked.

Aged nine, she won an elocution competition reciting Shakespeare’s This England at Sydney Town Hall. Regardless, Judi’s grandmother dismissed her as a “guttersnipe” who would never amount to anything.

Judi learnt ballet for 10 years from the age of six, eventually relinquishing her passion for dance for a less punishing career that supported her love of the beach.

A couple of months into her final year at Holy Cross College, Woollahra, she abruptly quit school, a decision she later regretted. While working as a receptionist, she saw an ad for a drama school and enrolled without telling anyone. “I was there for three months,” she said. “I learned how to close a door onstage without turning my back on the audience and how to kiss someone without touching them, neither of which I ever had to use. But I knew I loved it.”

She joined The Colony Players, an amateur theatre group on Sydney’s North Shore, but it was at the Genesian Theatre that 19-year-old Judi had her breakthrough, as Sabina in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. One critic praised her “delicious, foolproof soufflé of a performance”. Encouraged to turn professional, she booked passage to study drama overseas but got cold feet, instead finding regular employment in radio serials on Sydney’s 2GB, as well as becoming an audience favourite in the popular Phillip Street Theatre satirical revues.

In 1962, Judi made her television debut in a live broadcast of The Taming of the Shrew on ABC-TV and was mortified when the director would not delete a line describing her as “the beautiful Bianca”. The following year, Judi married Derry Macgillicuddy, with whom she had performed in a Genesian production. The couple had three children: Sean, Sarah and Bridie.

Becoming a mother brought about a shift in Judi’s attitude towards her career when McGooley came along in 1966. “It’s wonderful that an Australian show has been so successful but I’m not as excited as I would have been five years ago when I was utterly consumed with ambition,” she said. “I still enjoy acting but stardom is no longer the most important thing in life for me.” She cherished family time, spending long days at the beach, introducing her children to the etiquette of ‘how to ride a wave’ and insisting on nightly gatherings around the dinner table. “That is when we all air our problems,” Judi said. “Once we had a love session and told each person what we loved about them, and then we had a hate session. That was the best of the two.”

Set in working-class Balmain, the McGooley sitcom starred Chater, Farr and John Meillon. When it premiered on Channel 7, it was an instant ratings success and quickly became part of the fabric of Australian life. Judi was deeply embarrassed by the sudden fame − when she saw her face for the first time on a magazine cover at a supermarket checkout, she dropped her groceries and fled. She didn’t even own a TV set, and when a young Sean was informed by a schoolmate that his mother was on television, his bewildered reply was, “No, she’s not. She’s at home.”

In 1979, Gary Reilly and Tony Sattler created Kingswood Country, featuring Ross Higgins as the bigoted and blustering Ted Bullpitt, with Judi as his patient but dithery wife Thelma. Once again, the series caught the public’s imagination, running for four years and 89 episodes. Lex Marinos, who played son-in-law Bruno, felt Judi was the true star of the piece. “She was the one who created the ‘world’ of the show,” he recalled. “She found a way of negotiating that dizzy, daffy character into an acceptable reality around which the rest of us could revolve.”

In a dazzling change of direction, Judi secured the role of Linda Loman in the Nimrod Theatre production of Death of a Salesman, starring Warren Mitchell and Mel Gibson. “It’s the one that was a complete experience,” recalled Judi. “Wonderful director, wonderful play, we all adored each other, and it was a huge success. You can’t ask for more than that.” Director George Ogilvie was even more effusive: “Judi’s performance was one of the finest I’ve ever seen in the theatre, and Warren was of the same opinion. Her humanity brought out, along with the tragedy of their lives, the humour and downright ordinariness of the family she loved.”

In 1982, Judi began her long association with Marian Street Theatre in Killara, appearing in or directing 15 productions over the next two decades − most notably 84 Charing Cross Road, which had a return season by popular demand. In 1987, she hit another career high with her indelible portrayal of the bitter, judgemental Gwen in Michael Gow’s Away for the Sydney Theatre Company. “A lot of the women I play remind me of my grandmother,” Judi said. “She was horrible, but to get into it you have to find out why she’s horrible. And I have developed over the years a great deal of sympathy for my grandmother.”

For the next 25 years, Judi was rarely offstage, with highlights including Women of Troy (winning the 1992 Sydney Theatre Critics’ Circle Award for Best Actress), Angels in America, Cloudstreet, August: Osage County and as Miss Marple in A Murder is Announced. Onscreen she played designer Florence Broadhurst in Gillian Armstrong’s 2006 docudrama, Unfolding Florence, and Josh Thomas’s Aunty Peg in Please Like Me. She received an AFI Award in 2002 for her nuanced performance in Walking on Water.

Bunny Gibson, Judi’s co-star from her revue days, wrote, “Fortunately for forgetful audiences, Judi is discovered every few years and for a while there is great astonishment at this hitherto unnoticed treasure. Then the astonishment dies away until she is discovered again.”

In 2015, while working on the TV series A Place to Call Home, Judi was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the parotid gland, an aggressive cancer which had been misdiagnosed over many months. The seven-hour operation to remove it resulted in unilateral facial disfigurement. Over the next few years, she underwent several reconstructive surgeries, while also managing the lung disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.

In 2016, Judi graciously accepted a Sydney Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award, acknowledging that “now was the time to out my new face − this is the challenge I am now accepting”. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the performing arts in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Loved by her peers, a mentor and inspiration to young performers, Judi’s advice to aspiring actors was simple: “Enjoy it. It doesn’t last.” She is survived by her brother Michael, her three children and grandchildren, Lucy and Harry.

Obituary by Tony Sheldon. Originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald.