BEV ARMSTRONG: It seems that Kerry, because she is such a high-energy person, life deals her either extremes. Very unfortunate things or very wonderful things have happened to Kerry throughout her life.

REBECCA GIBNEY: I think Kerry thinks she was Hitler in a past life. She really does believe that she did some nasty things back then and she's paying for it now. I think many people think Kerry's crazy, and she probably is, to a certain extent. She wouldn't mind me saying that. I think people don't know how to take her, I think professionally and personally. They just don't get her. I've always gotten her - I got her from day one.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: What we're doing is organising what we're calling a 'banner of faith' on the steps of Parliament House for next Monday to raise our voices against the war.

NU LYNCH: Once she gets an idea into her head about a project, it's, like, full focus, go and get it done.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: This is a way of getting attention. It's got nothing to do with the bra. We need to work from the inside out now. We need to know that every small thing we do is of consequence.

REBECCA GIBNEY: I think people in this industry particularly don't like the honesty. They don't like someone saying, "I think that's a piece of crap." That's confronting, particularly if you're a writer or an actor. It's, like, hang on - you can't say that. And she's, like, yes, I can. Why not? And I love that. It's honesty in its purest sense.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: I don't know how it happened, how it occurred, how I became so-called controversial, but it seems to me that in this business it can be infiltrated by people who... They're not here by a calling - they're here because somewhere deep down inside their ego decided that they want to be in show business. But I don't know how the notion of celebrity got chucked onto people like me who is an actor, that’s it. There's no cause for celebration, there is no celebrity anywhere near me, and there's no kind of social graces that go with this. So I don't know where the lines got blurred.

RAY MARTIN - LOGIES: And the silver Logie goes to Kerry Armstrong.
LOGIES ANNOUNCER: Kerry Armstrong played Heather Jelly in 'Seachange' and this is her first Logie.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: I'm 42 years old and I started in TV as a weather girl. It was something called the desire to act, and the funny thing is that I've realised after 30 years that I act to disappear, not to be seen. It's a very strange thing. And so I love Heather Jelly and I'm glad it's her that's got me up here because she is the goddess of small moments.

REBECCA GIBNEY: You could see people in the audience going, what's going on? It was the most extraordinary speech, I think, at any Logies that I've ever seen. She came off and she went, "Oh, Boofy..." She calls me 'Boofy' - we call each other Boofy, I go yes boofy, She goes, "I think I talked a bit too much, didn't I?" I said, "No, honey, you were fantastic." She went, "Oh, OK, good."

BEV ARMSTRONG: Kerry can only act from virtually her soul, and this career has been a very difficult career. It's given her a very hard life. There have been some highs, like wonderful Ray Lawrence's 'Lantana', and other highs, but it's been very difficult, and not a lot of joy because she feels so deeply.

RAY LAWRENCE: Originally while we were casting, she nearly didn't get it. I asked her if she would read for two parts - the one of Sonja, the mother, and the other of the other woman, I guess. I got a message back saying she didn't want to play a lascivious housewife slut. Which sort of pissed me off, because it's a good part, and I didn't really want any of the actors to start judging characters, but she did.

LANTANA EXCERT: It's not that he might have slept with another woman.

RAY LAWRENCE: And she did this amazing reading. It was so truthful and so honest.

LANTANA EXCERT: It's that he might not tell me.

RAY LAWRENCE:I mean, she was well into the part we rehearsed and she just sort of flew with it.

LANTANA EXCERT: That would be the betrayal. Do you still love him?

KERRY ARMSTRONG: It's about entertaining. It's actually the fact that I know that I'm really interested in moving people deeply, and so I'll do anything to do that. I'd been in all the school plays - every school play. I did tours around Australia in a thing called 'The Mating Season' with Sid James.

BEV ARMSTRONG: She played the role of a schoolgirl, and she learnt a lot from Sid because timing in comedy's so important.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: And I love the stage. The stage is the place for me where I feel the safest of all. Someone put me in a contest for the Channel 9 weather girl, and I was 15, had long hair and not a care in the world. Anyway, I walked in, and I'll never forget - he looked up after about five minutes, this head of Channel 9, and he said, "Well, all we can say to you is, congratulations! You're the Channel 9 weather girl." And I went... (Gasps) He said, "A schoolgirl weather girl." He said, "We are gonna kill them. We're gonna kill them." He said, "The ratings will go through the roof."

BEV ARMSTRONG: She felt it was foolish for a young girl to be reporting on the weather. She just felt very uncomfortable. And finally when she quit, there was this billboard, 'Weather Girl Quits'.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: No-one in our family had any idea about the industry and that you don't have to, you know, initiate yourself by wearing bikinis on prime-time TV.

BEV ARMSTRONG: And it was also something that - has she ever lived it down? I don't know. I don't think so.

