Candid, intimate and sometimes shocking: Heather Mitchell tells her story

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MEMOIR
Everything and Nothing
Heather Mitchell
Allen & Unwin, $34.99

Sometimes in a conversation you can feel it – the moment when someone moves from relaying a story simply to entertain or to vent or to fill the air with words, to something deeper.

It’s the difference between I lost my mother when I was young, and my mother’s death when I was a teenager meant that I was convinced that if I got married and had children, I too would die early.

Acclaimed Australian actor Heather Mitchell has written a candid and generous memoir, Everything and Nothing.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

This space, where you share genuine thoughts and feelings, is a vulnerable one to occupy and in real life only visited intermittently. It’s easier to slip into with strangers, difficult with acquaintances and seamless with loved ones. In her memoir Everything and Nothing, Heather Mitchell invites readers into this space almost from the first page, opening up her mind and her experiences with generous and unexpected candour.

Divided into three sections – Girl, Woman, Mother – the acclaimed Australian actor lays out key moments of her life in a roughly chronological order.

In Girl she renders family members in vivid details. There’s her adventurous, intellectual mother who set off for Shanghai in the mid-1940s. There’s her caring and insightful father, Red. There’s her aunt Rosemary, who took her camera almost everywhere and used her smile to combat tragedy and despair. Each new portrait shows the complexity that exists within every human life – the contradictions, the choices, the sorrows. As Mitchell carefully translates her loved ones onto the page, she shares more of her own story while building a picture of those who helped shape her.

Heather Mitchell’s family in Camden, NSW, in 1967.

Woman marks a slight shift in structure but not tone, which remains gentle, inquiring and introspective throughout. Here, Mitchell lays down her own stories, sharing moments connected by theme. It’s also here that she demonstrates her masterful storytelling ability.

The book’s structure is deceptively simple, but in Woman and Mother, Mitchell weaves different memories together to address bigger truths. A story about experiencing her first period is a gateway into a conversation about sexual assault; a short section about receiving rejection from a casting agent paves the way for deeper discussion about compassion and generosity.

Mitchell is a familiar face on Australian stage and screen, with roles in Muriel’s Wedding, Spellbinder, RBG: Of Many, One at STC and most recently Love Me – but readers don’t need to be a fan of her work, or even know who she is, to read her book.

Heather Mitchell as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Credit: Prudence Upton

The stories Mitchell chooses to share are often intimate and sometimes shocking, but she doesn’t flinch, carefully teasing out the lessons she has taken away and the far too many battles she has fought.

In between the candour, her writing is consistently gripping – there’s tension, laughter and horror expertly balanced. Images stay with you long after you move past a chapter – Mitchell crawling into neighbours’ yards to take their laundry down and leave it folded on their doorstep; Mitchell freezing up on stage; Mitchell letting out a cry backstage after receiving bad news; Mitchell sitting opposite a clairvoyant with uncanny ability.

A book that takes on everything from feminism, art, issues in the healthcare system, cancer, mental health, spirituality, the difficulties of life as an actor, to raising a family, runs the risk of becoming rapidly chaotic, but Mitchell keeps things on an even keel. Nothing is out of place; every story is here for a reason.

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One of the most surprising aspects of the memoir, is the thread of the supernatural. There’s Mitchell’s father showing up soon after she and her sister were in a minor car accident as he just had a feeling he needed to start walking. There’s the story of her son, Finn, who as a toddler sensed “dead babies” in a room they later discovered was where abortions were performed. But, like every other thread of the book, it’s explored with a clear mind and rationality.

In a particularly striking moment, Mitchell reflects on losing out on a role as a cancer patient while experiencing cancer treatment herself. As she drives herself home, she reflects on who gets to tell what stories, what the role acting plays in our society. Everything and Nothing is not simply a reflection on the past – it’s the work of a person using their own story to cast the present in a new light.

Heather Mitchell will be speaking about her book Everything and Nothing at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Sunday May 7 and will be appearing at Sydney Writers Festival on Saturday May 27.

The Age is a partner of the Melbourne Writers Festival

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