Bad Boy Bubby star Nicholas Hope reflects on cult fame ahead of Bangalow Film Festival screening

HE starred in one of Australia’s most notorious cult films, but fame proved fleeting for Nicholas Hope. The 67-year-old won the AFI Award for Best Actor for Bad Boy Bubby in 1994, just months after it took out the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. But while the film’s success suggested it might launch him into mainstream stardom, that never really eventuated.

“Bad Boy Bubby took me to weird places,” Hope said. “It didn’t take me to Hollywood, it took me inside the Arctic Circle in Norway to do a film tour. I did all sorts of weird little festivals. It was a wild time. I’d get picked up in a limousine, then when I got home I’d be going to the dole office.”

Hope grew up in South Australia and worked in a post office, playing in bands at night, before deciding to study acting in his mid-20s.

He worked in theatre for the first few years before his big break came in Rolf de Heer’s controversial film, which follows the story of 35-year-old Bubby after he escapes his squalid Adelaide home, where he has been locked up and abused by his religious fanatic mother, and his ensuing adventures as a completely unsocialised human being navigating the modern world. The film explores themes of incest and animal cruelty, though no animals were harmed during production.

To immerse the audience in Bubby’s claustrophobic world, microphones were sewn into the wig Hope wore, with one placed directly above each ear so audiences heard exactly what the character heard.

“It was really groundbreaking in many ways both in the filmmaking and the subject matter,” Hope said. “If the camera wasn’t on Bubby, it was his point of view. It’s an emotional rollercoaster. It really questioned the notion of perceived beauty and the notion of bringing up people and what you’re doing to them. If you got through the first 20 minutes without leaving it was very entertaining. It was kind of a hardcore Mr Bean.”

For around a year, Hope couldn’t walk down the street without being stopped, with people often asking him to recite lines as his character.

Despite at times feeling like a performing monkey, Hope said he enjoyed the attention and found it hard when it stopped.

His memoir, Brushing the Tip of Fame, which was published in 2004, tells the story of the realities of being a working-class actor.

 

“You enter into acting and half the time you don’t know why,” he said. “You keep saying it’s about telling stories and some of it is, but from my point of view it was probably also about getting famous, without any knowledge of what fame really meant.”

Despite this, he is recognisable from countless films and TV shows over the years, including series such as Changi, Gallipoli and Black Snow and the Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock.

He also starred as Old Man Smithers in the Scooby-Doo movie and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in the 2024 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards for his turn in the mystery crime film Limbo, in which he starred alongside Simon Baker.

His most recent work, the romantic supernatural horror film Leviticus, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and screened at last year’s Sydney Film Festival.

“It looks like a lot, but I think if you added it up it probably wouldn’t even come to a year’s work,” Hope said.

“I was lucky enough to be in a film that was an iconic hit. That’s why I’m on the list that people consider when they’re looking for an actor in their 60s.”

Over the years he’s done everything from selling wine in a call centre to working in an organic store to pay the bills between acting gigs. He now works part-time advocating for other actors and performers at the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the trade union and professional organisation for workers in the media, entertainment, sports and arts industries.

But Bad Boy Bubby is still his defining role, and he’s looking forward to joining de Heer in a Q&A after the film screening at the upcoming Bangalow Film Festival, a reminder of the film’s lasting impact on his career.

“I still do really like getting the slap on the back and when someone sends an email and says, ‘do you want to come to Bangalow for a festival?’,” he said.

Bad Boy Bubby screens at the Bangalow Film Festival on Saturday 13 June.

For more information and tickets, visit bangalowfilmfestival.com.au