Bryan Brown: Aussie actor turns crime writer with debut book Sweet Jimmy

Australian actor Bryan Brown is a familiar face on our screens. With an acting career stretching back four decades, Brown has appeared in more than 80 films, including Breaker Morant, The Thorn Birds, Gorillas in the Mist, Cocktail, and Along Came Polly.

Now, in his early 70s, Brown is adding another feather to his cap by trying his hand at crime writing. His debut book, Sweet Jimmy is a collection of short stories that have been described as taut and crackling with character, in the vein of modern Aussie noir.

The male characters get caught up in complicated scams and then take justice into their own hands to get their revenge. 

Brown says he reads a lot of crime stories, including by Henning Mankell (who writes the Wallander series) and Ian Rankin but hopes he has found his own voice and style in Sweet Jimmy. 

Both Mankell and Rankin give readers a true sense of the cities in which their writing is set - Malmo and Edinburgh. Sydney born and bred Brown is hoping he has achieved the same for his hometown so that it will  encourage readers to see it in a way they haven't before. 

"Just how multicultural Sydney is. It's not all about Bondi... I just want to take people into ordinary lives, lives that are rich and fulfilled but they aren't high-end lives."

Brown says his characters "bump into darkness that may overtake them and they have to work out to navigate [it]". 

Turning to writing was not a way to fill in time in lockdown - one story even dates from 40 years ago when he wrote it in Los Angeles as the basis of a film script. 

Asked if he will write more books, he says he has been a storyteller all his life with his film and television work and his projects with other writers. 

"I think I just started to enjoy a new process of putting some stories down that were in my head on a piece of paper. Now they've eventually come out as a book.

"Has it given me the bug? Not really because I don't do things by the bug - I do things by what do I feel like doing now."

He says he has an idea for a bigger story "but I'm not sure I'm smart enough to do it. That's the problem. ...
Let's see, who knows?" 

Currently in Queensland as several Australian states battle a tide of Covid-19 cases he went through two weeks of managed isolation in a hotel. 

He said he coped well but when he got out, it was "disorienting". 

"It was like I was stepping out into a universe that I didn't know... I hadn't seen a face for two weeks and suddenly one of the first really strange thoughts I had was 'Boy, aren't we different, don't we look different, how did that happen?' ...I'm back now not noticing anybody."

While he is in the Sunshine State for three months he is filming Derby and Joan with Greta Scacchi. The two characters meet when they crash into each other in the Outback. 

"It's about that relationship ... good fun. There's funny stuff in it, funny because of the interaction of these two characters who are so different." 

He describes the genesis of the movie Palm Beach directed by his wife, Rachel Ward, and also starring his close friend, Sam Neill. It came about after a Christmas spent with some friends after Brown had just experienced six months of anxiety. He observed one friend who had lost his sense of purpose after selling his business and another friend who was an alcoholic and the impact that had on his family.

He told his wife that while people might think they were all lucky, in fact they were a bunch of blokes who were struggling.

"People never stop struggling all their lives, and I said to Rachel, there's a movie in that for that age-group because they'll understand what's happening to those men and women. So we decided to make Palm Beach."

Brown said with his own anxiety issues, triggered initially by a bout of septicaemia and then arising again whenever he had to travel, he decided to go to a psychologist. 

"That was the smartest move I made - I was able to understand what was happening and how the triggers happened and how to help myself."   

He said dealing with anxiety has made him a better man and he has realised it's important that people seek treatment. 

Brown said the absence of a father when he was growing up has not scarred him because he had "the most extraordinary mother" who was a solo parent whose own parents had died by the time she was 20. 

He lived in a state house and considers himself lucky to have been brought up by someone who was so devoted. 

"She gave us warmth and love and food - I didn't miss out on a single bloody thing. It was only as the years went by that I realised what she gave up to do that so I'm pretty incredibly grateful. She taught me how to be a bloke." 

He also defends the reputation of Aussie men, saying there are rednecks in every country. "...They're [Aussie men] actually very emotional and sensitive but they don't go falling all over the place about it.

"Most of the blokes I mix with are devoted to their families, they work hard and they're funny."

He said like Kiwi men, they will laugh things off and would rather opt for humour to handle something than tears.

"I don't necessarily think we can say there's anything particularly wrong with that." 

Brown and Ward have recently been accused on social media of bringing Covid-19 back from the United States which they have not visited for five years. 

His daughter was told by a friend of a friend that it must be true because a policeman on the beach had told the person. 

Brown, who does not use social media, says we are living in a different age where so many people believe everything they read on the internet.

He says he was grateful that Australian media approached him first and then rubbished the reports.  

He finishes on an upbeat note praising the brother and sister relationship between Aussies and Kiwis and he is also confident that both nations will survive the pandemic.

"We will get through it ... we need our entertainment to get through the bad times."