To a great many Australians, Stephen Curry will always be Dale Kerrigan, digger of holes and narrator of The Castle. That 1997 classic was Curry’s second film role and gave him his big break. In the years that followed, he’d go on to appear in Australian movies including The Wog Boy, The Nugget and Take Away, plus a notable turn in the Graham Kennedy biopic The King and a slew of TV roles. His latest role is in Favourites, a short film about a couple faced with an impossible choice when their family camping trip goes awry.
On set, Curry is often required to take his wedding ring off – a recipe for disaster for someone prone to misplacing things. Here, the actor tells us about that very important and now-missing piece of jewellery, and shares the stories of two other important belongings.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
My guitar. I got it directly from the factory in 1994. It was the very first semi-acoustic Maton, and it’s been my favourite guitar for 30 years. I’ve ruined a prodigious number of campfires with it.
If my house was on fire, I’d sit out the front, watching it burn down, rip into the theme song from St Elmo’s Fire and hope to God that my insurance is up to date. Although I’m pretty sure it’s not. Then, if there was anyone left around the fire cooking marshmallows, I’d rip into a reggae version of Nikki Webster’s Strawberry Kisses to send the stragglers on their way. But not before I’d asked them if they were the one who burnt my house down.
My most useful object
My mechanical redgum splitter. I’ve got a 20-acre property in the Macedon Ranges in Victoria which has a lot of trees and a lot of wood. So I need a wood splitter to do my bit to keep the place looking beautiful and keep my children’s feet warm in winter.
My splitter’s name is Nikole Splitovic (although she prefers “Nikki Splitz”) and I love her. She fills me with a sense of unbridled manliness that can only be achieved from the sound and unmistakable aroma of eucalyptus being unceremoniously ruptured. And she’s red, so she does it faster than the blue ones.
The item I most regret losing
My wedding ring. As a professional pretender, I’m regularly forced to play characters who aren’t married and therefore it’s incumbent upon me to bring out the Meadow Lea and ease the ring off my finger. However, being a bit ditzy at the best of times, I’ll often forget where I put it. Usually someone turns up with the shiny ring and says, “Is this your ring I found in the sink of the makeup truck?”
On my current job, no one’s done that as yet. My wife will find out about it upon reading this article, so all I can hope is that she doesn’t leave me because I was more comfortable admitting it to the entire readership of the Guardian than to my soulmate.
That’s why I love doing films like Favourites, because I was married in that one.
• Favourites screens as part of the St Kilda film festival, which runs from 6–16 June in Melbourne
