By Karl Quinn
It's one of the great paradoxes of showbiz: we love an able-bodied actor who plays a disabled character, but we're not so keen on actors with genuine disabilities.
Nowhere is this more evident than at the Academy Awards, where the choices in the acting categories have earned them the dubious nickname of the "gimp awards".
"Oh man, if you are an actor and you have a role that has a disability you are guaranteed to win an award somewhere," says Sofya Gollan, the chronically deaf writer-director of Gimpsey, a terrific short film screening at St Kilda Film Festival that is both about disability and stars an actor with a disability, 19-year-old Bridie McKim.
"Audiences find it deeply comforting when an actor they know and love plays a role with a disability, then they get up [at the end of it], shake off the role and become a normal person," says Gollan, who graduated as an actor from NIDA in 1992 but found work in the mainstream not easy to come by.
Actor Bridie McKim (left), who has cerebral palsy, and writer-director Sofya Gollan, who is deaf.Credit: Jason South
"It's a completely different dynamic when you have an actor with a disability actually playing a role with a disability. That's not to say it can't happen – they just haven't been given the opportunity."
Since the Oscars began in 1927, about 16 per cent of all the acting awards have gone to actors playing characters with a disability. And since 1989, the trend has become even more pronounced, with more than half of the best actor awards going to able-bodied men playing a disabled character.
Some of the recent examples of able-bodied actors playing disabled characters and winning big are Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump (intellectual disability); Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot (cerebral palsy); Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (autism); Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July (paraplegic); Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (blind); Jamie Foxx in Ray (blind); Julieanne Moore in Still Alice (Alzheimer's); and Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything (ALS).
Precisely two have gone to actors who actually have a disability: the deaf Marlee Matlin for Children of a Lesser God; and Linda Hunt, who has a form of dwarfism, for The Year of Living Dangerously (a role in which she played a man).
Gollan's 11-minute Gimpsey is a simple but moving tale of a young woman (McKim) who realises her best friend is actually not such a great friend after all.
"I've had a few toxic friendships [like that] because I thought that's what I had to put up with in order to be liked," says Gollan, who has been a presenter on Play School since 1991. "I think everyone goes through that but there's a layer of complexity with it when you have a disability because you're not sure you can measure up to the ideal – especially if the other person is wildly popular and beautiful and everything you think you're not. But one day you wake up and you go, 'You know what? I am enough'."
McKim has a mild form of cerebral palsy, the most obvious sign of which is a pronounced limp. She is a triplet, born 10 weeks premature; her siblings are able bodied, and, she says, growing up "I knew I was different but I was never given any excuses".
"Disability affects you socially much more than it does as a person," she says. "I know how to live my life with CP but it's tough when people don't know how to respond to you – they can be a bit insecure and they can sometimes belittle you, or they can be so in awe of you that you're the token child, this incredible person."
McKim had done youth theatre in Brisbane but Gimpsey is her first film role. She is now studying at NIDA, and Gollan has cast her as the lead in a feature, Melt, that she hopes to make soon.
Given her own experiences and the continuing dearth of opportunities, does Gollan think an acting career is a wise move for someone with a disability?
"All actors have to do other jobs, so actors with a disability will have to do other jobs as well," she says. "You have to follow your heart – so go for it."
Gollan is about to start a job in development at Screen NSW. She's not there specifically to advocate for stories about or people with disabilities, but she does hope to bring a different viewpoint. "We are here, we are part of the fabric of society, we need to be able to tell stories from our perspective," she says.
And what of those able-bodied actors and their awards? Does it grate, just a little?
"I don't see it as them and us, but I think it's a missed opportunity," Gollan says. "Eddie Redmayne – I think you did an amazing job, you did the research, kudos to you, but it's a missed opportunity.
"You could have got someone with a mild disability to do that and digitise them to be normal. Why not: if you're going to digitise normal people to be disabled, why can't you go the other way? Radical thought."
The St Kilda Film Festival runs till May 28. Gimpsey screens on Tuesday. Details: stkildafilmfestival.com.au