Rachel Ward was the leggy British model-turned-actress who had starred in the movies "Sharky's Machine" and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." Australian Bryan Brown was making his mark in such international hits as "Breaker Morant" and was well on his way to heartthrob status.
The two rising stars met and fell in love 18 years ago while making the classic Emmy Award-winning miniseries "The Thorn Birds." They married in 1983 and have raised their three children, who range in age from 7 to 15, in Sydney, Australia, far from the Hollywood limelight.
The couple have worked in separate projects over the years, appearing together only twice since they married: in 1986's "The Good Wife" and now in Showtime's "On the Beach," the new three-hour adaptation of Nevil Shute's legendary apocalyptic novel. Directed by Russell Mulcahy and penned by David Williamson and Bill Kerby, the thriller, set in 2006, deals with a nuclear holocaust that threatens the lone civilization surviving in Australia.
Ward plays Moira Davidson, a beautiful, carefree Australian woman, and Brown plays her former boyfriend, cynical scientist Julian Osborne. Armand Assante also stars as American submarine commander Dwight Towers, who falls in love with Moira.
Charming and down-to-earth, the couple, recently in Los Angeles for an invitation-only premiere of "On the Beach," chatted about the project and their marriage in their expansive villa at the Sunset Marquis Hotel.
Question: Don't you think "On the Beach" is a grim reminder that nuclear war is still a major threat?
Bryan Brown: Yeah. We have got the India and Pakistani problem there with nuclear weapons. We have got the whole thing in Russia with the old nuclear weapons and [the question of] where are they stored.
Rachel Ward: We have North Korea buying uranium from North Africa.
Brown: It's interesting. When we were first asked to do this, it was probably eight years ago. If we had made this [then], it would have been a bit passe, but it has come back in a big way--the whole nuclear fear. I think it is far more topical.
Q: When you were first approached about "On the Beach," was it for TV or a feature?
