Gareth Reeves played one of the most high-profile theatre roles in the world, but he has found himself back in a position depressingly familiar to all actors: the money is about to run out and there is no work on the horizon.
For over a thousand shows starting back in February 2019 Reeves played Harry Potter in the blockbuster Melbourne production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Gareth Reeves starred in the blockbuster Melbourne production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.Credit: Jason South
Cursed Child closed just under two weeks ago, after several lockdowns and selling over a million tickets, but it will take some time for Reeves’ body to unlearn the muscle memory it has created. “I woke up in the middle of the night two nights ago doing the show, apparently,” he says.
Playing the one role for so long is highly unusual and Reeves knew this from the outset.
“[Normally] you do your three to six weeks season – or longer if you’re doing a tour – and then crash and get the flu and fall apart and then get up and madly scramble around for the next gig,” he explains. “My whole life [as an actor] I’ve always kind of hovered around this sort of $20-$30,000 a year kind of income.”
So, when he was cast as Harry Potter he knew it was a chance that might not come again. “Going into it one of my first thoughts was ‘OK, this might be the only time in my life I have a full-time job’,” he says.“So, we were like, OK, we have to be smart about this. How can we maximise the opportunity?”
Reeves as Harry Potter.Credit: Matt Murphy
Reeves took out a home loan and built the kind of financial buffer that is rarely possible for actors. In two months, however, that buffer will run out and he will return to familiar territory – trying to pay the bills any way he can and not knowing what acting job comes next.
“I’m looking at training as a marriage celebrant and helping out a friend who’s setting up a small business,” he says. “That’s about all I’ve got in the pipeline at the moment.”
While Reeves threw himself into playing Harry Potter and found the experience deeply satisfying, he also knew that when things finished he would be returning to the hustle that goes hand in hand with being an actor.
“In terms of career ... I’m under no illusions that playing Harry Potter is going to open any doors for me. I think, if anything while I’ve been doing this, a bunch of doors have probably closed and I have to go back and start banging on them again.”
“[Cursed Child] was a real outlier – it was a large Broadway-musical-scale play with movement, and there aren’t many of those.”
Gareth Reeves
He says it’s an interesting time to find himself out of work, pointing to the Hollywood writers and actors strike. “We’re all watching very closely,” he says.
Something the strike has put into sharp relief is that a big break doesn’t necessarily mean financial security, or an increased likelihood of work in the future. More often than not, once that role wraps up, you’re back where you started.
“It took me years, even as an actor to figure that out” says Reeves. “I had friends who would get a big gig and you were like, ‘Well, off they go they’re loaded now’. But that isn’t the reality, at least not any more.”
He points to streaming services in particular – even if actors land a role in something high profile and well regarded, “it’s only once it becomes popular and starts repeating that you and your team can then start to kind of push and negotiate for a bit more”.
“No one’s set for life anymore, that’s for sure.”
“As you get older, and you have families or you get a gig that enables you to buy a house … this is one of the main times that people start dropping off,” says Reeves. “They just get jack of it and start to see the advantages of having a job where you can be home at night with your families and be around on the weekends to see people, and to be able to know that that money is coming in regularly and know how much it’s going be.
“Harry was a real outlier – it was a large Broadway-musical-scale play with movement, and there aren’t many of those. I always knew that it was going to be a one off.
“I’ve got this little window of time just to breathe and heal and find out who I am now [while] trying to stave off the terror because I have absolutely no work or gigs lined up at all, not through lack of trying – but I’m working on it,” he says with a small laugh.
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it every Friday.