Just as Australian actress,Teresa Palmer is hitting her stride professionally, she’s about to take a break.
While on the promo trail for her latest project, The Last Anniversary, Palmer reveals she’s expecting her fifth baby.
“Surprise, surprise,” the 39-year-old laughs about soon becoming a mother-of-six.
Palmer and her husband, actor and director Mark Webber, have four children together: Bodhi Rain, 11, Forest Sage, 8, Poet Lake, 5, and Prairie Moon, 3, and they co-parent Isaac Love, 16, who is Webber’s son from a previous marriage.
Growing her family again will see Palmer take a break from acting, just as she seems to be hitting another professional peak.
It doesn’t faze her one bit.
“I go against the narrative in some ways,” she says. “I’ve been able to live out two dreams in parallel. My biggest dream was to be a mother and have six babies. And my other biggest dream was to be an actress.
To be able to do both things is really, deeply meaningful to me.”
“In the early days, when I was quite vocal with agents and managers and publicists, when I was 19, 20, and I’d say, ‘Oh, I really want to be a mum,’ everyone said, ‘That can wait, that can wait, focus on your career.’
“I did things my own way. I had my first baby at the very peak of all the exciting things happening in my career. And I know that over the years that’s definitely been met with hesitation and worry and fear, I’m sure, coming from my team.
“So I do write my own story and I hope that it can be inspiring to people who don’t want to choose between different goals. There is a way to forge your own path and your own story.”
Before her “break”, though, there’s still a little work to be done.
She’s just about to wrap on Bear Country, which also stars Russell Crowe, and is also promoting the series The Last Anniversary, one of a number of her projects set to hit screens this year.
“I’ve feel like I’ve kind of hit a stride with the types of projects that I’m doing,” she says.
“Something will slip into the inbox and, if there’s something juicy and fantastic and they’re wonderful creatives at the helm, then I tend to say yes.”
In the The Last Anniversary, based on the Liane Moriarty novel of the same name, Palmer plays Sophie Honeywell, a journalist and hopeless romantic who is focussed on her biological clock counting down as she nears 40.
While desperately trying to find a partner, as well as inspiration for a story, she inherits a house on a remote island, left to her by her ex-boyfriend’s grandmother Connie.
Given a prediction that she will find the man of her dreams on the island, she moves in and begins to unearth secrets held by three generations of women.
Palmer says not only was she taken by the character but by the story which “explores the intricacies of womanhood and everything that comes with it”. As she explains, falling pregnant has never been a problem for her, but last year, Palmer experienced pregnancy loss and publicly shared her grief.
She says she had taken having children for granted as it had always come easily to her and was humbled when she lost the baby. “But also I was a part of this wonderful community of women who have been through that experience,” she shares.
“The good news is that I’m past the stage I was last time – everything has come back healthy. My bump is enormous – it looks like I’m having twins!”
Taking on the role of Sophie reunites Palmer with executive producer and fellow Adelaidian Bruna Papandrea, with whom she worked on Warm Bodies in 2013.
Through her production company, Made Up Stories, Papandrea has been behind projects including The Dry, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and The Undoing, which starred Nicole Kidman, another executive producer on this six-part series.
Working with Papandrea again was not only something Palmer dreamed of doing, but actively “manifested” during a night with girlfriends, when they all set their intentions for the year and laid out vision boards.
Palmer put a picture of Papandrea at the centre of hers, hoping it would lead to work with her and, specifically, on a Moriarty project.
Whatever happened that night worked. “It was serendipitous, it was meant to be,” says Palmer, who explains she has been “intention setting” since she was a teenager.
“Whether or not you believe that you’re calling these things in or you’re actively taking the steps towards bringing about these opportunities, whatever your school of thought is, however you believe this works, I have found that it’s just a proactive way of bringing into alignment the things that you want to experience in your life,” she says.
“I always take the actionable steps, so I don’t just put something out there and expect it to come true.”
Where can I watch The Last Anniversary?
The Last Anniversary premieres Thursday 27 March on Binge. It’s also available on Hubbl, and on Showcase at 8.30pm and is available On Demand.
