In the fable-like stage play Cyrano de Bergerac, the smart, beautiful Roxane is not meant to live happily ever after with the handsome young nobleman, Christian, who merely mouths the words of the bignosed poet Cyrano. But when Justine Clarke, actor, singer and newly minted Play School alumnus, began rehearsing the play at Sydney Theatre Company with the dashing Jack Finsterer in 1999, they saw into one another's souls.
There's a sweet black and white photo from back then of Clarke as Roxane and Finsterer as Christian holding hands, gazing intently at one another. Clarke was 27, and since childhood she'd had the idea she would be married by 28. Finsterer was 31, with "beautiful blue eyes you want to sink into", Clarke says. But there was so much more.
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I meet Clarke at a cafe in Sydney's inner west. She is wearing a dark-blue skirt dotted with yellow daffodils and tapping a tube of lip balm gently on a table. Her mind is on planning a stage production of her tales of benign monsters, Gobbledygook and a Scribbledynoodle, from her storybooks co-written with Arthur Baysting.
Now 45, she laughs when I distract her by mentioning the archival picture of her and Finsterer. "He's a very kind person and incredibly supportive, and has always wanted me to do my best, and has given me every opportunity to do that. We just fell in love – what can I say? It just was undeniable."
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How did she come up with the magical figure of marrying by 28? "I don't know. Just, as a kid I thought, 'By 28, I'll be married and then I'll have four kids.' It just so happened that that's what happened.
Well, not quite. Clarke and Finsterer have three children, Josef, 15, Nina, 13, and Max, 7; Benny the rescue dog completes the picture.
When their kids are older, Clarke would like to do more theatre. For now, though, it's a case of juggling and fitting everything in with family life, including her latest role as Noelene Hogan in the Seven Network's two-part miniseries Hoges: The Paul Hogan Story. Playing the former wife of the famous Australian entertainer, and a mother of five, Clarke must utter, in a south-western Sydney accent, lines such as "Bein' on TV, it's not a real job. It's a hobby."
Clarke has never met Noelene, now aged 77, so to accurately capture Noelene's very Aussie vernacular, Clarke listened to her older half-sister, from her mother's first marriage, who grew up in Sydney's south. (Told by a women's magazine about Clarke's casting last year, Noelene reportedly said: "I don't even know who that is.")
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"It's very hard playing people who are still alive," confides Clarke about portraying the former Noelene Edwards. "It's very delicate, and with the utmost respect do I step into her shoes."
As a mother herself, Clarke relates to Noelene. "The Hogans were both really young. They had nothing. Raising three kids is hard enough – I can't imagine what raising five would have been like. When you've got little kids, you're surviving, but there's a kind of a freedom to that survival."
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Preparing for the role, Clarke read the autobiography Prattling on with Noelene Hogan, and gleaned the sense that both Paul and Noelene were well endowed with the very Australian ability to laugh at themselves – something Clarke also has in spades.
Jo Porter, the director of drama at Fremantle Media, says Clarke's warmth comes through on screen, even as she portrays Noelene's "fearless embracing of colour" in late 1970s and early '80s fashion. On set, Clarke was "magnetic" around the kids who play Paul and Noelene's children, adds Porter, helping to create "this wonderful tumble of joyous family life".
While Clarke's own marriage has been successful, her parents' union collapsed early, perhaps giving her some unconscious insight into what Noelene went through.
In recounting her Aussie knockabout story, sunny-side-up Clarke uses the "f" word again: freedom. Her own mother and sisters showed levels of resilience Noelene would applaud.
Clarke's late father, Len, had lived through the Depression and had been a British air force test pilot in World War II. After the war, he moved to Sydney, where he became a publican at the Crest Hotel in Kings Cross, and manager of the Redfern RSL.
He met Clarke's mother, Beverley, a choreographer and performer at the Tivoli and Chequers nightclubs. They married and Beverley, who had two children from a previous marriage, bore two more: first Vanessa, then Justine. When Justine was eight months old, Len and Beverley separated, but remained friends. Clarke believes the reason they never got divorced was because "they just never found anybody else".
