‘Screaming girls chased me down the street’: how we made Strictly Ballroom

‘A big dude came up to me and said, “My wife dragged me kicking and screaming to see your movie – and it was the best thing she’s ever done”’

Baz Luhrmann was this cool guy two years ahead of me at NIDA, the drama school in Sydney. When I graduated, I joined his theatre company Six Years Old and the play of Strictly Ballroom came out of that. It was inspired by Keith Bain, who taught movement at the school. He was a ballroom-dancer who had left Australia for South America in the 1950s then came back with these shocking new steps. We talked a lot in rehearsals about the paso doble, and from that came Fran’s Spanish immigrant background. I thought up the name Frangipani because Sydney has frangipani trees everywhere. On my walk to rehearsals, I’d often pick one of the flowers to put in my hair.

It was while doing the play that I met Craig Pearce; he and Baz were ancient friends and ended up working on the screenplay. Craig and I were together for 13 years, and we have a daughter. But it was never a foregone conclusion that I would play Fran in the film. I did seven screen tests over the course of a year. Craig would say to me, “I’m only ever thinking of you when I write Fran.” Meanwhile, I was wondering: “What’s going to happen with me and him if I don’t get the part?” I felt this ownership of Fran because I’d worked on her for so long.

I was only told I’d been cast the night before we started. Even once we were filming, I had this sense of doubt: I’m not pretty enough, I can’t dance well enough – which is 100% Fran.

Baz had already got me doing pre-production work with Paul Mercurio, who played Scott. Paul was an extraordinary dancer with the Sydney Dance Company but he hadn’t done any acting, whereas I’d done the play but had less experience dancing. We sort of met in the middle. Fran and Scott are the centre of their own naturalistic world surrounded by all these larger-than-life characters. That’s typical of Baz’s peculiar, unique style. It’s morphed over the years but Strictly Ballroom is where he developed it.

None of us could believe we were making the film. It had been so hard to get funding, and everyone had told Baz it wouldn’t work. But I’ll never forget stepping on to the set. Fran’s house was so perfect. It was winter and frangipani wasn’t in flower so Catherine Martin [production designer and Lurhmann’s wife] had some made and stuck them in the trees. We stayed up doing those scenes until 2am because they needed the goods train to go past Fran’s house.

Paul and I travelled the world for a year promoting the film. There’d been Crocodile Dundee, but this was different. Muriel’s Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert came a bit later, and I think Strictly Ballroom established that trajectory of Australian film-makers taking bolder choices and creating a different image of the country. It’s still a blokey culture, let’s be honest. But it changed something.

I got a call from this eccentric person called Baz, who said he was making a film about ballroom dancing. He needed someone to choreograph Scott’s unconventional steps. I said: “No probs.” Then he rang back a year later when he finally had the money to make the film. He wanted me to audition to play Scott.