KINGS Cross – seedy, ominous, and unbelievably seductive. The inner-city suburb of Sydney has for decades played host to a legion of strippers, gamblers, whores and drug dealers who, drawn to the fast money, have sealed its reputation as one of the country’s premier adult playgrounds.
Into its luxurious nightclubs each weekend gather hoards of beautiful young thrill-seekers looking for fun, rebellion and, as tradition would have it, a walk on the wild side.
This is the place where, with one nod to the right barman or waitress, a person can still gain ready access to most recreational drugs. Pills, cocaine, meth and heroin can all be routinely acquired with a roll of banknotes pressed into the right palm.
More glamorous today than it was 20 years ago, the club owners are attracting celebrities in record numbers as young revellers chase the ultimate all-night party experience.
Into this environment more than a decade ago strolled a bright-eyed, gregarious young Melburnian with the face of a cherub and the surname of an Australian television legend.
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All that glitters
Matthew Newton, the only son of veteran performers Bert and Patti Newton, burst onto the public stage at the age of 15 when he starred briefly in Channel 10 series Late For School and in episodes of Channel Nine’s high-rating drama series The Flying Doctors.
From age five, Newton had shown a passion for acting and a single-minded will to succeed at the competitive game. As a teenager he quickly started winning the kinds of roles that suggested he was either abundantly talented or at least prepared to enjoy the extraordinary privileges that went with being the offspring of one of the country’s most famous couples.
A student of the prestigious Xavier College, one of Melbourne’s oldest Catholic boys’ institutions, Newton would describe himself as a “bit of a misfit” in his youth, saying that as a non-conformist he was something of a “troublemaker” at school.
“I think I was rebelling against being in an institution like my school and being told what to do,” he said of his private education.
When he graduated from NIDA in 1998, Newton, to his credit, already had a reputation for hard work, partly instilled by his parents, and a determination to break the mould.
“What I do is a completely separate thing [to my father],” he said in an interview in 2000. “It’s my life and I am going into a very different area to that of a lot of the people I knew as a child. I specifically went into acting – and that’s a different beast altogether.”
A succession of top roles followed his graduation. Two days after bidding goodbye to his NIDA classmates, he won a defining role opposite Pia Miranda in the acclaimed film Looking For Alibrandi. Three weeks after that film wrapped, he stepped seamlessly into a major part in My Mother Frank.
His success was a testament to his talent, but industry criticism that he was being handed it all due to his family ties led to resentment.
“I haven’t grown up in the shadow of my father,” Newton said a decade ago. “I didn’t have huge pressures on me. Whatever I wanted to do was cool so long as I was fantastic at it. I come from a very intelligent family and I guess it was more: ‘Be anything, just don’t be boring’.”
The giddy heights
At first Sydney held little appeal to Newton, who had enjoyed friendships in Melbourne with a group of mates who saw him as being more than Moonface Jr, a media label he despised.
During his NIDA years, he flew home to Melbourne at the end of each semester, eager to resume his life there. But having made some friends in Sydney, it was logical to remain in the city, particularly as the work was plentiful.
He set himself up in a shared-accommodation house in grungy Surry Hills for a time but after striking up a relationship with Neighbours actress Brooke Satchwell in 2000, the couple relocated to Neutral Bay.
Embracing bohemian ideals, Newton and Satchwell chose to shun the spotlight and Sydney’s fashionable haunts and enjoy the anonymity afforded by less fashionable venues, where they partied with close friends including a group of fellow thespians – among them actors Pia Miranda, Rose Byrne and Kick Gurry, who variously described Newton as “loyal”, “generous”, “gentle” and “loving”.
Thanks to regular work in the US sci-fi program Farscape, he was quickly becoming a man of means. Changi, in 2001, brought critical acclaim and in 2002 Newton enjoyed a boost to both international profile and earnings when he was cast as the vampire Armand in the cult hit Queen Of The Damned.
Feted around town, Newton’s career was going from strength to strength but privately he was having issues. A representative for the actor later revealed he was seeing a psychiatrist for depression through this period.
