At the Ian Macpherson Memorial Lecture, a Sydney Film Festival event, David Stratton interviewed Bryan Brown about movies & movie making & this is what I discovered...Naomi Rossdeutscher

BRYAN BROWN grew up in Bankstown, in State Housing with his mum. As a child he used to watch Westerns and Tarzan and during interval at the movies he'd swap comic books.

He joined AMP, training to be a mathematician but ended up working as a salesman, hoping to meet girls & have a beer. But it was the AMP drama club that won his heart. He auditioned for the end of year revue, was accepted & discovered a great passion, finding rehearsal utterly thrilling & emotionally overwhelming, feeling alive like never before & compared the feeling to scoring a tri at football.

Later, Brown joined an amateur theatre group and performed until he was 25, but at the time all he saw was American or English plays, so he travelled to England and hit the boards in search of experience.