Sarah Wynter is blushing. She drops her face into her hands, but there's no hiding she's as red as the ketchup she just poured over her classic New York breakfast of eggs, hash browns, toast, and coffee. Then she laughs so hard people seated nearby turn around. Newcastle-born Sarah is recalling the moment, 14 years ago, when she arrived in New York to be an actress. She was 17.
"I had saved up $800, and boy, I thought I was a millionaire. My uncle gave me three nights in a hotel when I landed and I thought, well, that's all I need, because surely by day four I'll be on my feet.
On her feet? Try on the floor. "I finally got a waitressing job and was fired on my first night because I talked too much to the customers and I forgot who ordered what. I can't even tell you how mortified I was, but then I said, 'Sarah, onwards'."
Onwards, indeed. Despite the comical if less than auspicious start, the indomitable Sarah eventually did land on her feet - and how. Though her starring role as Kiefer Sutherland's love interest, Kate Warner, on the hit series 24, gave her worldwide exposure, consider the following list and you realise that the once hapless waitress has worked with such big names as Ben Chaplin, Bruce Beresford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vincent Perez, Jonathan Pryce, Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts, David Wenham and Ally Sheedy.
"Growing up in Newcastle, all I thought about was becoming a stage actress," she says. "The idea that I would work with stars like Arnold in The Sixth Day or Kiefer was not even on my radar. I was dreaming about doing a play at the Opera House."
Tall, blonde, with a smile that could light up a stadium, Sarah, 31, doesn't appear to have lost touch with her Australian soul, despite living for almost half her life in the US. She is self-deprecating in the classic Aussie manner, quick to laugh and modest. There is also a softness to her demeanour. You realise she is proof positive that nice girls can finish first.
This year, she has three new films, L.A. Dicks (opening this month) with Michael Madsen, Shooting Livien, a meditation on the perils of fame, with All Sheedy, and her first Australian movie, Three Dollars, opposite David Wenham and Francis O'Connor. Oh yes, and a recurring part in a little thing called Stephen King's The Dead Zone on television. And if this weren’t evidence enough of her good fortune, cupid has been at work, too.
"I am utterly smitten," she says of Daniel Peres, 31, her boyfriend of one year and editor-in-chief of the US men's magazine Details. "We don't have firm plans to marry, but we are very happy together."
Honestly, if Sarah Wynter weren't so likable, you'd kind of like to strangle her.
As we talk, it's clear that someone has recognised Sarah and is staring at her. It's the power of television, she says, it delivers a surreal, instant recognition factor. One day you’re a working actress, the next thanks to 24, you're a paparazzi most-wanted.
She accepts the situation, but has to adjust. Arriving at JFK airport recently, she noted photographers and a cluster of autograph hounds waiting at the arrival gate. "I looked around wondering who they were waiting for," Sarah says, laughing, " I was so shocked they were waiting for me. It's just so weird when that happens."
Not that Sarah is altogether unfamiliar with "weird". The girl does live in touchy-feely California, and in L.A. Dicks she plays a wealthy yet avowedly Buddhist LA wife who gets caught up in comic a detective caper. "I live in LA. I see those women all the time, Sarah says with a laugh, suggesting plenty of material to study.
"The city is the capital of the self-improvement culture. You can be rich and chant and promise to give up all your earthly possessions - sure, it's all normal!"
So, making Three Dollars, which was shot in Melbourne and in which she plays the long-lost love of a man (David Wenham) in the midst of a life crisis, required, she says, a full 360-degree turn and then some. No chanting, no granola eating while the camera was rolling. Nothing but straight drama.
"Working on Three Dollars meant so much to me because it was my first film at home. On set, it was familiar, yet foreign as well. I did worry I wouldn't get the accent right, because I've been working in an American accent for so long. But it was fine."
Sarah is full of praise for David Wenham. "It's his movie, he's extraordinary," she says, adding that there were fewer differences between filming in Australia and filming in Hollywood than you might imagine. "The one thing you see straight away is how hard the Australian crews work. And they are thinner. Not as much eating between takes that’s for sure!"
It’s telling of the circuitous path of success that it took Sarah nearly 15 years to make her Australian debut. Though she auditioned for both NIDA and the late-80's TV show E Street, the subsequent stinging rejection turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It spurred her to move to New York, where she trod the path of all young hopefuls, studying acting, waitressing (she got a new job and kept it), babysitting and acting off-Broadway. "It was years before I got an agent or a union job. But I never felt I was doing the wrong thing. I knew this was what I wanted," she declares.
Like all good tales about perseverance, Sarah's paid off when, in 1997, she was cast in the pilot episode of Sex and The City (her first nude scene) and the movie Species 2. From there the story sounds like a fairytale, with Sarah chosen to play the English wife of Ross in Friends - until you hear how the pumpkin never showed up to take Cinderella to the ball.
She taped one episode of the mammoth hit, only to be replaced. "It was devastating," she recalls. "Here I get offered eight episodes on the hottest show on TV and then it's gone. But David Schwimmer [Ross] called to say, don't take it personally, it happens to all of us.”
Today, the actress cites the case of Friends as one of the best lessons she has learned. "This is a business of rejection and it happens to everyone. I understand it now and move on."
