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Belinda Bromilow sprang into the world’s imagination wrangling butterflies. Such was the impact of the Sydney actor’s performance as the eccentric Aunt Elizabeth (whose hobby was training butterflies) in TV series The Great that she’s been mobbed by fans from Zimbabwe to Portugal.
Created and written by Bromilow’s husband, Tony McNamara, The Great necessitated that they and their two school-age children relocate to London for more than six years. They then spent six months in Prague while Bromilow made Netflix’s The Age of Innocence series. Now they’ve returned to Sydney indefinitely for the children’s teens: “That phase of their life where their friendships become increasingly important, and their parents less the focus,” as Bromilow astutely puts it.
“I really love being a mum, and it’s probably my most important role, by far,” she says. “So I’m always making sure that whatever work I do fits in around the family. But it’s also really important to do what you love, and that’s great for the kids to have a role model of parents who do what they enjoy … I think it becomes weird if you’re not living your dreams.”
Most people find raising a family challenging when just staying in one place and keeping regular hours. Bromilow says she and McNamara manage to juggle the logistics, motivated by being extremely driven in their careers, and wanting to see each other succeed.
“The challenge for us,” she explains, “is to balance that with downtime and enough routine and relaxation so we also have a stable family; that our life isn’t too chaotic for our kids.
“I’m very lucky to have found someone who’s really on the same page as me with all of that stuff because you often don’t realise going into a marriage that that’s such a big part of it: finding someone who’s genuinely willing to share the load, especially when children come on the scene. He’s predominantly a writer, so he’s quite flexible, as he can write anywhere. That helps.”
Despite McNamara (who was nominated for Academy Awards in 2019 and 2024, respectively, for his work on the films The Favourite and Poor Things) creating The Great, Bromilow still auditioned for Aunt Elizabeth. “It certainly wasn’t a given that I would end up playing it,” she says. “I auditioned against some really fine actors, and none of the people at the studio or network knew of my relationship to Tony. So it was reassuring for me that I got that job on my own terms.”
A strong connection between Bromilow and McNamara is their shared “slightly dark and weird” sense of humour – a connection she first made before they were romantically involved, when she had a small part in a film McNamara wrote and directed. It’s carried over into other projects, as well as domestic life.
Bromilow now returns to the stage for the first time in 14 years in Ensemble Theatre’s The Roommate, about two ill-matched middle-aged women (the other played by Lucy Bell) cohabiting.
She was drawn to it partly because stories about middle-aged women are seldom aired, as are those addressing “whether you can change your trajectory in the middle of your life, and how certain people shut down options almost unwittingly at a certain point in their life; how you can actually crack that open and surprise yourself, and possibly move yourself in a different direction.”
She’s slightly terrified of returning to live performance, but keen.
“What really interests me about theatre,” she explains, “is the shared experience in the moment between the audience and the performers, and also the experience of the audience sharing something together. That becomes increasingly important because I think people are craving a kind of a connection to community and to each other.
“Those simple acts of going to the theatre together, sharing a meal with neighbours, growing a community garden, or any of those things that involve strangers doing something together, I think that’s the kind of quiet revolution that’s going to save the world … I really believe in the power of that as an antidote to all of the ridiculousness and awful things going on.”
I suggest that being in an audience creates a rare sense of community completely independent of smartphones.
“Oh God, don’t get me started!” she exclaims. “I have an iPhone 6 that I’m in the process of retiring, so I can get a dumb phone. I’m going completely off screens. It’s weird because my whole livelihood comes from being on the screen, so I think there is value in going to the movies and even great TV, but I try and make that a shared experience.
“In our family it’s not a babysitting tool, it’s something that we do consciously as a family to share and experience together … I really despair at people trapped with their own little screen, not engaging with one another.”
The Roommate, Ensemble Theatre, until July 25.
