Interview: Jane Larkin
- Matthew Eales
- Apr 30
- 13 min read
Cinema Australia / 30 April 2025
From chasing Olympic dreams on the track to calling the shots behind the camera, Jane Larkin has packed a lot into her career already.
The Australian sprint athlete has recently turned her sights to filmmaker after acting roles in Thirteen Lives, Darby and Joan, and the Netflix adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe.
Larkin is far from your average screen talent. She holds a PhD in creative writing and philosophy, has formal acting training from California’s Ivana Chubbuck Studio, and boasts stunt and combat skills to match. Her creative energy and passion for storytelling have shaped a diverse filmography that continues to grow with her most personal and ambitious project yet – The Edge.
Set to celebrate its world premiere at the Gold Coast Film Festival, The Edge follows the lives of three young female athletes - sprinter Annie (Larkin), Paralympian Yui (Mei Ichinose), and First Nations powerlifter Sylvia (Lily Riley) - navigating sport, identity, and hardship. Larkin wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the film, bringing together her lived experience as an elite athlete and her long-held love for cinema.
In this interview, Jane discusses her early love for sport and storytelling, the challenges of shifting careers, the real-life experiences behind The Edge, and why she believes film is a powerful tool for change.
“I’m hoping that it starts narratives. I unfortunately do know people in elite sport who have committed suicide, and it’s a terribly tragic thing. I’m hoping that if we get conversations going, it will inform the narrative.”
Interview by Matthew Eeles
What came first, your love for athletics or filmmaking?
My first-ever memory is the dream of making the Olympics. I don’t really remember a time before then, but in saying that, I never thought that was the only thing that defined me. I never felt like that was what I was boxed into. I was an athlete, and I loved sport, and I wanted to make the Olympics - but I also wanted to be a filmmaker. And those dreams coexisted for a very long time. I realised I was going to have to pick my moments, and I think I knew there was a very limited amount of time as an elite athlete, especially as a female athlete. I mean, I have a baby on the way. [Laughs]. I wanted to get the most out of my body. So I curbed that dream of filmmaking for a little bit and told myself to get the most out of dream one first. And then, when that ended, I said, “All right, I’m going to be a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger or The Rock now and transition to the filmmaking dream.” But the dreams, to me, always existed.
You’re successful in both fields. How did you find balancing these two passions while you were emerging in both fields?
Well, I lived, breathed, ate, slept, and just died for sport when I was in it. I obviously wasn’t making films during that time, but I also studied film, TV, and drama at university. So I guess I felt in my head that I was developing my skills, even though the dream wasn’t necessarily in motion. I had a script that I started writing when I was 15 years old about a female sprinter. And every time I’d go on tour, I’d add little bits to that script. But I was narrowly focused on the sporting side of things until after the 2018 Commonwealth Games nomination trials on the Gold Coast and realised that I’d gotten the most out of my sport. I didn’t make an Olympics - I always wanted to - but I had made all these other Australian teams, and I was really proud of my journey. And I also knew that now was the time to transition. So I used the skills that I’d developed at university, made it onto a lot of sets, got an agent, and just tried to immerse myself in the world of film and TV.
Are you still actively involved in sprint athletics today?
I was, up until about seven months ago when I got knocked up. [Laughs]. I really admire that there are a couple of people out there who have kept up amazing levels of training during their pregnancy. I have a pregnancy condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, which is just a very fancy term for saying I throw up all day, every day. [Laughs]. So walking at a quicker pace right now makes me pretty nauseous. So that’s off the cards for me, unfortunately. But up until seven months ago, I was still training daily. And I think a lot of people, even when they step away from competitive sport - which has been such a fundamental part of their lives—find that they just can’t escape it. I miss it. I know I’ll start running again the moment I’m allowed to. I’ll get one of those pregnancy prams where you can run with it. [Laughs]. I still actively follow the sport. I think I’m very biased, but I think it’s the most interesting sport in the world, and I just don’t see any long period of time in my life without sport. There might be bits of time with injury or pregnancy or sickness or whatever where you have to respect your body and its limits, but for me, sport is life.
You also have stunt training, and you’re highly proficient in fight choreography, firearms, and combat. Does all of this fit into your filmmaking future, or is it just a matter of keeping the mind and body active?
