He might now have found success in comedy, music, television and theatre, but Tim Minchin admits that no one ever thought he was ‘particularly talented’.
The Australian creative, 49, was born in Northampton before his parents moved back to their home country, where he was raised in Perth, the most isolated city in the world.
It was there that Tim initially pursued a career in the arts, studying contemporary music but as he admits, ‘graduated without actually being able to read music’.
Throughout his 20s, he wrote songs, played in bands, acted in plays, and composed for theatre, but struggled to get noticed.
After marrying his high school sweetheart, Sarah, the couple moved to Melbourne, but it was still an uphill battle.
‘I was 29 at that stage and really did think I wasn’t very rock n roll or grunge or what people wanted and thought I’d just be a poor songwriter, but literally the next year everything changed,’ he tells Metro on the day his latest album TimMinchinTimeMachine is released (the album is a curated anthology of previously unreleased material).
Eamonn M. McCormack/ Getty Images)
Rob Ball/ WireImage)
‘It’s only got more and more unbelievable with the things I’ve been able to do since. I was really struggling throughout my 20s to get any traction and couldn’t get an agent or record deal,’ he said.
It was Tim’s 2005 comedy show Darkside that saw him finally capture the attention of the right people. He went on to debut it at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where he received the Perrier Comedy Award for best newcomer.
In the two decades since, Tim hasn’t taken anything for granted, working his ass off, continuing to release music, featuring on a range of comedy panel shows, appearing in Californication, Robin Hood and The Artful Dodger, composing the Groundhog Day musical, and writing and starring in the comedy drama Upright.
But it was being asked to write the music and lyrics for Matilda the Musical that changed everything. After it debuted in 2010, the show won a record-breaking seven Laurence Olivier Awards and has since gone on to be awarded four Tony’s.
Its success allowed Tim to achieve financial stability and make calculated career moves – including turning down multiple offers to host his own talk show.
Reflecting on the decisions that could have made him a regular fixture on our screens (and undoubtedly rake in millions), Tim said he doesn’t regret the risk he took.
‘Lots of channels approached and asked me, but that just happens once you reach a certain level and start selling out arenas, which I did. They all asked me and asked what show I wanted to make,’ he recalled.
‘I said I was an actor and wanted to make drama and they went “yeah right”. I said I didn’t want to be known as a talking head. I’ve been asked so much over the years to host documentaries or shows…and I kept saying I didn’t want to be a presenter, I wanted to be an artist.
‘I’m not a trained actor or trained in composition and it takes a lot of suspending my self-doubt to go “I think if I hold the line there’s a chance, I might get to be an artist, not a comedian/ presenter”.’
Although Tim admitted that might sound ‘pretentious’, he was willing to take that gamble – and it paid off when he was offered Matilda.
‘[That show] made me financially secure so I could take risks, but it also made me believe I was a real composer and could actually make things that could land in culture and not just be a fleeting joke. I was glad I held off on taking the big bucks. And once you’re on a late night show you get famous and aren’t walking the streets anymore,’ he added.
Despite his string of successes, Tim admits that he ‘never really had one of those big career dreams’ to chase.
That admittedly felt surprising to me, after watching him become one of our shared home city’s most successful artists. Coming from a city on the literal end of the earth, it’s commonplace for young people to dream about ‘escaping’ their mostly middle-class existences.
It’s just as encouraged for parents to send their children out into the world, too, with Tim and I both sharing stints in London, a rite of passage for many.
Although he has taken plenty of gambles over the years, Tim describes our shared ‘luck’ as one of the reasons he’s been able to push himself.
‘Some people think that daddy got me a car or mummy paid my rent but there was none of that. They were like “good luck and here’s $500 towards your first car”. It’s a very Australian thing. I knew if everything went to shit though I could go home and had somewhere to sleep and that is unbelievable privilege and luck.’
In 2013 advice he gave to university graduates at a commencement speech in our home city made waves, currently having over 5.6 million views on YouTube and being the basis of his recent book, You Don’t Have To Have A Dream.
In the speech, he imparted nine life lessons with his trademark wit and humour, with one surprisingly poignant line including: ‘Don’t seek happiness. It’s like an orgasm; if you think about it too much, it’ll go away.’
More than a decade on and having just completed a tour of the UK to mark 20 years since his career took off, I ask what advice he’d now give to himself at the same age.
Being incredibly candid, he explains: ‘It’s hard to imagine what advice I’d give myself. I worked so hard because I never thought I had the right to be an artist. My folks didn’t mind that I wanted to be a muso…but no-one was ever telling me I was special.
‘No one ever thought I was particularly talented…I never got the roles in the school plays. I just thought I had to work hard. I wouldn’t want to give myself any advice that lets young me know that it works out ok because I might not have put my head down.
‘The central lesson in the speech was to just be really, really good at what’s in front of you and dedicate yourself to that and let the future take hold. That was something I did intuitively and now I look back and understand it to be a way of thinking. Just stop f***ing worrying about the ladder and take the next step.’
So, what’s the next step for Tim, who has had a notably hectic schedule for years now?
‘I’ve got the Australian version of the tour in November and between now and then I am going to try and make a start on a new stage musical I am really keen on, but I can’t talk about what it is,’ he teased.
‘And then next year I really want to write a TV show I have an idea for. I have two or three stage musicals I have ideas for. Next year needs to be a writing year. Even though I love touring, I’ve done it a lot a last few years.’
Whatever it is, it’s likely it will be a worthwhile gamble…
Tim Minchin’s new album, TimMinchinTimeMachine is out now. The RSC’s Matilda The Musical is currently playing in London and will concurrently tour the UK and Ireland from this Autumn. http://www.matildathemusical.com You Don’t Have To Have A Dream is out now.
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