By Christopher Wallenberg
22 Dec 2011

	Griffiths and Sally Field on "Brothers & Sisters."
	photo by Randy Holmes – © 2010 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

Griffiths grew up in Melbourne. Her mother raised her and her two brothers alone after Griffiths' father abandoned the family when his daughter was still in grammar school. The young Rachel struggled for a while with the loss, internalizing her feelings.

She spent a year at university, but then decided to apply to Australian acting conservatories. When she didn't make the cut, she instead studied drama at a public university. After school, she spent several years with the theatre company Woolly Jumpers, where she performed at schools, community centers, and even prisons. Later, she toured Australia in a stage production of The Sisters Rosensweig with Tony Sheldon, the Tony Award-nominated star of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

What she first loved about acting was the spontaneous creativity of improv-style theatre games. "It was so fun, because we just made up shit all the time — shows and plays and scenes and improvisation…I loved the kind of crazy creativity of that," she says.

"Then as I got older, I just liked the exploration of the human being in living, breathing, three-dimensional form. I found it more satisfying than the academic analysis of the human being, from a sociological, psychological, sociopolitical, or political point of view. I found that actually being inside a character and exploring it was more fun."

She says she thinks she was destined to become some sort of artist.

"If I didn't end up as an actress, I would've ended up as someone like Tracey Emin — you know, like putting my bloody sheets in a tent and exhibiting that. To me, to separate what's crucial and critical and fundamental about life from your work — spending 10 or 12 hours a day — seemed like an insane idea to me. So I had to find some job where the two met."

	Griffiths on opening night
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

After Griffiths wraps up her stint in Other Desert Cities (likely by the end of January), she and her family will head back to Australia. Her role in "Brothers and Sisters" has kept the family in Los Angeles for a large part of the past five years, so she's thrilled to be returning Down Under for an extended period. While there, Griffiths is hoping to direct her first feature film, which she says is close to getting a green light (she's directed several shorts already). Titled "B-Model" and written by Aussie writer Samantha Strauss, the film tells the story of 16-year-old girl coming of age, unchaperoned, in the world of international modeling.

"It's a girl's story that's hip and funny and sweet and heartbreaking," says Griffiths. "So that's a big reason that we're going back to Australia."

She also hopes to return to the stage in the coming year, perhaps acting in something at the Sydney Theatre Company, run by Cate Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton. "I want to try to make that work, so that might be the next play I'll do."

Indeed, Griffiths says Blanchett had suggested a part for last season, and they had a number conversations about it, but "I was just finding it hard to commit, because it was so far off, and Sydney is not my hometown," she says. "So I passed on something that I was really quite rueful about. It was a very hard decision."

Griffiths will also be seen in the upcoming Australian indie, "Burning Man," opposite Matthew Goode, which screened at the Toronto Film Festival this year. "It's all told from the point of view of a man who's basically going on a sexual rampage after losing his wife to cancer. But there's some big laughs. It's funny, but black," she says.

So does Griffiths see herself returning to the network television milieu? "I was joking to my agent recently, 'I'm really over playing complicated people. I just want to be the D.A. bitch in leather on 'Hawaii Five-0,'" she says, with an exuberant laugh.

Now that she's gotten a handle on playing Brooke, what she's struggling with most are the distractions of live theatre, such as latecomers and ringing cell phones that seem to go off at every performance, especially during those Wednesday matinees.

"Today, there were nine phones that went off in the first act alone. I almost lost it. Everyone keeps telling me, 'You've got to suck it up. You've got to get professional.' But it was driving me crazy!"

Still, she says, there's absolutely nothing like starring in your first Broadway play. "It's so electric on Friday nights. I just love those Broadway houses."

More than anything, though, Griffiths cherishes the time she has left playing such a meaty and fulfilling role in a play she adores. "I just loved the piece so much the first time I saw it," she says. "I loved its elegance and its audacity. I loved what a great night I had. I loved how much it made me feel and think and how it created this world that I'd never been in before, that stayed with me for a tremendously long time."

Christopher Wallenberg is a freelance arts and entertainment writer based in Brooklyn. He's a frequent contributor to the Boston Globe, Playbill and American Theatre magazines.

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