Gillian Armstrong clearly has an eye for talent. She gave Judy Davis her big break in ''My Brilliant Career'', introduced audiences to Claudia Karvan in ''High Tide'', placed Cate Blanchett in one of her first big-screen leads in Oscar and Lucinda and recently cast Saoirse Ronan in her new film ''Death Defying Acts'' before the young Irish actress landed her Oscar-nominated role in Atonement. But one of Armstrong’s lesser-known casting coups was giving “a very tall, thin redhead with incredible presence” a part in the music video for Pat Wilson’s ‘Bop Girl’ back in the very early ‘80s Yes, one of the young women in that clip was Nicole Kidman. “That was Nicole’s first role on film,” says Armstrong with a laugh.

Both Kidman and Armstrong have come a long way since ‘Bop Girl’, though. Having enjoyed success both at home and internationally, Armstrong is one of this country’s most respected and in-demand filmmakers. There was, however, a six-year break between Armstrong’s last feature, the WWII drama ''Charlotte Gray'', and her most recent work, the docudrama ''Unfolding Florence: The Florence Broadhurst Story'' and ''Death Defying Acts'', a mixture of fact and fiction that sees legendary escape artist Harry Houdini (played by Guy Pearce) fall under the sway of a Scottish con artist named Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her teenage daughter Benji (Ronan) during his tour of Edinburgh.

Houdini, heartbroken by the death of his mother, had taken it upon himself to debunk the psychics who claimed they could communicate with the late woman’s spirit, offering a $10,000 bounty to anyone who claimed to know his mother’s last words. For the penniless McGarvies, it’s too good an opportunity to pass up. But as the world-famous illusionist and the fake medium become closer, the line between what’s real and what make-believe begins to blur.
Houdini has been the subject of a few film biopics in the past, and Armstrong initially had little interest in bringing the man’s story to the screen one more time. “When my agent said it was a film about Houdini, I went ‘Really?’” she says. “I didn’t know what I could bring to it. But she asked me to read it, and the writers’ concept was something I found interesting - that it was a portion of his life, a ‘What if?’ story. It is about trickery and fakery, and Catherine and Guy are both playing people hiding behind masks. That’s what intrigued me about the story, that you think it’s going to be about these two con artists but then it switches into a love story. So I liked the script, because with so many American things that I read I know how it’s going to end 10 pages in.”

Still, wanting to make a movie and actually making it are two different things altogether, and ''Death Defying Acts'' faced a number of complicated factors, mainly stemming from scheduling issues, before the two-year process of production and post-production work. “The person we actually had to wait on in the end was bloody Saoirse because of Atonement!” laughs Armstrong. But locking down Pearce and Zeta-Jones was no picnic either, with the shooting schedule on ''Factory Girl'' (in which Pearce played Andy Warhol) complicating Armstrong’s plans to film ''Death Defying Acts''. Once the two leads were both ready to begin, Armstrong got the news that young Ronan had landed her ''Atonement'' role and would only be able to start playing Benji two weeks into the ''Death Defying Acts'' shoot. “I didn’t want her to go straight from one to another, so I asked Guy and Catherine if they’d mind putting it back a few more weeks,” says Armstrong. “I said to them ‘No one’s going to be better than her’. That was very clear from her first audition, and from rehearsals too, and they agreed. When they saw her, Guy and Catherine went ‘Well, we know who’s stealing the movie’.”

In addition to ‘discovering’ Ronan, Armstrong was pleased to discover a great rapport developing between her two stars, glamourous Oscar winner Zeta-Jones and the steadfastly independent Pearce. Mindful of the need to wrangle a number of varied acting methods – “the director’s role is to being all of it together, bring people’s styles together to work for the characters” – she says that the leads’ shared “sardonic sense of humour” resulted in a “joyous” rehearsal period and shoot. “The Aussie and Welsh senses of humour are quite close, so there was a great rapport there,” she says.

The rapport between Armstrong and ''Death Defying Acts''’ plethora of producers, however? Not quite so great. “We had three producers in America, two in England,” says the filmmaker. “That’s an awful lot of people who think they have a say. The key producer – the Australian producer, Marion Macgowan – had a full-time job going between all these other producers, especially after they went DVDs of my cuts of the movie and they all started disagreeing with each other. We had to say ‘Can you please talk to each other, put your notes together?’ Because I couldn’t spend time dealing with everyone’s ideas when I had a team in the editing room and a deadline to meet. Everyone has individual ideas, and they all get terribly close to it as well. And they don’t have my 30 years of techniques of how to step back from a film. On this film, some of their suggestions were good but I always say ‘Give me your first reaction’. Because reactions change the more you see it. It can get boring, seeing a thing over and over and over. That’s when the nitpicking begins, and that’s what drives us crazy.” In such conflicts, Armstrong says she has always fought for final cut on her films, “and I’ve pretty much won”.

“I’ve dealt with American studios over the years and they’re all worrying about whether a film will be commercial, whether people will come to see it,” she adds. “It’s actually really, really hard to make a hit. It’s like a fluke. No one ever knows. None of us ever thought My Brilliant Career or even Little Women would go through the roof. Then another one you make and love just as much, like Oscar and Lucinda...well, the Americans never quite got it. I don’t think they got Peter Carey’s black sense of humour. It’s so hard.”

When it comes to the Australian industry, Armstrong’s view is a straightforward one – we simply need to make more movies. “There is the point of view that we don’t have the money for that kind of marketing clout compared to the American system,” she says. “But I think what Australia needs is more product. We’re all very hard on our own industry but I’ve seen some shocking films made by the English and the Americans. Often when I’m casting I’ll get an actor’s showreel or a DVD of a film they’ve made. They’re the ones that don’t get released here. In England I saw all the Four Weddings and a Funeral wannabes – you wouldn’t believe how many ‘Quirky London characters sharing a flat’ films were made that never saw the light of day.”

Of course, ramping up production is going to require boldness from financiers, many of whom are averse to betting on long shots. “Investment is the most conservative end,” says Armstrong. “They’re not going to say ‘Ooh, that’s never been done before! That sounds risky! Let’s make it!’ They should say that. But instead they say ‘The Castle made money – we want 20 more scripts with a little Aussie battler’. Or they want 20 more crime comedy capers because Two Hands made money. That phase in Australian cinema killed our audience. People aren’t stupid. It’s the fresh thing that captures people’s imaginations. Those two films were brilliantly made as well, and it’s not that easy to pull off those genres. We’re judging the poor, pathetic number of Australian films that get made and wonder why it’s not the next Castle or Two Hands. There’s such a burden on our filmmakers. We’re so tough on our own but there’s rubbish made in America and England that goes straight to DVD or doesn’t even get released. We only see the best. But if something’s good – and we’ve got great talent here, we always have – people will go.”

Death Defying Acts opens in cinemas Thursday.

- GUY DAVIS