102 marieclaire.com.auGETTY IMAGESRG: No, I just think I was unbelievably
lucky. I don’t think God chose me and my
child to live any more than God chose
some other woman to be trafficked into
slavery, but the fact that I did live makes
you just go, don’t sweat the small stuff,
get on and do something worthwhile.Acts of charity
JF: You are known as an advocate for
women. How do you see yourself contrib-
uting in that area?
RG: Smart women – and I do put myself
in that box – think as we go through our
journeys as women there is a time we
move into “senior ladies of the tribe”
roles. I feel like I’m just at the beginning
of that journey. We have to have promi-
nent women who can speak for others.
There is something that happens when
you’re “post-fuckable”, a time when we
just don’t care anymore about what
other people may think of us. In my 20s
I probably tempered thoughts I had,
feelings I had. I don’t think I was nearly
as loud a feminist as I should have been.
JF: Except, hang on, in 1997 you protested
about Melbourne’s Crown Casino by turn-
ing up at the opening topless.
RG: That’s true. But I wasn’t really advo-
cating for women.
JF: How did that come about?
RG: I’m easily captivated, I guess, by an
idea. I’m not anti-gambling and I don’t
mind casinos, but for that moment whenCrown first came to Melbourne, it was a
huge change in our city’s culture. It just
felt like this crazy concentration of pub-
lic space for this enterprise.
JF: You’re a patron of Hagar, a charity com-
mitted to helping the victims of human
trafficking. Why did you get involved?
RG: Well, initially, I thought slavery was a
thing of the past. In a limited way I knew
of female sex trafficking, but I thought it
was a very kind of niche, small problem.
And then you realise the level of criminal
engagement and what the numbers are
[an estimated 30 million people trapped
in slavery] and how much money is
being made. It has overtaken arms deal-
ing and is closing on drugs as
being the main source of
cashflow for criminal net-
works. But how to do some-
thing about such an
overwhelming issue?
So I was drawn to Hagar
because their mission is so
specific: to take one person
who has been rescued from
domestic or sexual enslave-
ment. It’s case by case. And
it’s medical, legal. It’s work-
ing with local authorities.
It’s deep-trauma processing
because there’s so much
shame, especially in traffick-
ing. They take your dignity.
The final thing is to pro-
vide education in some kind
of trade because if you have
the ability to make a living,
you’re worth more than being
a trafficked person.
We do a Style For Life
day through the hair salons
of Australia, and part of it is
training women to be hair-
dressers. If you can work in a
salon and do a great blow-
dry, you’re going to make
more money than being
forced to work in a brothel.Going method
JF: What’s the most frustrating thing about
acting and what’s the most fabulous?
RG: The most fabulous thing is being able
to step into other lives. I just did this
miniseries about the history of the civil
rights movement through gay, lesbian,
transgender eyes. I play a nurse who
worked at the coalface of AIDS nursing
[in the ’70s and ’80s]. These boys were
dying, they’d been rejected by their fam-
ilies, the orderlies wouldn’t even come
into the room with food because they
thought they might get AIDS.
I had lunch with a male nurse who
had been on that ward and clearly they’ve
all still got post-traumatic
stress. He started weeping
when he talked about that
time. It’s like their war.
JF: How do you deal with that?
RG: I’m not really a method
actor. It’s all very well to
empathise, but in the end I
wasn’t holding the heads of
19-year-olds who were beg-
ging you to tell them they
weren’t going to die. So I
don’t really blur those bound-
aries. I try to be respectful.
JF: What demands does
success make on you, both
professionally and personally?
RG: I’m one of those people
that success has made a nicer,
more graceful, more thankful
person. I was quite pushy
when I was young because I
needed a certain degree of
success to fill whatever hole I
had inside myself. My father
left when I was 11, we had a
real kind of struggletown
childhood. It was middle
class from the outside, but
behind closed doors, not a lot
of excess. So I think I used to
push hard to get somewhere.
So I’m nicer now, I think.Teenage pin-up?Favourite TV
show as a kid?Hidden talent?What would
you take to a
desert island?3 fantasy dinner
party guests?5
HEART OF GOLD
Left: hamming it
up at the Oscars
with her cute
movie camera
clutch in 1999.
Right and far
right: Griffiths
has been a long-
time supporter of
Hagar’s Style For
Life, which helps
train former
sex trafficked
workers
to become
hairdressers.Q&A