It's been a big decade for Melbourne-born actor Anna Torv, and her latest role as celebrated Australian author Charmian Clift in So Long, Marianne continues her run of iconic roles that have shuttled her between Hollywood and Australia.
If anyone can understand the highs and lows of an unpredictable, adventurous life that kicks off in Melbourne and takes a boundless trajectory into new work, relationships and experiences, it’s an international actress who has her own tales of hard-won independence, lessons learned, and life goals discovered and met.
After more than a decade living in Los Angeles, including marriage, divorce and having a son, Torv returned to our shores in 2020. Arguably, portraying an lauded Australian writer who was one of the pioneering ex-pats in an artistic group on the Greek island of Hydra, could not have happened without two decades of screen and life experience. And Torv, unsurprisingly, brings Clift’s nuances into life on-screen with tangible, visceral force.
Anna Torv as Charmian Clift. Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos
Torv confesses, “I’m always surprised that no one knows her, even though I did. There’s some heat around her at the moment because of the new book and a documentary. I hope she gets a bit more attention.”
Torv is referring to the unfinished autobiographical novel, The End of the Morning, which was released in April this year, and documentary Life Burns High, which debuted at Sydney Film Festival this year.
Following her long, award-winning performance as Olivia Dunham in the US series Fringe, Torv starred in the US thriller Mindhunter as psychologist Wendy Carr. She continued the science fiction/thriller bent she'd been on with the The Last of Us in 2023, which coincided with the second series of the hit Australian drama The Newsreader, and this year - in addition to So Long, Marianne - she's starred in the film Force of Nature: The Dry 2 and will soon be seen in new series Territory.
As much as Hollywood might want to claim her, Torv's turn as pioneering female newsreader Helen Norville in The Newsreader reminded local audiences of her undeniable skill in portraying a uniquely Australian woman in a very Australian environment. As the first female newsreader for national network show News At Six in the mid-1980s, Norville is subject to derogatory put-downs from her seniors, unwelcome innuendo from industry men, and scrutiny for her relationship with fellow journalist Dale Jennings (Sam Reid). Norville was a far cry from Torv's first major role in what remains a cult favourite Australian series, The Secret Life of Us. Torv played the argument-loving, drama-seeking twentysomething Nikki Martel, who emerged in season 4 as a troublemaker determined to shake up the St Kilda sharehouse. From Nikki Martel to the outspoken, audacious Australian author Charmian Clift is a leap, but Torv’s roles as a psychologist in Mindhunter and newsreader in The Newsreader certainly nourish aspects of Clift’s life.
Anna Torv as Charmian Clift in 'So Long, Marianne'.
A relentlessly curious, articulate and observant author of women’s interior lives, Clift began as a journalist for former Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, before eloping with fellow journalist George Johnston and moving with her young family to London, then to the Greek island of Hydra without a skerrick of Greek language skills nor friends to show them the ropes. It characterised Clift’s adventurous, if occasionally reckless, nature and resulted in her best works, Mermaid Singing (1956) and Peel Me a Lotus (1959), both revelling in the ecstasies and minor devastations involved in establishing a life in a utopic, but alien, island home. Her own troubles with drinking and her philandering husband Johnston, would ultimately result in the family returning to suburban life, though Clift’s essays from those proceeding decades made clear that she never made peace with post-Hydra life.
In some ways, the love story of writers George and Charmian parallels the love story between famed singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ilhen, the pair at the centre of So Long Marianne. Both couples fell deeply, madly in love and pursued a life of curious, creative abandon outside of the stolid, suburban reality of their peers. Both couples would also suffer and hurt one another.
Charmian Clift (Anna Torv) with Marianne Ihlen (Thea Sofie Loch Naess). Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos
“Charmian and George were so ahead of their time,” continues Torv. “That move [from the UK to Greece] was so incredibly brave, but that’s who they were. The fact they ended up on Hydra at that time, you can’t comprehend how incredibly impressive that is.”
The island is lacking in some technological sophistication even today, the actress says. “The toilets don’t flush automatically, and all the water is imported. You can only imagine what it was like back then [in the 1950s]. They were in abject poverty, which she writes about so much. When you’re there, you see how it lays the path they took with their drinking and all the rest of it. It’s as if time stands still there.”
Torv describes that feeling as “island fever”, and despite Hydra’s immense beauty, the “claustrophobic” atmosphere was exacerbated by how tiny the island is. The cast and crew could walk everywhere and would bump into the same people daily. That closeness to community provided both a sense of security for Clift and her family, and a rigid structure that must have stymied her natural curiosity.
“I love that curiosity in her,” enthuses Torv. “If you’ve got any desire to create, any artistic blood, then you understand how that’s the tragedy of how things turned out for Charmian. The struggle of being a mother and a wife and also having a burning desire to create, this intellectual curiosity and wish to be stimulated in every way possible… That made her so alive and addictive to other people.”
Charmian (Anna Torv) at work in the living room of her home. Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos
They were older and struggling with affairs and drinking by the time Charmian and George encountered the idyllic, young romantics Leonard and Marianne.
“I don’t think they ever fell out of love,” says Torv. “There was a need, a desire along with that co-dependence. George was so sick that he couldn’t have survived without her. They both had affairs, openly or not. What the show does is depict Charmian’s warning to Leonard and Marianne. There are scenes that question the concept of a muse: what happens when you age, you have children… Charmian is quite harsh with Marianne in insisting that she not rely on a man for her happiness and identity.”
Torv won’t be lured into drawing parallels between her own life and Charmian’s, but the actress’s career is proof alone of how she has built and shaped her career internationally without any hand-holding or external pressure.
“I spent my youth on a network TV show in the US which ran for five seasons, and it took me a long time to find my feet again afterwards. It was such a structured way of working, a straitjacket, which taught me so much about when to hold back and when not to. ... [In] The Newsreader I flipped my approach entirely. I attacked that job with such joy! The third season is coming up and I think it’s better than the first two. It’s really satisfying when you believe in something, and it’s received well. I think Leonard understood that, too.”
Far from a straitjacket approach, director Øystein Karlsen rejected rehearsals or read-throughs of the script and filmed in natural light in a style closer to live theatre than typical filmmaking. It epitomises that sense of joy and jumping in feet first that Torv has embraced 25 years into her career. One might believe that Charmian would approve wholeheartedly of this approach to work and life.
All episodes of So Long, Marianne are streaming at SBS On Demand.
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So Long, Marianne