His appearance by 2005 also started to lose its lustre. Once fresh-faced and exuberant, he had begun to look washed-out and often attended media calls unkempt, unshaven, and looking weary. The lawyer Chris Murphy would later say he had suffered a nervous breakdown.
Then in September 2006 his perfect facade fell abruptly apart when he was charged over an assault on Satchwell in their Rozelle home.
Satchwell would tell police Newton had “punched her and pushed her into the wall”. The scandal overwhelmed Newton. He eventually pleaded guilty to one count of common assault and was put on a 12-month good behaviour bond – the conviction was quashed in 2007, but the damage to his reputation and career was immediate.
He found support with the family of his new girlfriend Gracie Otto, daughter of thespian Barry Otto, with whom Newton had performed on stage some years before. He moved into the family’s Lewisham home but opportunities were drying up. The workaholic had no work. The “playaholic”, as he had once described himself, was to emerge to keep him occupied.
Megastar of Macleay St
When Newton was cast in the second Underbelly series, Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities in 2008, friends wondered whether the bad boy typecasting was right for their fragile friend.
A longtime fan of the Method acting style, Newton was to play heroin trafficker Terry Clark, a detestable murderous villain.
This meant that for Newton, who had previously revealed that he attempted to teach himself Method acting as a 10-year-old for a school play, the worlds of drug dealer Terry Clark and Matthew Newton were at risk of becoming dangerously blurred.
He was now spending more and more time in the Cross, developing friendships with the people who ran the top nightclubs: Piano Room, Lady Luxe, Sugarmill, theclub and Trademark. He had long been a regular visitor to the area, two years earlier the TV1 sitcom Stupid, Stupid Man, in which Newton played the features writer of a fictional men’s magazine, had been based there.
But while professionally the Underbelly role had restored him, privately Newton was fast gaining a reputation as a serious party boy.
In the Cross, his public disgrace had served to make a bigger star of him. Coupled with his role as Clark, Newton was a megastar on Macleay St.
Eyewitnesses reported that he would work all day on the Underbelly shoot and then play late into the night in the district’s nightclubs and bars. All too frequently he partied alone, joined occasionally by nightclub managers and staff.
Having moved out of Barry Otto’s home in December 2008, Newton would take an apartment nearby.
Sin City was now his home.
A slide to recovery
Throughout 2009 Newton, often looking bedraggled – shirt open and belly on show during some drinking sessions – could be found at play in the seediest parts of the Cross.
What was happening to Newton was an open secret and he seemed largely at peace with his demons and didn’t mind who knew he was a man hell-bent on indulging himself.
The work resumed and after meeting and becoming involved with the actress Rachael Taylor, some believed the relationship might be a catalyst for change.
Those thoughts were dashed, however, when, in November 2009, he handed over his credit card to pay for $9000 damage to a Rushcutters Bay hotel room that had been booked in his girlfriend’s name. The actor made no statement about the bizarre destruction in the room; a partially melted television screen, a lamp ripped from the wall and scratch marks on the carpet among them. His agent simply said he had paid for the damage.
Then two weeks ago the actor checked himself into a private hospital in Melbourne. The Daily Telegraph reported this week that Newton would be undertaking a 28-day rehab program.
“It’s about time,” said a friend, adding that Newton’s appetite for excitement had grown exponentially in the past few years.
While his family have issued statements of support and his rumoured fiancee Taylor is sticking by him, it seems in Sydney some are refusing to believe he can take charge of his life.
As his famous father issued a statement confirming that his son was in hospital, (later adding “We’re with him and we hope for the best”), in Sydney some of his newer acquaintances were refusing to believe he would make the changes necessary to get his life on track.
Last Sunday night, while Newton was allegedly confined at Malvern Private Hospital, a report came from the party district that he was in fact partying at popular Bondi club White Revolver.
Family sources dismissed the claim as “nonsense”, but in Sin City, it seems there are many who believe Newton’s demons will be hard to banish.
denmark Banknotes
party experience, public stage