Yet Sarah had something else in her arsenal that helped move past the disappointment and focus on the next goal. The example of her late grandmother, Joy Cummings, Australia's first female lord mayor. She talks about Joy, who was elected to Newcastle's top job in 1974, with a combination of love and awe.
"She was a feminist, and environmentalist. Hers was the first [town] hall to fly the Aboriginal flag," Sarah says proudly. "I hope I have a percentage of her in me. I would be very proud to say I do. When I was small, she was just mythic. I remember she would be picked up and driven to the town hall. To me she was the Queen."
She was also a powerful role model, "Politics can be such a dirty business, and she would always say, never let them get to you, head up. I think of her a lot if I am having a hard time, she inspires me. I hear her saying, 'Sarah, don't listen to naysayers. Stay on the path’."
Which is what Sarah did, culminating in starring with Ben Chaplin and Winona Ryder in the thriller Lost Souls, wit Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Sixth Day (Sarah played his nemesis), with Eric Roberts in Race Against Time (she was a bounty hunter in the future), all in 2000, and then directed by Bruce Beresford in the 2001 historical drama Bride of the Wind.
"It was very emotional the first time I was on a set with big movie stars," she remembers. "I'll never forget it and I still have those moments. I will be on set, I can be really tired, and I look around and say, 'Sarah, you're so lucky to do this. It's such a privilege'."
If Joy Cummings was one seminal influence on Sarah, the California's governor is not that far behind. They've worked together and Arnold still counts Sarah as a friend, inviting her to his inauguration.
"Arnold Schwarzenegger, for me, was a lesson in the power of focus. Here was a scrawny boy from Austria who decided he wanted to be the strongest man in the world. And he did it. Then he decided he wanted to be a movie star and he made it happen. Now he is governor of California, an frankly I am not surprised. His focus is amazing, ...you can't help but be influenced."
By the time Sarah landed on 24, she was a minor star in the constellation. Then the reach of a hit show kicked her into a different stratosphere. She had more leverage in Hollywood, more scripts arriving.
Interesting, then, that she was initially hesitant about moving into series TV. "I wondered if my dreams of being a film actress were dashed if I did TV. Isn't that the weirdest thing?" she says now. Why? "Because it was such a fantastic experience. Television teaches you to take direction very quickly, you think faster."
Back on the small screen playing the love interest to Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone, Sara has no reservations this time around. "It's nice to be back on TV. I love the pace and instant gratification."
In Hollywood, Sarah's reputation is that of an actress with tremendous self-discipline. Yet the girl who likes to be in control became unhinged when she met boyfriend Daniel Peres at Christmas 2003.
"I was bowled over, she says like a love-struck teenager. (Sarah's previous long-term relationship with screenwriter Emanuel Xuereb had ended a year before.) "He's been to Australia twice already, he just loves it. I was sorry he couldn't come when I was co-hosting the IF awards in November, [but] he was working."
With Daniel based in New York, Sarah now divides her time between the Big Apple and her home in Hollywood Hills. She describes him as "a book junkie - his apartment is full of first editions," who is her perfect fit. When we're not working, we’re are homebodies."
Curiously, he has zero interest in celebrity, although he is dating one. Next time you see Sarah in public, you'll notice Daniel is out of range in the background. "He doesn't want the attention," she explains.
Ask Sarah if she enjoys her fame and success, and shell carefully differentiate between the two. The latter she appreciates, the former she is still coming to grips with. Tell her they sell Sarah Wynter autographs on eBay and she nearly falls into her plate.
"I don't feel famous, honestly. Sometimes people will come up and say, 'I like your work', which is very flattering. But selling my autograph?"
She is however, thrilled that her family, mother Helen, brother Brendan and sister Rainie, are proud of her success - "my mother loves it, but she doesn't get caught up in it" - as is the entire city of Newcastle. "I'm proud to be from Newcastle. I love that they claim me."
They are not the only ones. The fashion industry has claimed her, too, with Sarah becoming something of a glamour icon on the red carpet. A self-described "girl who to dress up," Sarah single-handedly put Lisa Ho's name on the fashion map after she donned one of her gowns for the Emmy Awards in 2003.
"I don't feel pressure to be on the best-dressed list but I spent a year doing a TV show [24], where I wore the same outfit every day, so it was nice to dress up. I pick my own clothes, but I have a great relationship with Lisa [Ho] and with Giorgio Armani. The fact that Lisa got recognition made me really happy. She deserves it."
Yet while fashion and the red carpet are part and parcel of any actress’ life these days, Sarah is careful to keep her eye on the prize – a solid acting career. “I know it’s cliché`, but all I want to do I work with people I respect… to pushed as an actor and to grow
You should know that every time Sarah sits down now with an American journalist she is asked what it's like to part of the Aussie invasion of Hollywood. She shocks them with her answer, which is that she doesn't believe herself part of it.
"When I came, the Australian invasion - Russell, Cate, Heath - hadn't yet happened. I didn't know them, so I don't feel part of that group."
Yet maybe now, having dipped her toe in Australian celluloid waters, she might qualify for membership. She would like that. "I'd love to do another movie in Australia. Working in Hollywood is a gift I continually appreciate, but finally working at home, that's a whole other kind of joy." .
