‘Pork Pie’ star has new look

Press, 4 July 1983, Page 14

‘Pork Pie’ star has new look

DIANA DEKKER

finds a New Zealand actress, Claire

Oberman, keeping fit and busy in London.

Easy-going, roly-poly Shirl of “Goodbye Pork Pie” is no more. The New Zealand actress, Claire Oberman, who decorated the hit movie’s yellow mini on much of its madcap journey from one end of the country to the other, no longer even looks like Shirl. A starring role in the British television series “Tenko,” in which she played an Australian nurse, Kate Norris, obliged her to appear war-weary and semi-starved. She lost more than a stone and a half over the time it took to film the two series of “Tenko” and retains her slim look.

Swimming, yoga, and aerobics help. “It was good to get it off,” she said.

The filming of “Tenko,” done in two nine-month stints, already seems a long time ago to Claire, 27, who arrived in London four years ago and has hardly stopped to rest since.

As well as film and theatre work she has gone to singing and dancing classes and made a living at ‘temping,’ being a legal secretary and working at a building centre. Sometimes she performs as a clown, for fun in London’s colourful Camden Market, or in churches and schools. Claire was born in Morrinsville, daughter of a farmer who was a jazz trumpeter at nights. The family later bought a shop in Te Aroha. Claire went to Te Aroha College, where she spent much of her time coercing her schoolmates into plays. “I was very lucky with the opportunities at Te Aroha College,” she said.

At 17 she was accepted for drama school in Wellington. She was unusually young. She worked in theatre in Wellington and in radio, and played a part in the television series “Moynihan,” and in “Joe and Koro.”

She landed a “superb” role in “Hunter’s Gold,” did

a tour with the Court Theatre, Christchurch, then stretches with Unity and Downstage in Wellington. She spent 18 months at Centrepoint in Palmerston North, and from there went to Mercury in Auckland for two years. Radio and writing continued to fill in spare moments.

“Then ‘Pork Pie’ happened,” she recalled. After that she left for the United States and worked her way through it “doing clowns in churches and schools.”

Her first real stop was Holland, where many of her relatives live.

“It was lovely to speak my own language again, she said. Now she is settled in London.

“I want to live in England. I love the architecture, the aliveness. I love the history, the theatre, the music, the possibility of things here, and because it’s so close to Europe. “I adore Switzerland, Holland, and Spain. It all feeds my work. “New Zealand is pretty isolated, and when you’ve had 15 or 20 years there you’re ready for other things. “When you’ve seen a number of other countries you suddenly see the universality of things. That’s wonderful for my work.

“That doesn’t mean I might not ever go back there. I might want to be a farmer. I might have had enough of the disadvantages of the European way of life.

“It depends on how the old career goes. “I’ll always have deep feelings for New Zealand. My mother and brother are there.

“New Zealand gave me my growth. One is growing, expanding, moving on, and that does mean in a way that you can’t go back.”

One of her most memorable jobs in London was taking part in a recording session with Paul McCartney for a pilot based on the adventures of Rupert Bear. She was Rupert Bear —

“running around the studio being banged on my back by Paul McCartney so I would make the right noises. The music was just fantastic.’ Some weeks ago she was knocked off her bike in London’s dense traffic. As she was ruefully recovering from hurting her face in the accident her agent rang to say there was the possibility of a job with the West German television group, 2DF Channel 11. Within hours she was flying to Munich, where director Rainer Erler accepted her as lead in a thriller movie with a planet nurturing message. Ten days later she was filming in Perth, Australia, where much of the action was to take place. She played an air hostess. “I dived over to Auckland for four days to see my mother, then we were filming in Singapore, then back to London. “Now I’m flat hunting, and I live on the dole. “It’s either a feast or a famine in this business. “I’ve got an interview lined up with the National Theatre though,” she said, crossing her fingers. “I just go with the flow.” Claire has found that her star status in “Tenko” has meant a marginal loss of anonymity in London. “People stop in the street to stare at me and whisper ‘Tenko’ in the tube.” When the series first went on screen in Britain she was getting about 50 fan letters a week, some from young people, some from men wanting to take her out, and some from older women. She still gets several letters a week.