It was always going to take something special to drag Rachel Ward back in front of the camera, and in The Death and Life of Otto Bloom – the film that officially kicks off the Melbourne International Film Festival on Thursday – she found it.
It wasn't just the fact she had 35 pages of dialogue, when "typically, you'd get five pages at most", she says. It was the fact first-time writer-director Cris Jones was looking for two women to play the female lead, a neuroscientist named Ada, at different stages of her life.
"It was a package deal," says Matilda Brown, Ward's daughter with actor Bryan Brown. "They were really looking for a mother-daughter. That narrows the field a lot."
"Neither of us gets hired for anything else," says Ward, whose humour is quick, sharp and frequently at her own expense. "There's huge competition among the mother-daughter possibilities."
Well, there's you two. And …
"There's Greta Scacchi and her daughter," offers Brown (Leila George is the daughter of Scacchi and American actor Vincent d'Onofrio).
"That's good, because she's always got the roles over me," says Ward. "Finally!"
Ward last acted in the 2007 mini-series Rain Shadow. "I'd really put my acting hat away and didn't think I would ever be tempted to go back," she says.
She's been busy in the intervening years, but as a director, a move she made in 2000, when she was 43.
"Of course, it was about taking control," she says. It was better than sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, or resigning herself to the "very short shelf life" all actresses feted for their beauty inevitably face.
"I wanted to stay in the business, I really enjoy the business, but I just wasn't getting enough work," says Ward, who hopes to shoot a new feature, Palm Beach, early next year.
"It took a long time to go back and do the shorts, to build up to a career as a director. It takes a long time for people's perceptions of you to shift. There's a long time where you're not taken seriously – 'it's just a whim, she'll do one short film and go back' – but it really wasn't."
When her daughter announced she wanted to join the family business, Ward told her to go to film school and learn a few other skills. "Don't limit your options by just being in front of the camera. It's a small industry here, so you've got to have more strings to your bow."
Brown heeded that advice and now has a dual career as an actor and director. Next week she begins shooting the second season of Let's Talk About, a 10-part series of short episodes (eight to 10 minutes) for Presto.
Mother has directed daughter in the past – in a 2010 episode of Rake, in the TV series My Place (2009), in the not-quite feature Martha's New Coat (2003). Could daughter imagine ever directing mother?
"I don't know if you would act again," says Brown.
"The role of an old tramp?" wonders Ward.
"I would love to," Brown says. "It would be so much fun. I'll write you a part."
"Of course I would," says Ward, claiming the mother's prerogative to have the last word. "But I'm much happier being behind the camera."
The Age is a media partner of the Melbourne International Film Festival, which runs until August 14. Details: miff.com.au
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