THE CAST

Heath Ledger as Dan
Heath's most recent credits are Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (for which Heath received a Golden Globe Nomination and the 2005 New York Critics Circle Award for Best Actor), Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova and Lords of Dogtown. Heath's international career followed swiftly on the heels of his feature film debut at 20 in the critically acclaimed Australian feature film Two Hands. His subsequent credits include the hit film Then Things I Hate About You, The Patriot, A Knight's Tale, Monster's Ball, Four Feathers and Ned Kelly in which he returned to Australia to play the eponymous hero and to work once more with the director of his original debut, Gregor Jordan.
"When you first meet Dan in the film he's knee deep in addiction. He's a regular user of heroin and a poet. He looks at drug use as poetic and romantic. Candy's curiosity towards drugs is born through him. He's attracted by the way she wants to dive into his world, to share his experience. Heroin ends up binding the two of them together, and destroying them as a couple. They go to hell and back. Candy is also the story of their rebirth."
"The prospect of shooting a film using my own accent - which I haven't done for eight years - was very attractive to me. It gave me a sense of freedom - being able to mumble, to breath in my own accent. I was able to improvise more freely. This, and the faith I had in the film - that it was going to be a good story to tell - and my curiosity to see what director Neil Armfield would do with it, drew me back to Australia."

Abbie Cornish as Candy
At fourteen Abbie Cornish became a regular in the ground-breaking Australian drama series Wildside for which she won the AFI Young Actors Award in 1999. Recently, Abbie made her international debut in Ridley Scott's A Good Year. For her critically acclaimed lead performance in the award-winning feature Somersault, Abbie won the AFI (Australian Film Institute), IF (Inside Film) and Film Critics Circle of Australia awards for Best Actress in 2004. Her other Australian feature film credits include One Perfect Day and The Monkey's Mask.
"At the beginning of the film Candy is a young artist who has the world at her feet. She falls in love with Dan, and from here their tale begins. Playing Candy was about infusing her character with life, spirit and promise at the beginning of the film, and then slowly breaking this down throughout the course of her journey. During rehearsals I realised that it was the love between Candy and Dan which would drive the film forward an also lay a basis on which the events that occur would create knocks and scratches, both harsh and beautiful."
"Neil once described Candy to me as being fire and air. It made sense to me, provided me with ideas and imagery form which the character grew."

Geoffrey Rush as Casper
After two decades of critically acclaimed performances on Australian stage and screen, Geoffrey attracted international attention with the feature Shine (1996), winning amongst a slew of other awards, a BAFTA and an Oscar for Best Actor. Feature credits since have included Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Love (another BAFTA win and an Oscar nomination), Quills (Best Actor Oscar nomination), The Tailor of Panama, The Banger Sisters, Frida, Lantana, Pirates of the Caribbean, Intolerable Cruelty, and the title role in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers for which he received a Golden Globe, SAG Award and an Emmy. He was the voice of Nigel in the hugely successful animated feature Finding Nemo, and his Australian film credits include Lantana, Oscar and Lucinda, Children of the Revolution, Swimming Upstream, Ned Kelly and the Oscar winning Harvey Krumpet. Most recently, he completed filming on Steven Spielberg's forthcoming Munich and Pirates of the Caribbean II and III.
Geoffrey has performed in over seventy Australian theatrical productions. Highlights include his lead performance in Neil Armfield's production of The Diary of a Madman which toured Moscow and St Petersburg. For his title role Geoffrey won the Sydney Critic's Award for Most Outstanding Performance, the Variety Club Award for Best Actor and the 1990 Victorian Green Room Award for Best Actor. For the next three years, he received Best Actor nominations in the Syndey's Critics Circle Awards for his starring roles in Gogol's The Government Inspector, the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Chekov's Uncle Vanya and Mamet's Oleanna in which he co-starred with Cate Blanchett. In 1994 Geoffrey received rave reviews for his role as Horatio in the Company B Belvoir production Hamlet. The same year, he received the prestigious Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for his work in theatre. Geoffrey's professional relationship with director Neil Armfield encompasses twenty-five years of collaboration in theatre and film.
"Casper is a kind of accidental mentor. There is a very strong suggestion that Dan's friendship with Casper goes way back some time, probably into Dan's mid-adolescence, so there's ten or twelve years of shared experience behind it. As a much longer-term addict than Dan and Candy, Casper presents to them a living example of one particular path that you might possibly go down in your life. The difference is that Casper comes from a privileged background. He's an academic, an associate professor of organic chemistry - so he gets to make his own stuff. This means he has never had to deal with the difficulties and the despair that are part of the street scene. He's a fanatical old academic, a rather decadent, art deco gay host, a rich man. Dan is a struggling young artist who, like a lot of young men, wants to find the poetry in his life, his maximum potential, his expression in the world."
"I thin Casper loves the youth and the vibrancy of these two sweet and beautiful human beings. I think he's also rather saddened by the fact that he can see, being a junkie himself, that they are on a poignant and rather inevitable collision course."

Tony Martin as Mr Wyatt
Tony Martin is perhaps best known to Australian audiences for his role in the ground-breaking ABC television series Wildside, for Heartbreak High, and for his award-winning performance as the notorious Neddy Smith in Blue Murder. He has appeared on stage for, amongst others, the Sydney Theatre Company in The Floating World, Belvoir Street Theatre in Capricornia, The Ensemble Death of a Salesman and The Stables in Foreskin's Lament. Tony received a Critics Circle Nomination for his performance in the feature film The Interview, an AFI for Best Actor in Blue Murder and two Most Outstanding Actor Logie Awards. 

Noni Hazlehust as Mrs Wyatt
Noni Hazlehurst recently appeared in the Australian feature Little Fish for which she won her fourth AFI award (for Best Supporting Actress), co-starred in the telemovie Stepfather of the Bride (for ABS television), and played the lead in the about-to-be released Bitter and Twisted. Previously, she has given award-winning lead performances in the feature films Waiting (Best Actress, San Sebastian IFF), Fran (AFI Best Actress, 1986) and Monkey Grip (AFI Best Actress, 1982)

Amongst her many leading performances in Australian television drama, Noni has earned an AFI for Best Actress for Waiting at the Royal, and Logies for her roles in Waterfront and Ride On Stranger in 1985 and 1979 respectively. Noni has played lead roles in numerous theatrical productions, including Sydney Theatre Company's sell-out season of The Breath of Life; and has been a much-loved member of the ABC Playschool team for more than twenty years. In 1995 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services of the performing arts as an actor, director and presenter of children's television programs.

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