Call it charm, charisma, a disarming smile or a sparkle in the eye.
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Whatever it takes to turn your life around and reach for the stars — Stan Yarramunua has got it.
It's taken him from an itinerant childhood blighted by poverty to a successful career as an artist, musican and actor, including his latest appearance on screen as a menacing lore man in the second season of the ABC outback crime series Mystery Road.
Sometime in the early 90s, Stan Yarramunua put down his paintbrush to watch indigenous actor, comedian and all-round good bloke Ernie Dingo on television.
It was a lightulb moment for Stan, who was dabbling with art and music, but not exactly sure what to do with his life.
“I thought geez, if he can do that then so can I. So I rang up ABC and they put me on to someone at Channel 7. Then I got a role on Flying Doctors,” he said.
From there, Stan acted alongside Hugh Jackman in one of his early television roles in the crime series Corelli. He went on to feature in Blue Heelers with John Wood, and joined the theatre cast of the play Stolen, which toured for seven years across Australia, Europe and Asia.
Just like all his other artistic talents, Stan's acting skills were learned on the job and in the school of life.
“I learned from having a go, and sitting with actors while they had lunch or waited for the next scene — and I asked them how they learned things,” he said.
“I'm sitting having a conversation with Hugh Jackman and he's telling me stories about NIDA, and he was giving me all the information. That's how I learn — I'm a people's man, I like to talk to people.
“Now it's just me and the camera and the actor that I'm working with. I've got the lines in my head and I just let it come out natural.”
Stan was born in Swan Hill and arrived in Shepparton when he was about 14 years old. He spent about four years here before moving on to Melbourne.
But as he tells it, he never really spent much time anywhere — certainly not enough time to attend school regularly. From the age of seven he followed his father — a tent boxer and lion tamer with Sole Brothers’ Circus.
“Yeah, I grew up with men like that. I grew up in pubs around Melbourne and Redfern — The Champion, The Builders, Rob Roy. We travelled all over the place — Ballarat to Adelaide to Sydney to Melbourne to Brisbane.”
Alongside his acting career, Stan was building a reputation as an international artist through his striking, colourful paintings inspired by his Yorta Yorta heritage.
In 2008 he opened one of the first privately owned indigenous art galleries in the world in Collins St, Melbourne. Three years later he opened a country gallery in Daylesford. He now also has a gallery in St Kilda.
His art has been exhibited and sold across the across the globe to celebrities such as Stevie Wonder, Bono, and AC/DC.
He has also taught the didgeridoo to international stars and played with them on stage.
“When Stevie Wonder came here they flew me to Sydney and I played the didg on Superstition with him,” he said.
For his role as charismatic elder Jimmy Two in Mystery Road, Stan travelled to Broome to film.
Stan acts opposite fellow indigenous actor Aaron Pedersen, who plays tough police detective Jay Swan. The two roles clash as Jimmy Two challenges the white man's law and brings into focus the traditional lore — knowledge, beliefs, and stories that stretch back through time.
“Aaron is playing the law man who enforces the white law, but I'm the Aborignal lore man,” Stan said.
“There's a scene where he walks up into the land and he doesn't ask permission and I tell him ‘before you walk on our land you have to ask permission, boy'. He asks me why do you call me boy? I say because you're not a man — the lore makes you a man.”
He said he felt proud to deliver the message that indigenous lore is still happening in a real way in the bush.
“I say to the wider community: if you're Australian, this is your culture as well. It's not you and us — there are Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people who respect the land,” Stan said.
Mystery Road season two, directed by Warwick Thornton, premiered on ABC TV on Sunday, April 19 and continues this Sunday from 8.30 pm.
Stan Yarramunua's Jimmy Two character appears in episode three.
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