‘Screaming girls chased me down the street’: how we made Strictly Ballroom

‘A big dude came up to me and said, “My wife dragged me kicking and screaming to see your movie – and it was the best thing she’s ever done”’ Baz Luhrmann was this cool guy two years ahead of me at NIDA, the drama school in Sydney. When I graduated, I joined his theatre company Six Years Old and the play of Strictly Ballroom came out of that. It was inspired by Keith Bain, who taught movement at the school. He was a ballroom-dancer who had left Australia for South America in the 1950s then came back with these shocking new steps. We talked a lot in rehearsals about the paso doble, and from that came Fran’s Spanish immigrant background. I thought up the name Frangipani because Sydney has frangipani trees everywhere. On my walk to rehearsals, I’d often pick one of the flowers to put in my hair. It was while doing the play that I met Craig Pearce; he and Baz were ancient friends and ended up working on the screenplay. Craig and I were together for 13 years, and we have a daughter. But it was never a foregone conclusion that I would play Fran in the film. I did seven screen tests over the course of a year. Craig would say to me, “I’m only ever thinking of you when I