Sheridan Harbridge is currently playing singer Chrissy Amphlett in a theatre production about the Divinyls singerβs life. Harbridge, 40, has experienced her own pleasure and pain, including a short marriage to actor Michael Whalley (the two remain friends). Now single, she discusses the influential men in her life, including the theatre teachers who spotted her βfireβ.
Sheridan Harbridge is single, but says sheβd definitely marry again.
My paternal grandfather, Roy Harbridge, lived in Tyers, Gippsland [in Victoria]. He had a shed that was like a mad-manβs junkyard. He had an obsession with tinkering. It wasnβt a womanβs place, but that never stopped me from going.
My maternal grandfather, Laurie Waite, died when I was six months old. He was very handsome and looked like Fred Astaire. He ran a dairy farm and apparently had a really heavy stutter and was ticklish.
My dad, Bill, is like farmer Arthur Hoggett from the movie Babe. He has an incredible, complex and nuanced relationship with animals and humans. He worked as an earthmoving contractor and still lives in the same house that we grew up in. When he retired, he started singing in several choirs.
I am the sixth child of seven β with three sisters and three brothers. Dad was always inventing strange ways for us to do tasks, instead of just going to the shop himself to buy the part he needed to fix things. He is a wanderer and travels the country in his caravan.
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I am closest to my brother Nigel, whoβs 46 and works in IT. We all have a wicked sense of humour in our family, but he is very mischievous. My mum, Joy, would always buy wooden spoons in bulk to rap across his backside.
My youngest brother Joshua, 36, lives in Toowoomba in Queensland. I was off to drama school when he was still in high school, so we didnβt grow up as close.
When I got into NIDA in 2003, Dad couldnβt financially support me, but he helped in other ways. He put all my belongings in the back of a horse float and drove them to Sydney. All my brothers helped that day.
