The accidental star: How John Waters turned a cheeky bluff into a 50-year career

John Waters might not have ever become one of Australia’s most famous stage and screen actors, were it not for a little bit of luck and a whole lot of chutzpah.

He arrived as a 10-pound Pom at the age of 19 after a few years of playing music in London, knowing no one and with nothing but a single lead given to him by a relative who had spent time in the far-off land.

“I arrived in Australia with only one name scrawled on the back of an envelope that my uncle Tom had given me, and it was this George Patterson – he worked for Clark and Tait Pastoral Company in Brisbane.

“[Tom] said he can get you a job on a station, no problems at all. I know them all, and I went, ‘OK.’ So I saw this guy, and he said to me, ‘Well, yeah, you can get a job there any time because no other bastard wants to work on it.’ So I was sent on a train out of central Queensland, but I’m a very urban person, and there I was in the middle of nowhere.”

Central Queensland was never going to be the right place for Waters. These days his possessions are in the Southern Highlands, but his real home is on the road.

“I haven’t been home for more than about four days this year,” Waters says – but he loves the travel. “I like hotels. I just love having a place where you get back after a hard day’s work and someone’s cleaned and made the bed. What’s not to like?”

His temporary home now is in Melbourne, and we’ve met for lunch at Farmer’s Daughters the day before technical rehearsals begin for Fiddler on the Roof, which will open next week around the corner at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Waters spotted the 80 Collins precinct fine diner when he was performing up the road in Waitress and thought it looked like a lovely place for a meal.

It is, and we quickly decide on the two-course lunch option, with mains and dessert. Waters opts for lamb rump and coastal greens, followed by a dark chocolate tart. I am swayed by the Murray cod and tangelo and rhubarb ice-cream, and like almost everyone who has dined at Farmer’s Daughters, we decide to share the aligot, a creamy and rich blend of silky mashed potatoes and bitey Gippsland cheese. What’s not to like?

But back to that chutzpah. The son of Scottish character actor Russell Waters (“He was never famous, but my school friends would say, ‘Is that your dad I saw on telly last night?’”) was not made for jackarooing, but he thought he might give the performing arts a crack Down Under. Only problem was, he had no name on an envelope to open doors this time.

He saw in the newspaper that the movie Adam’s Woman was being shot on the NSW south coast, and its director, Philip Leacock, was staying at the Sebel Town House in Sydney.

“I knew this name because my dad knew him,” Waters says. “So I went to the Sebel Townhouse and I bullshitted my way. I said, ‘Oh, I’ve got an appointment to see Philip Leacock,’ and a young woman who was at a desk outside the room where he was said, ‘Do you have an appointment with Mr Leacock?’ I said yes. And she said, ‘Well, hang on a minute.’ She was obviously very suspicious.

“She didn’t have my name written down, and I heard her inside, and I heard this very English voice saying, ‘Well, yes, I do know Russell Waters. He’s a lovely man, but I’ve never heard of his f—ing son.’ But anyway, he said, ‘Show him in.’ He said, ‘Do you want to be on that film? What do you want?’ I said anything. And he said to his production manager, ‘Get the boy a job.’ So I started as a runner on the movie.”

While making tea and delivering rushes on the set, he learnt Jim Sharman was auditioning for an Australian production of Hair, which had scandalised and thrilled Broadway and London.

He landed the part in the Vietnam-era anti-war paean to free love and revolution, which set him on the path to stardom across stage and screen, both big and small – including, of course, nearly 20 years hosting Play School.

He became the most famous man in Australia for the preschool set, but his own children were completely unfazed. “Kids in childcare and primary school would say, ‘Oh, your dad’s on Play School’, and they thought everybody’s dad was on Play School because it was entirely normal.”

Waters was just 22 when his first child, Rebecca, was born and 24 when son Ivan came along, so they were of peak Play School age when he was hosting the program. He unexpectedly found himself a father again in his 50s, after marrying his third wife, Zoe Burton.

“When I met Zoe, she was 29, and I was 51, and she hadn’t had children,” Waters says. “She had a starter marriage, but she hadn’t had children. And I thought, yeah, I could go again. Why not? It was always a joy. I never did anything but love being a parent.”

By the time Archie, Gloria and Rusty came along, they were barely aware that their father had once been the talk of the playground. Not that they were unaware of his stardom, of course – as he was in everything from All the Rivers Run to All Saints and Underbelly, Waters’ children of all ages also heard plenty of “Is that your dad I saw on telly last night?”

But for those who grew up with it, Play School would always be his calling card. Our photographer, Simon Schluter, says Waters brought a certain rock-star bad boy glamour.

“John was cool because he had a scar,” Schluter says, pointing to his cheek. “There’s this cool bikie dude on Play School. Respect.”

