Lorraine Bayly on the health issues forcing her to retire from acting
Celebrity by Siobhan Duck It can be frustrating for Lorraine Bayly to listen to people complain about lockdown. After all, a few weeks - or even months - is nothing compared to the two-and-a-half years the Logie-winning actor has spent isolated at home in her one-bedroom Sydney apartment as she recuperates from serious health problems. First, she was diagnosed with pneumonia shortly after visiting her close friend
Home And Away star Cornelia Frances at her hospital deathbed in 2018. That illness led to a partially collapsed lung. And not long after she d recovered from that, she discovered she had breast cancer.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this story contains discussion of people who have died.
You could be forgiven for assuming that having every single cinema and film set closed for over six months would render any list of this year’s best Australian movies a slightly truncated one, the only possible upside being an accompanying dearth of ‘worst films’.
But while popcorn and choc top sales dipped alarmingly, there was no shortage of homegrown cinematic excellence, even if most of it never reached an actual big screen.
Depending on your viewpoint, the streaming behemoths are either providing life support for motion pictures by chucking big bucks at every single script they see, or downloading the final nail into the box office coffin as the lounge becomes the default location for movie viewing.