NU LYNCH: The blond, the blue-eyed, the girl next door, can be as much of an obstacle as a help. It looks as though your character's ability to communicate and her empathy have been transferred to another character. My role in Kerry's life - I help develop characters and scripts with her. I mean, I think there's humour in there, which is great. Once she's found a character, she knows who she is. The more humour that she can be given, the better. So when some dialogue comes along that is obviously not her character's dialogue, I don't think that she can compromise. I don't actually think it's a choice. There's just this huge, "No!" that happens inside her.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: I'm controversial because sometimes when we are making modern work and they give me words that don't come out of me organically, I'm not polite enough to say, "I'm not sure this word fits." Apparently I go, "Oh, no!" Or I'll go, "Oh...!" Or I'll go, "Eugh!" Or I'll go... or apparently I'll circle and cross them out.

REBECCA GIBNEY: She's certainly been called difficult on numerous occasions by lots of people, and I can understand that. I can understand that people don't like that way of working. I know that some directors find her hard work, but then there are other directors who just want to work with her because she is so giving and so willing to put herself out there.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: We are a nation and we almost champion mediocrity. We repeatedly seem to have forgotten how to make our hair stand up on end, and so maybe that's why, you know, I'll get up and throw everything upside down or shake it out or whatever.

REHEARSAL - Stick to the truth - you know what that is. Understand it, take your time. Pause if you need to. She's telling you the story, telling your story, and suddenly you realise how painful it is...

RAY LAWRENCE: In a sense, I think Kerry's her own worst enemy. I think her standards are so high, her standards for herself, and everybody else - they don't come up to her level. And they - you know, they don't know her, so they look at her in a particular light.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: Raquel Welch once was heard to say, "If they're shooting below you, drop to your knees."

BEV ARMSTRONG: She has been sacked years ago. She was doing a part and, especially when it comes to women, she wants women represented as they should be.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: We were on the covers of 'TV Week' and I remember seeing these photos or these images of me and I loathed them so much, with every being. And I thought, "I don't know how to get out of here." So there was this really strong voice inside of me saying, "You've got to get out of here," 'here' being Australia.

NEWS REPORTER: Brad Robinson was today described as the 'ridiculously handsome' guitarist of Australian Crawl.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: The great dilemma was that I met Braddy at that time and he was the first person who absolutely, implicitly understood me and who loved me for every aspect of what I did and who I loved. I had a complete... a resting place finally.

BEV ARMSTRONG: The quick wedding thing - that was amazing. She had decided to go to America to study and eight days before, Brad and Kerry said, "We've decided to get married." It was wonderfully romantic, but it was ridiculous. We really wanted it to work, but unfortunately it didn't. She had some wonderful friends in New York, and Alexander Bernstein, I think, is still her, probably still one of her most wonderful friends.

ALEXANDER BERNSTEIN: I first met Kerry Armstrong in 1981 at the HB Studios in New York. It was obvious when she arrived at HB that she had an immense amount of talent. Our teacher, Herbert Berghof, and Kerry had a somewhat stormy relationship. And I think he even kicked her out of class a couple of times, and she left a play one time.

BEV ARMSTRONG: You have to do other work, and 'Dynasty' gave her the opportunity to make a living in the States.

DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS: I remember someone said about Laurence Olivier, "Oh, yeah, he's the guy that does the Kodak commercial." Hello. You know, Kerry gets remembered for 'Dynasty'. She did a lot of amazing theatre and everything, but, you know, they're the commercial things that stick out.

ALEXANDER BERNSTEIN: She had been working with The Actors' Gang - a group of incredibly talented people - with Tim Robbins, John Cusack, some wonderful, wonderful actors.

BEV ARMSTRONG: And then at the Arena with Tom Stoppard. She got excellent reviews from the critics.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: Something made me just want to come home. Every time in my 20s I had something amazing, whether it be - which I did have with Brad Robinson - probably the best sort of husband in the world, or the best job in the world, or the best anything... I, um...oh, very good. I threw it away.

BEV ARMSTRONG: Her private life has been quite rocky. But she has the most wonderful three children, and a stepdaughter who she loves dearly, Shanti. So, that's been her absolute joy.

DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS: Sam Finn, gorgeous, and the two boys, Cal and Jai. She's a great mother. I mean, she's a single mum now. She's got three boys. That's a huge responsibility.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: The single parenting thing's not something that I want to advertise as a great cause. What it was is that I never chose, or knew how to choose, partners that I was at peace with. We have this structure where the boys have got fathers who love them. I'm grateful for that. It's untidy as all get-out, but it's working. So that's good.

BEV: As a mother, I've had to learn, and with Kerry helping me and saying, "Bevvie, don't go to fear." And she's made some poor decisions, I think. But she has beautiful children, and that's the most important thing. Yes, it's very hard for Kerry to have a relationship because she gives so much to her work - her work is very important - but her boys are the most important thing.

DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS: Kerry's not a person to live in regret. She's not going to sit around and worry about why she left America. She left because she wanted to, because that was where she was meant to go.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: I came back here and I couldn't get arrested. I remember even when I did 'Seachange', I did the screen test and they called me back and said, "They just want to see if you can do that again." People saying that I was fluking something. It was incredibly debilitating. It was like being a phantom in my own country.

DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS: She won't just create, you know, a subtle character. I mean, you make bold choices like that, it's either going to pay off or you're going to fall over. And it paid off.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: Heather was also our chance to apologise to all of the supposed women walking around who look like dumb blondes, or whatever a dumb blonde is, when what we know is that they're women with great endeavour who have no sense of self-worth.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: And who dress up and hoick their boobs and put on the Quick Tan and, "Hello." And do all of that just to hope that they don't get noticed in a bad way.

SEACHANGE - Bob Jelly: What am I going to say to Sid Farley?
Heather Jelly: You can tell Sid Farley that he can he can stop touching your wife's bottom.

SCOTT RANKIN: My term for Kerry is that she's a national treasure. I'm not sure everybody agrees with that, but there is a certain... time of kind of maturity in a performer's craft, and in Australia it's very hard for you to reach that moment or that arc and still have the courage and not be burnt out.

NEWS REPORTER: 'The Bed Vigil' opened the Melbourne Festival. It's a bed in which some celebrities and a lot of ordinary people are asked to sleep, and the first person in the bed was Kerry.
NEWS REPORTER: Can you please tell us a time you've had a knot in your heart?

KERRY ARMSTRONG: A knot in my heart? I think that's pretty easy. That was the day I came home from work and I realised that our house had burnt down. The other knot in my stomach that day was when we found out we weren't insured.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: I think for the first half of my life I was given gift after gift after gift. But the trouble was is that unless you feel worthy of all of that, you don't know what to do with it. I think that the second half of my life, or my 30s, apart from the boys, which were gifts in abundance, there were when the house burnt down and when Braddy died, all this... There have been some... I seem to have either really horrific or really wonderful things. And I think that's all just training.

NEWS REPORTER – BRAD’S MEMORIAL: It was a celebration of a man who so obviously charmed everyone around him.

BEV ARMSTRONG: Yes, Kerry was very, very depressed when Brad developed cancer. And, yes, it was a very, very sad time.

DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS: 'Lantana' was just one of those things that I believe came at the right time for her. It was meant to be. When you look at the role, you go, "No-one else could play that, no one else could do it the way she did." And fortunately everyone agreed. That's why she got all the awards and the accolades that she deserves.

RAY LAWRENCE: There was only one scene that she added a line, and that just sort of came out of her mouth. You could just see her building up in the scene.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: And I remember looking at him and my line was, "I don't know if I'll even be here tonight," but suddenly out of my body, he said, "We'll talk about this tonight," and I went, and I just thought, and I said, "Get fucked. I don't even know if I'll be here tonight." And Anthony went... like this, and I went... Sonja went, "Yeah, stick that up your jumper, boy." And I walked out and got into the car and the two boys playing my kids looked at me and they went, "Are you OK?" And I went, "I'm great."

RAY LAWRENCE: I think we just did it once and every time I've been in an audience, a small audience, you know, like showing people, the women sort of love that scene. They all seem to want to tell men to fuck off. I was in Paris a couple of months ago and we had a screening just for people in the industry. And about three French directors came up to me and said, "Does she speak French?" I said, "No, she speaks Spanish." They were just completely bowled over by her. You know, and they really do like the mature woman.

BEV ARMSTRONG: I think that she felt deeply that the Australians, her people, were giving her recognition.

RUSSELL CROWE: The 'Harper's Bazaar' Australian Film Institute Award for best actress goes to... ..Kerry Armstrong for 'Lantana'.
ANNOUNCER: This is Kerry's second AFI tonight. She is the first person to ever win best actress AFIs for film and television in the same year.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: Maybe that's why the speeches at award nights are so erratic. Because I'm so sure that no-one's going to give me an award in my own country, and when they do I'm so sure they're going to cut me off or boo anyway that I just start to blurt.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: If they play music, I swear to God I'll deck someone with this award 'cause I'm... Seriously, I've got people to thank, I do I do.

BEV ARMSTRONG:I think for Kerry it was, "I'm home. I'm an actor and I'm home." All of that was in it - all her struggles after returning from overseas.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: And my beautiful boys. Thank you, everybody.

SCOTT RANKIN: What always happens on the second night of any show, no matter how professional people are, is that there is an energy drop in the room.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: It's been made really clear to me that I'm much better off avoiding situations where I'm fighting sometimes to the detriment of my own peace and the peace of the production, so I actually am not interested in that kind of conflict anymore.

SCOTT RANKIN: Armstrong is renowned for stuffing up second-night performances. She's lazy, she's shonky. She's got the credit, the review's in, and she cruises from there. Don't follow her career pattern.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: So I now don't spend time with people who I'm not good for. Or...and I try not to spend time with people who I can harm. I can sting, I can hurt people that I love. I don't mean to usually, but sometimes I do. But I don't want to be around people who I can harm just by my velocity. 'Cause they don't need any of that.

REBECCA GIBNEY: Kerry just has those extremes. Most of us keep a lot of those things to ourselves - our vulnerabilities, our failures or our whatever, we'll keep them inside. She's quite happy to just display them for the world to see.

KERRY ARMSTRONG: Human beings interest me greatly and I want them to have a better time. And the way I can do that is to have a better time myself and to entertain and also just change the world just a little bit. I promise it won't hurt.