Jo Kennedy
Jo Kennedy | |
|---|---|
 Kennedy in 1983 | |
| Born | Josephine Marghrite Kennedy 5 August 1962[1] Warburton, Victoria, Australia[1] |
| Occupations | Actress, singer, screenwriter, director |
| Years active | 1980–2011 |
Josephine Marghrite Kennedy (born 5 August 1962),[1] known professionally as Jo Kennedy, is an Australian actress, singer, film director, and screenwriter. Her best-known role is her feature debut as Jackie Mullins in the 1982 musical film Starstruck. She then took roles in dramatic independent films, including Wrong World and Tender Hooks, while also starring in various TV and theatre productions, directing a number of short films herself and pursuing music. In recent years, she has retreated from public life to work as a therapist.
Career
[edit]1980s
[edit]Kennedy grew up in Warburton, Victoria.[1] Her first film appearance was in the 1980 short documentary Hearts in Paradise, which showcased "Jo, a new wave singer... compared and contrasted with Teresa, a would-be mothercraft worker... against the background of society’s general resistance and non-comprehension of that which is new and different."[2][3]
At age 19, Kennedy got her big break in the 1982 musical film Starstruck. She was cast by director Gillian Armstrong in the lead role of Jackie Mullens despite having no prior acting experience outside of a children's puppet show. During the audition, Kennedy and co-star Ross O'Donovan improvised a sketch in which they pretended the building was on fire, involving Kennedy hanging from a firehose out a window. Specific accounts of the stunt vary, but in any case, it was outlandish enough to win the roles for them both.[4][5] The soundtrack album spawned a hit single for Kennedy, "Body and Soul". However, she then had to put her singing career on hold for three years because of, according to her, "artistic differences" and "a dud contract" with a record company.[6] Following a gruelling American publicity tour for Starstruck with frequent interviews, Kennedy also decided she disliked the experience of "non-stop talking about (herself)".[7] Ever since then, she has avoided the pursuit of major stardom to focus on smaller, independent projects and creative pursuits.
In 1983, she travelled to "deserted, sub-tropical" St Bees Island to film the documentary Survival. Kennedy, Mike Willesee, Diane Cilento and Dr. Glynis Johns (not the British actress) were given a mission to find a way to survive for a week with no food supplied to them and only one day's supply of water.[8] That same year she appeared as Snake in a Sydney production of The Kid with the Nimrod Theatre Company.[9][10][11]
Her next major feature film role was in 1985's Wrong World, a drama in which she played a young woman with a drug addiction who befriends a disillusioned doctor and embarks on a road trip from Melbourne to Nhill. Kennedy was drawn to the role because it was completely different to Starstruck[12] and because she wished to humanise people with a drug addiction.[13] While her performance was not nominated for a local AFI Award, it did win her Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival.[14]
In 1986, she starred in the feminist cabaret TV special The Pack of Women which aired on the ABC. A soundtrack album was released, and Kennedy sang lead vocals on "Is That Me?" which was also released as a single.[15] That same year, she appeared in the play Slow Love at Sydney's Performance Space, a complicated work requiring elaborate cast coordination that is performed in a series of blackouts punctuated by various love songs; the script is written in four columns.[10][16] She also played Mary in Binge, a play about a woman named Adele who suffers from bulimia, at the Griffin Theatre.[17] Kennedy played Adele's supportive friend Mary who "(parodies) sexual woman but cannot find happiness" and also Adele's mother.[18]
In 1987, she appeared in No Worries at the Q Theatre in Penrith.[19]
In 1988, she appeared alongside Helen Jones in a Sydney production of the Wendy Kesselman play My Sister in This House at the Seymour Centre, based on the true story of two women employed as maids in 1930s France who ended up murdering their oppressive employer and her daughter.[20][21] That year she also appeared in Court in the Act, an educational film for high school students that warns of the legal repercussions of shoplifting and demonstrates the procedures of the Magistrates' Court.[22]
In 1989, she appeared in Tender Hooks with co-star Nique Needles, a social realist film about a turbulent but loving relationship set in Manly and Kings Cross.[23]
1990s
[edit]Throughout the 1990s she appeared in a number of other films, TV and theatre productions, and directed many films of her own. In 1990, she appeared in Golden Braid, a film by Paul Cox about a clockmaker who finds a braid of women's hair in an antique cupboard and uses it to masturbate. That year she also played Solveig in a Melbourne production of Peer Gynt[24] and appeared in