‘My greatest achievement is not Hollywood’

November 28, 2014 11:26 am 5 comments Views: 1
Catherine Martin has conquered Hollywood.

Catherine Martin has conquered Hollywood.
Source: News Corp Australia

WITH four Academy Awards to her name, Catherine Martin has the distinction of being the most successful Australian in Oscars history.

The ingenious costume and set designer has quietly conquered Hollywood as one half of what is widely considered to be the country’s most successful creative duo, with her flamboyant film director husband Baz Luhrmann.

It’s a mighty achievement on the entertainment world’s toughest stage, but thoughts of it are left for dust in the hectic hustle and bustle that is Martin’s life as a working mother.

“I never think about it. Usually I am crippled under my children’s extremely harsh judgment of me as a poor mother and generally bad person,” she says, only half joking, down the phone line from Miami.

“Your children always keep you with two feet on the ground. The best thing I’ve ever done in my life is having my children (Lillian, 11, and William, 9) and having that experience with my husband. I wouldn’t exchange that for any Oscar or anything in the world. We just continue to laugh at the fact that they’re very unimpressed with the pair of us really.”

Parenting isn’t the only area of this high achiever’s life that seems more aligned with the rest of us. Martin, 49, recently addressed another every-woman kind of problem and knuckled down to lose 18kg after what she describes as a life-long battle with her weight.

“I’ve always struggled with my weight, my entire life, and I made the choice before turning 50 to tackle it,” she says. “It was nothing dramatic. I went to my GP, I practised restraint and I exercised reasonably. It’s all about re-educating yourself on the way you eat. I’ve always been a very healthy person, in terms of exercise, but it’s not about exercise, it’s about portion control and eating sensibly.

Martin, the proud Oscar winner. Picture: Tim Hunter

Martin, the proud Oscar winner. Picture: Tim Hunter

“There’s no real miracle. It took forever for it to happen, and I think people need to realise that it’s a very gradual process because it’s as much emotional as it is physical.”

Martin — or CM, as she was christened by Luhrmann soon after they met in the 1980s — chats warmly and openly about the nitty gritty of real life, with no hint of the razzle dazzle that has come to define hers and Luhrmann’s creative partnership on films such as Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge!, Australia and The Great Gatsby.

They met almost 30 years ago when Martin was a design student at Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) and Luhrmann, a graduate, was scouting for creatives for his theatre and opera projects.

Luhrmann distinctly remembers the first time he laid eyes on her in a “fantastic” green linen suit that appeared to be self-made.

“There was a tiny piece of cotton thread hanging off the shoulder and I remember thinking, I wonder if she made that suit because if she did then she really knows something about tailoring, too,” he says.

The meeting was pre-arranged; an interview of sorts at Luhrmann’s Kings Cross apartment after he checked out her “extraordinary” design work.

Baz Lurhmann and Catherine Martin celebrate the opening night of Strictly Ballroom The Mu

Baz Lurhmann and Catherine Martin celebrate the opening night of Strictly Ballroom The Musical in Sydney. Picture: James Morgan

As Luhrmann puts it, that first meeting lasted four hours and was the start of a conversation that continues to this day.

“The profound romantic connection with her was both present and visceral for me from the beginning … we were kind of inseparable,” he says.

Over the course of a 30-minute conversation with Weekend, Luhrmann describes Martin as “the coolest chick in the world”, the “love of my life”, a creative “genius”, “whippet smart”, “hilarious” and “beautiful” on the inside and out.

He is far less flattering about himself, saying he hasn’t always been the “most reliable” or “easy partner”, particularly in the early days when he was a “pretty extreme boho” who could be “a bit loosy goosy on the facts”.

But on a pedestal above it all, it seems, sat his beloved CM, whom he married on her birthday (Australia Day) in 1997.

“I think you have these very rare connections and for me it was just that. I never really questioned it,” Luhrmann says.

Academy Award winning costume and set designer Catherine Martin.

Academy Award winning costume and set designer Catherine Martin.

“The relationships that are really powerful and sustained are quite mysterious and they’re sometimes mysterious to the people in them. The really profound relationships are profound because you can’t analyse them, they just are, you know? I think that’s absolutely been CM and I.

“Which is not to say we don’t argue all the time, usually in the bathroom, and it’s not to say we haven’t had our, ‘That’s it, blah blah blah’ moments, but really, not really.”

Martin is less “loosy goosy” in discussing her marriage, saying she’s a “very lucky but also superstitious person” who doesn’t want to risk ruining the magic by talking about it in too much detail.

“We really met as like-minded people and almost 30 years later we’re still speaking and arguing and discussing things and we’re still interested in the other person’s opinion,” she says. “It all started with ideas and thankfully, touch wood, we are still interested in each other’s opinions and ideas.”

Their ideas have taken them on a wild ride all over the world, most recently to New York as co-designers of Barneys’ famous holidays windows, which were unveiled to much fanfare last week.

The power couple mostly live between Sydney and New York, where they are currently based for multiple projects including Luhrmann’s upcoming but unnamed Netflix television series about the history of New York City in the ’70s and ’80s.

Catherine Martin with Strictly Ballroom costumes.

Catherine Martin with Strictly Ballroom costumes.