The scar was a souvenir of not listening to his mother when Waters was a child in south-west London.

“I was probably about this high,” Waters says, gesturing about a metre off the ground, “and I was walking along with one foot on the sidewalk, one foot in the road. My mother was saying, ‘Don’t do that; it’s dangerous.’ And a guy on a bicycle came along, an American airman actually, who was based at the Bushy Park USAF base, which had been there ever since the close of the Second World War. He was horrified because I just stepped out in front of him and his bike smacked me in the face. Blood spewed everywhere, and so he carried me to the Teddington Hospital, which was down the road.”

The ensuing scar endeared Waters to generations of boys growing up with Play School, but one of his most defining characteristics is no longer visible.

“It’s faded so much,” he says, pointing. “It was low on this cheek. It almost just disappeared of its own accord. It’s very faint now. But it was quite vivid.”

The famous scar would be difficult to see today even if the ensuing years hadn’t dulled it, as Waters is now sporting a rather magnificent bushy white beard to play Lazar Wolf, the village butcher in Fiddler on the Roof, which is about to open in Melbourne after runs in Sydney and Brisbane.

Fiddler is set in the Jewish village of Anatevka in 1905 and follows the heartaches of Tevye, his wife and daughters and their community as they try to adapt to a changing world against a background of deadly pogroms, expulsion and persecution.

“I saw it back in the early ’70s. I was doing the first ever big stage show I ever did, which was Hair, and I’d gone into Hair just from being a singer,” Waters says. “I’d never been an actor on stage before. But my partner then, she was a new arrival to the Hair cast, but she had been in the touring cast of Fiddler on the Roof, which was still touring … It was an amazing show. I really, really loved it.”

He saw another production about a decade ago, starring his longtime friend and All The Rivers Run costar Sigrid Thornton as Golda, Tevye’s wife. Thornton is back this time around, as matchmaker Yente.

Waters joined the cast late, after rehearsals had started, as the previously cast Lazar Wolf had to pull out for medical reasons and the show Waters was in, Waitress, was closing early.

“For a mad period of about three weeks, I did the last weekend shows of Waitress here in Melbourne, flew to Sydney for the rehearsals [of Fiddler] while my understudy did the midweek shows [of Waitress], and then came back every weekend because the two theatre companies got together and arranged how they would share me,” he says.

‘I saw Sigrid sitting there, and I thought, ah, a friend! … I’m at a new school, but I’ve got a friend that I can have a laugh with.’

John Waters

Joining a cast already in rehearsals was somewhat daunting, he says. But when he arrived at the rehearsal room, “I saw Sigrid sitting there, and I thought, ah, a friend! I’ve got a friend. I’m at a new school, but I’ve got a friend that I can have a laugh with.”

Waters’ role of Lazar Wolf is a secondary character – though in this production, which is transplanted from a sold-out, five-star season in London and directed by Jordan Fein, the entire village of Anatevka stand as silent witnesses to the Tevye family drama instead of retreating offstage. (“It’s a lot of tableau standing – I find it very tiring. One of the worst things you can do is stand still for a long time when your lower back is screaming.”)

Waters is 77, making him the right age for Lazar Wolf, the much older suitor of the far younger Tzeitel.

“If I’d done it when I was 45, I might have played Tevye,” Waters reflects. But he is glad in a way he was not offered the part when he was the right age, as “I think a Jewish man should play Tevye.”

This production stars Troy Sussman in the starring role, and Waters says he is perfectly cast. “He’s been waiting all his life for this role,” Waters says. “He’s a proudly Jewish man who has been in theatre all his life, since he was very young, waiting for this role to come up.”

Many of the other cast are also Jewish, including Alexis Fishman as Golde, Tevye’s daughters and Ben Adler as the titular fiddler, and Waters says they have been generous in sharing their traditions with the rest of the cast.

“We do a Shabbat service on Friday evening, just a little blessing the bread and lighting a candle. The girls do the prayers, the daughters, they do the Hebrew prayers.

“It just lasts for about five minutes, and it’s a nice thing to do. Shabbat starts on Friday evening, and then we do the show.”

Fiddler is set to play through to the end of the year, and Waters does not yet know what 2027 will bring – though, as his Waitress experience proved, opportunities come and go quickly and unexpectedly.

He’s considering whether to return to a show with his band Radio Luxembourg, named after the station that beamed all the cool new music into the UK in the1960s, before commercial radio had a licence anywhere in the British Isles.

“I still sing and play with the band, which of course is actually being me, and I love doing that because I still love to play the music that I love,” he says. “I’ve got an audience of Baby Boomers out there just waiting to hear the next [show].”

Fiddler on the Roof is now playing at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Read more great conversations over lunch