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The Cochrane family of actors make their mark

Kieran, Cris and Noah Cochrane.

There have been many showbiz dynasties in Hollywood including the Coppolas, Fondas, Barrymores, Redgraves and Douglases, while Australia has the Hemsworths and Ottos among others.

To that list we can add the Cochranes: father Cris and his sons Kieran, 11, and Noah, 14. The trio of actors has appeared together or in some combination in more than 30 TVCs, music videos, shorts and feature films.

Often they are cast as father and sons or Kieran and Noah play younger versions of Cris’ character.

Cochrane senior took up acting in 2014 after being made retrenched as warranty manager for an outdoor travel company which went into liquidation.

Cris and Kieran first worked together playing a father and son in Refuge, a short film by Swinburne student Madison Duffy-Beel.

“There is nothing like the joy of creating art with my boys; their understanding of humanity, performance and set is inspirational for such young people,” Cris tells IF. “To be their dad and know we will naturally feed off each other is such a joy, and clearly directors like it too. “

In Addison Heath’s feature comedy The Perfect Nonsense Kieran and Noah played the schoolboy bullies Terry and Robert and Cris was their loser father Lloyd. All their dialogue was improvised.

Cris played an Army captain with Kieran as his son and Noah as an extra in Stewart Marshall’s action/sci-fi film Red Sky- Candidate 5238.

The trio featured in numerous music videos including Ben Wright Smith’s Born Yawning, Peking Duk’s Fire and for the band Autumn in Alaska.

In Peter Daly and Thomas Sutcliffe’s sci-fi series pilot Project S.E.E.D.: Prelude Cris is cast as the Irish ship’s engineer with Kieran as his wife’s son from a previous relationship.

Next up the father and sons will work in Addison Heath and Jasmine Jakupi’s Japanese-set thriller The Shinjuku Five, playing exiled Irish people who were forced to leave the country and found their way to Japan. Noah will play a younger version of Cris’ character Bartley with Kieran as a younger version of Tim Wicks’ character Cillian.

Kieran wants to be an actor but also intends to study marine biology or quantum or particle physics. Noah enjoys performing but as an animal lover is keen to pursue a career in veterinary science.

“My career since committing full-time to acting has been a constant learning curve: learning about myself as a person, learning about human nature from both a performance perspective, but also a relationship perspective, learning about the industry and learning to find that balance between life and art,” Cris says.

“I’ve wasted a lot of time with projects and people that aren’t sincere and in the past I let that upset me; now I don’t. They were lessons I needed to learn. I’m happy that I’ve been trusted by some wonderful directors to perform challenging roles…but I’m not complacent.”

Cochrane has another string to his bow as a writer, has scripted a short film entitled Embody and is working on a factual historical drama on a subject which he says is virtually unknown.

A psychological horror, Embody will be directed by Jakupi and Addison, with Cris as the lead and Kieran, Noah and Mariah Cini in supporting roles.