An Irishman who walked out of his secure Telecom job and landed a role in iconic Australian soap Home & Away comes to Drysdale next month.
Dennis Coard, best-known as Michael Ross on the series, brings his life story to the Potato Shed on 4 April.
“If you don’t laugh, you get your money back!” the veteran actor said.
“And no one has ever asked for their money back.”
The show, The Fall of the Roman Umpire, begins with Coard’s childhood in Ireland.
“As a kid I pinched my mum’s mop and tea cosy,” he said.
“When they asked what I was doing I said, ’I’m playing the fall of the Roman umpire’. It seemed a fitting title for the play.”
Coard migrated to Adelaide in the ’60s as “one of the boat people” with his family.
“At that time in Ireland unemployment was pretty high,“ he said.
“My parents just wanted a new life and better chance for their four sons.”’
He “lost” his Irish accent in high school to fit in with other kids, he said.
“But as soon I’m back with my mum I’m Irish again. I play mum, dad, my grandad and a host of other characters in this show.”
A stint working for Telecom and two divorces later, Coard swapped the safe life for theatre.
“At the time my mum thought I was throwing away a good career with Telecom,” he said.
“But it was absolutely the right thing to do – I never regretted that for one second.”
He had performed in local theatre but never attempted the bigtime until auditioning for Victorian College of the Arts at age 35.
“I always loved entertaining. But I didn’t do drama at school or anything.”
It paid off as he scored long-running parts on shows such as Blue Heelers and Home & Away.
On Home & Away he met future wife Debra Lawrance, who he married onscreen before they tied the knot in real-life.
His character Michael Ross would eventually ‘drown’ after six years on the show.
“I had only planned to do two years,” Coard said.
The couple have two adult children, with Lawrance currently performing onstage in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Coard is working on a new Channel 10 drama, Five Bedrooms.
But he was glad he had time off to come to the Potato Shed, he said.
“I love the space, I love the people and it’s just a great theatre.“
