From February 5–9, the AACTA Festival promises five unforgettable days packed with experiences celebrating the best of film, television, and digital media. This weeklong celebration features a diverse lineup of events designed to inspire, entertain, and connect, with activities for everyone from industry professionals to pop culture enthusiasts.
Nick L’Barrow spoke with AACTA Festival ambassador, actor, and comedian Stephen Curry (The Castle, Hounds of Love) about some festival highlights, and The Castle TV series that never happened!
Nick: Looking back at your history with the AACTA’s, you were nominated for Hounds of Love in 2018, you hosted the awards in 2018, and now you’re back in 2025 as an ambassador for the festival! How has the AACTA’s evolved in your eyes that made you feel like coming back this year as an ambassador?
Stephen Curry: Yeah, it’s a great question! It used to be sort of very much about the awards, and now it’s a fully fledged festival! It’s a five-day festival on the Gold Coast, or ‘Goldy-wood’, as Baz Luhrmann coined. Am I allowed to coin Baz Luhrmann phrases?
Nick: I think so! As long as he doesn’t have a trademark on ‘Goldy-wood’, we can probably put that in…
Stephen Curry: Yeah, he probably does. I’ll say ‘Goldy-wood’ T.M. That’s probably the safe thing to say! And look, everything I say today is probably going to be a quote from Baz Luhrmann. I do like to quote Baz!
But look, it’s a huge festival and it’s very much about supporting and nurturing new talent and people. It’s been such a cottage industry for so long, the Australian screen industry, and it’s growing exponentially. The AACTA Festival is very much focused on making the industry accessible to anyone who has any desire to be involved in the screen industry.
That’s what the AACTA Festival does! It provides a forum for extremely experienced and ridiculously talented people to kind of lift the lid and open the curtain to people who might otherwise have not had the opportunity. It’s unbelievable where it’s come to, and I’m really excited for where it’s going.
I think the more people we have telling their stories, and not just the storytellers, but the technicians too which is such a big part of the industry, it can’t be anything but positive to have access and inspiration from people who have made a name on a local and international level.
Nick: This year’s festival is jam packed with so many of the things you were just praising. Is there anything in particular you’re excited to check out while you’re there?
Stephen Curry: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a guy called Paul Kelly? He’s written a couple of ditties, and he’s performing live on the HOTA stage alongside Meg Washington and a bunch of incredible musicians, doing the original soundtrack from the movie version of How to Make Gravy. That’s going to be massive!
Leigh Whannel has just been announced too. The co-creator of Saw and Insidious, which are million-dollar franchises! I went to uni with Leigh Whannell too! The Cairnes Brothers who did Late Night with the Devil and 100 Bloody Acres, so there’s a great spotlight on Australian horror, which has performed out of it’s skin over the last 10 years.
And Working Dog have been announced as the Longford Lyell award recipients for a lifetime achievement in the industry! They’re going to be doing an in conversations which is something they rarely do! These are the guys who have done Utopia, Thank God You’re Here, Have You Been Paying Attention?, and a little known film called The Castle, which I’ve seen… twice. I like the young kid in that. I thought he was fabulous. Bad haircut. Bad, bad haircut. He I think he’s going places!
Nick: I feel like that hair cut was quintessential for some many kids growing up in the 90s and early 2000s. I had that haircut growing up too… and now, kind of [laughs]. It’s a rite of passage to have the Dale Kerrigan haircut.
Stephen Curry: [laughs] Yeah, a little moo-lay [mullet]. My 12-year-old called it a ‘moo-lay’. That was the first time he watched the film too, last week.
Nick: Wow! What was the experience like for you?
Stephen Curry: Wearing a mini-‘moo-lay’? [laughs] No, it was interesting. I wasn’t sure he was going to get a lot of the references, you know? It was 1996 when we made that film, and I was hoping he was going to laugh. Because, if he didn’t, I was going to have to let him go.
But my 12 and 10-year-old both laughed in all the right spots. So, the good news is that we can keep them! So that’s a win!
Nick: You mentioned Working Dog being honoured for the work in comedy in Australia. Their footprint in Australian screen is iconic, so I’d love to know what the experience was like for you working with those guys on their first movie [The Castle] as they transition from TV into film at that time.
Stephen Curry: I firmly believe they are our finest comedy team that Australia has ever produced. I started out in extra work in 1989, and I never really believed anything would come of it. And I had teachers tell me that I should have something else to fall back on. But, look at me now, hey? [laughs]
It was interesting that after 7 years of doing extra work with my brothers, or commercials and stuff like that. Then all of a sudden, I’m sitting at a readthrough with my comedy heroes. I grew up watching D-Gen or The Late Show. Watching all their stuff and just thinking about how cool it would be to work with them all one day. Then I’m there with Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Bud Tingwell! He was a very generous person to me over the years, and taught me so much about the importance of being thankful for effectively doing your hobby as a job.
Working Dog have got that work ethic, and that’s been very inspiring to me. As a 20-year-old sitting there, all I was thinking was, ‘Don’t stuff this up.’ But they were great, and their strike rate is better than any strike rate in the history of Australia. Long may the rule! I urge people to see the In Conversation with them, because their all generous people with such a wealth of knowledge!
Nick: As someone who has working in both film and television over your career, is a movie character you’ve played that you’d love to perhaps explore or expand on more in an episodic setting?
Stephen Curry: That’s a really interesting one… You know, there’s films I’ve done, like Hounds of Love, where I love that film, but I would never want to see that guy again! Do I want to embody that guy again? Probably not. He’s the worst person in the history of time!
I do feel like once I’ve played a character, personally, it feels good to kind of let them go. But interestingly, I think Channel 9 wanted Working Dog to turn The Castle into a series! And I think they made a great decision not doing so. You know the reference ‘jumping the shark’?
Nick: Sure. The Fonz!
Stephen Curry: Yeah, The Fonz in Happy Days! And they knew they’d run out of storylines to the point where a shark is literally terrorising the bay, and so The Fonz has to jump over the shark to scare it out of the bay.
Now, to turn something as indelible as The Castle into a series, you’re probably going to jump a few sharks! There’s not a word out of place in that film, and all the characters are beautifully realised that I think you could end up cheapening them. Taking some of the sheen off the beauty of that story.
Thank you so much to Stephen for his time, and to AACTA and Think Tank Communications for organising the interview. The 2025 AACTA Festival is taking place at HOTA on the Gold Coast from February 5 – 9. For more information, head to the website here: https://www.aactafestival.com/