As a child, Clarke went to Woollahra Public School, in Sydney's east, and she and Vanessa saw Len most weekends. She still remembers the distinct smell of beer at the Redfern RSL when she went there to visit him.
So Clarke grew up in an all-female household. Beverley had given up her dancing career to raise her children, but still taught dance. Clarke says she had a great childhood, even though they moved house a lot. There was laughter, music, cart-wheeling and tumbling off sofas, and using anything handy as a balance beam.
"There's a certain amount of freedom that comes with being a single mum," says Clarke of her mother. "You're not answerable to anyone else."
When Clarke was 18, Len moved to the Gold Coast and she didn't see him for several years. They would remain distant for much of her adult life. Her acting breakthrough came with the role of Anna Goanna in the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. However, it was playing Roo Stewart in Seven's Home and Away that made Clarke a household name when she was still a teenager. She felt "undeserving" of the sudden fame, so she quit Summer Bay after 18 months to go to drama school, swapping instinct for acting theory to underpin her craft.
But Clarke could also sing. At 16, she discovered the recordings of Australian jazz great Vince Jones, and at 18, while singing at her boyfriend's restaurant in Melbourne, Jones saw her. His double bass player, Jonathan Zwartz, told her, "Vince reckons you can sing", and she was invited along as a guest vocalist at their monthly gigs. Singing and writing songs would become a great creative outlet for Clarke, though she now says she "mainly sang to make ends meet, in between acting jobs"
Those acting jobs have gone on to include series such as Time of Our Lives and movies Look Both Ways and A Month of Sundays. This year, she celebrates 18 years as a Play School presenter, as well as a string of screen and theatre credits.
Her latest role isn't without controversy, however, with Noelene Hogan publicly expressing concerns that the producers hadn't contacted her about the story. Jo Porter confirms this, adding that Paul Hogan, his longtime collaborator, producer John Cornell, and Cornell's model-actor wife Delvene Delaney "were involved in scripting, but they haven't seen the show".
"This is Paul Hogan's story, and we have been very respectful of [Noelene] and the important role she played in his life and the life of their family and treasured children," says Porter. "We really just told it from his perspective. This wasn't designed to muck-rake."
The Hogans' love story begins early in episode one, with Noelene seeing Paul (played by Josh Lawson) acting the clown at Granville public swimming pool. It continues with two teenage newlyweds raising kids in a small fibro house in Chullora, with a Hills Hoist and second-hand orange Charger in the yard, paying the bills from change and small notes collected in a jam jar.
But on the set of the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee (still the most popular Australian movie ever), Paul falls for the Hollywood siren call of co-star Linda Kozlowski (Laura Gordon), whom he marries after divorcing Noelene.
Says Clarke, "You could never deny his success, and what Hoges brought to our culture, but there may have been some casualties along the way. Noelene raised a loving family, all with a good sense of humour, who are all still very close. She's very proud of that, and so she should be. It's certainly something I admire about her."
Clarke and Finsterer also share a strong sense that family is everything, too. Clarke's mum Beverley is still going strong, and she reconnected with her dad Len when she was in her 20s. Much later, he moved back to Sydney, coming to see Clarke sing at her gigs. Every time a catch-up finished, she'd feel sad.
In 2009, at the end of his life, Len wanted to move in with Clarke and Finsterer, so they bought a renovated house with a studio out the back which could also accommodate him. Len died 11 weeks after Clarke gave birth to Max.
Life goes on. Nina – with a strong mind of her own, refusing to wear dresses – is training in piano, Josef and Max are learning guitar, and Max is a good singer. Will any of the kids follow in her footsteps as entertainers?
"You do what you can to discourage them," Clarke laughs. "Make sure you give them all the information about the pitfalls and perils of the industry. They will make their own decision. It's not a secure way of life … but then, I don't know what is any more.
Hoges: The Paul Hogan Story airs on Sunday, February 12 and 19, at 8.30pm on Channel Seven.
Fashion Styling: Penny McCarthy