They are a rare creative force and all four of Martin’s Oscars have been for her work on Luhrmann-directed films. She won two for Moulin Rouge! (best costume design and best art direction) and two for The Great Gatsby (best costume design and best production design).

Soon the pair will be Melbourne bound for the opening of Strictly Ballroom the Musical at Her Majesty’s Theatre on January 17, the stage version of Luhrmann’s first major feature film in 1992, for which Martin designed the sets and costumes.

Independent of stage and screen work, Martin has her own interior design business — which has involved makeovers for major hotels — and has also worked with brands such as Prada, Chanel, Tiffany & Co, Collette Dinnigan and RM Williams.

Martin says she is still closely connected to her Australian collaborators, some of whom she has worked with for more than 20 years, and tries to include them in as many projects as possible.

“I love my Australian team. They’re incredible. I’ve travelled with them all around the world and I try to get them involved as much as I possibly can and as much as the projects allow,” she says.

“There are always limitations about what the investor is willing to spend in terms of travelling people etc, so it’s as many of my core collaborators who’ve worked with me for over 20 years as I can possibly get onto a project and then the rest is new discoveries.

Strictly Ballroom the Musical on stage.

Strictly Ballroom the Musical on stage.

“Those things are painful and fruitful … there are always circumstances that push you beyond your comfort zone and force you to explore new territory.”

Despite the fame and high-flying lifestyle, Martin says family and friends come first and Australia will always be home.

Her children are her top priority and school schedules are of higher importance than whatever is in her or her husband’s diaries.

So much so that putting the children’s needs first even resulted in nasty gossip earlier this year when Luhrmann didn’t accompany Martin to the Academy Awards because he was at home in Sydney with the kids watching it on television.

“Being better known is challenging and ego-enriching and it’s a complicated sensation, but I think that ultimately if you have good people in your life and you’re connected to your family and your friends, the sense of entitlement and the sense of fame is always trimmed by the secateurs of family,” Martin says. “They always remind you of who you really are and by a lot of people’s standards I’m only famous in my own lunchtime, so I would never, ever equate to being that.”

Her husband would beg to differ, describing scenes where Martin is approached by fans on the streets of New York. He says the earlier days of Martin being in his shadow are gone and she is rightfully recognised independently for the incredible artist that she is.

Catherine Martin with flamboyant husband Baz Luhrmann in their early days.

Catherine Martin with flamboyant husband Baz Luhrmann in their early days.

“She’s phenomenal. CM has particular areas of genius that I couldn’t imagine approaching. I’ll have a vision of something and I’ll give the reference of how it should be, but she will come up with a third idea that takes it to a whole other level,” Luhrmann says.

“One of the great things that’s unknown about CM is that she’s a brilliant builder. She can command an army of 100 builders to make the perfect set and she’s relentless and great at rallying people to be their very best.”

When asked how much of her career success comes down to pure ambition, Martin says she thinks her achievements are more likely to have flourished from curiosity and romanticism.

“I believe that things can be better than they are and I hope things can be more beautiful, more just, more happy and I think that’s what drives me,” she says.

“I am interested in new frontiers. I don’t know whether that’s out of ambition or a combination of curiosity and foolhardiness, but I am interested in investigating and exploring things that are unfamiliar to me. I’m always interested in something different, something that challenges my intellectual perspective, something that challenges where I see myself in the world.”

But it’s her role as a mother that has proved the most challenging — and rewarding.

Luhrmann says his wife is an “over achiever” when it comes to motherhood. “She is always present with her children, they travel with us everywhere. The one thing we have in our little family is love. Those children are loved and they feel it.”

But like all mothers, Martin is less confident she’s got it nailed. Recently, her son even questioned her professional capabilities, accusing her of not being a real costume designer because a friend helped her make his overly complicated Halloween costume.

“I went to great lengths to have his Halloween costume made. He’s just like his father — he’s a director, as is his sister — so he wanted a very specific version of Rocket Raccoon that was not the movie version, but the original comic-book version,” she says.

“It was very complicated and I managed to get a friend to help me and we worked together to get it made and he said to me, ‘You’re not even a real costume designer! You had someone to help you!’

“I think that’s part of being a parent. You have unrealistic expectations on what you can deliver and your children make sure you know that they expected those unrealistic expectations and it’s kind of perfect and it’s funny,” she says.

Rationally, Martin knows she’s a good mother — or at least not a bad one — but says she still sometimes feels inadequate. But in her clear and insightful way, she explains that she believes those negative feelings are a necessary part of striking the right balance.

“It’s something that creates, I suppose, a checkpoint in humanity for all of us and it’s important. Those feelings are not necessarily true, but they create checks and balances and it’s hard to deal with them sometimes in a sanguine way, but they’re important because they reset you like you restart your computer,” she says.

“You think to yourself, ‘Right, is what I’m considering really important or not that important?’ and I think we all need to keep centred on the things that are important in life and that is the human relationships that we have, whether they be with our children, our spouses, our family, our friends.

“They’re the things that actually motivate life and you need people to pull your chain occasionally so that you remember what’s important.”

 

Strictly Ballroom The Musical opens at Her Majesty’s Theatre on January 17. Bookings: ticketek.com.au or 132 849

Originally published as ‘My greatest achievement is not Hollywood’
www.news.com.au/entertainment/music

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