Chelsea Williamson and Rebecca Robinson are the latest among a crop of young Western Australian actors who are striving for international careers.
Williamson, who’s 20, has signed with a Los Angeles-based manager and will play a key character named Tiffany in Broken Contract, writer-director James Pentecost’s action comedy that starts shooting in Perth on April 28.
Christopher Morris (Crownies, Janet King) plays Max, a down-on-his-luck club owner struggling to make ends meet. When a local gang threatens his livelihood and his family, he hires a hit man to protect the ones he loves. Tiffany is a bartender in a seedy strip joint who is trying to make ends meet while trying to find a missing family member.
Robinson, 22, is the first Australian in some years to be selected to take part in the Master’s program for film at the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama in London.
Before she departs for London, Robinson will play one of the leads in Nasty Pieces of Work, an online comedy series which will follow three friends as they navigate their way through the gay scene of Newcastle.
“I’m playing a reformed party girl struggling with grief and drug addiction,” Rebecca tells IF, describing the series as a “LGBT-focused black comedy.”
Williamson, who spent the pilot season in LA and is represented by RGM in Australia, has signed with Danny Siyoum of Mode Entertainment in the US.
Born in Perth, she studied acting and performing arts with NIDA and The Hub Studio. Her film roles include the lead in Urchin Productions' low budget feature Awake for a Moment and a support role in John V. Soto’s The Reckoning, which stars Luke Hemsworth and Jonathan LaPaglia.
Another Perth-based actor, Nicholas Coombe, 19, has just scored a guest role in the US series Supernatural, which stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki as brothers who travel the country looking for their missing father and battling evil spirits along the way.
Last year Coombe signed with Siyoum when the latter was with Elevation Talent Management, and he will move with his manager to Mode Entertainment.
WA-born actors Presley Massara, Priscilla-Anne Forder and Jacob Brown are making their international debuts in The Pineville Heist, a thriller which starts shooting in Canada in June.
As IF has reported, Massara will play the lead, 14-year- old high school student Aaron Stevens, who ends up with $5 million stolen from a bank after the heist goes wrong and one of the robbers is killed. Forder is cast as Amanda Becker, Aaron’s drama teacher with whom he seeks sanctuary in the locked-down school, pursued by one of the robbers. Brown has the supporting role of a character named Mike.
All these young actors are being mentored by LA-based Coppelia Tingley, whose daughter Freya has a recurring role as Peter Pan’s Wendy in the US ABC network’s Once Upon a Time and played Frankie Valli’s daughter in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming film Jersey Boys.
Freya recently finished filming the lead role in the Lifetime Channel’s The Choking Game in Canada and will next star in the TV series Goosebumps