I think everything just bleeds into everything else. I remember first hearing about the term Renaissance man - but let’s call it a Renaissance woman - and just loving that because, to me, the human experience is everything. What can you do with your mind? What can you do with your body? I don’t just want to act. I was like, “Okay, I don’t understand lenses. Explain them to me. Can I see a tutorial on them? I don’t understand lighting. I know the look that I want, and I know that certain scenes have evoked certain emotions within me, but let me understand this department.” I don’t intend to work as a gaffer or in the costume department, but I think you need a base-level understanding to appreciate storytelling and cinema for what it is as a whole. People might not have the tight language, but they do know how something makes them feel. So I wanted to understand things. How could I go deeper, and how could I work at understanding all departments involved in filmmaking? Because knowledge is power. My doctorate was in philosophy, so that’s very much part of who I am. I like knowing, I like understanding.
You first started screen acting in 2017. Take us back to that time.
It was on a web series called Sodium Squad. It was about a bunch of angry gamers playing Overwatch. That was so much fun. It was made by a bunch of QUT film students after they graduated. They were all passionate about film and the game Overwatch. So I had a beautiful first experience there. That was a soft launch because I was still very much involved in athletics, and I just wanted to understand a little bit more about getting involved in short films. Then it wasn’t until 2018 when I got a proper agent and started doing union-represented gigs. In 2019, I was in Vancouver, and in 2020 I was on Spiderhead. That film was my first Hollywood credit.
How much did those experiences feed into your hunger to become an actor?
I got a lot from the short films and the small projects that I was a part of. It was just great to learn. I never thought I was going to start at the very top. And then Spiderhead came along. I’m not even on screen for more than a second. I was a body double for a small portion of that film, and I was in a party scene as well as other things. But being on a real set, seeing how everything was done - I was just so hungry for more. And I remember thinking, “I want to be the one delivering the lines. I want to be the lead.” And I’m sure that a lot of actors feel like that.
As far as character development, relationship dynamics, and personal conflict go, there’s a lot going on in The Edge. Where did the idea for this story come from?
I was 15 years old and on my first Australian world school athletics team when I had this idea for a script because I wasn’t seeing myself represented on screen. I saw that there was a lack of female sports-driven narratives, and so if I was going to write about what I knew, that was going to be sport. I wanted to see a female athlete lead. It really evolved from there, and it evolved over a number of years. I took a lot of classes. I devoured novels and scripts and watched films and took acting classes and just wanted to learn from all these people that had come before me. The Edge grew and grew, and it started incorporating a couple of other minority groups that I had a lot of respect for. I traveled, trained, competed - I had a lot to do with Paralympians, who I have the utmost admiration for. Out of their struggle, they’ve chosen humour, and they’ve chosen dedication and determination, and they’re the sort of people you want to be around. I’d never seen a Paralympian lead a film. I needed to incorporate that. I hadn’t seen too many First Nations female athletes lead a film either. So slowly, I wanted to tell this story about a few minority female elite athletes. I kept pitching to people when I was on Hollywood sets - producers and crew members - and would find actors and people who gave me the time of day. The reason that I’m here today was really fortunate because we have an amazing executive producer, Jade van der Lei, who also worked on Spiderhead. She also worked on True Spirit in a production capacity, and the really ambitious female filmmaker in me saw her journey. I would not have been able to make it without her. Then we cast and shot the film, and I kept trying to find someone who would direct or someone who would produce, but I was just in a bit of a unique position where I cared more than anyone else.
I don’t expect you to get too personal here, but were any aspects of this film’s narrative based on your real-life experiences?
Absolutely. Writing is quite cathartic, and I think I’ve come to terms with being quite open about this. Nothing in this film is exact. Everything is loosely based on a lived experience, and I’m pretty open about that because I think we write what we know, and we write truth. It doesn’t mean that we can’t extrapolate or dramatise, which is exactly what’s happened here. I regularly threw up from the really tough lactic acid sessions, and it was important to me that we incorporated that into this film. It was important to me to show various aspects of the female character. There’s not just one stereotype. We’re people, not robots who are athletes, and I hope I did that justice. I’m hoping that it starts narratives. I unfortunately do know people in elite sport who have committed suicide, and it’s a terribly tragic thing. I’m hoping that if we get conversations going, it will inform the narrative. I’ve been in terrible situations where I was groped at the gym, and I remember it being a really, really terrible experience, with people not quite understanding. I really wanted to showcase that people in positions of power can abuse it, and it doesn’t have to be about being held down. It can be a range of things, and it can affect you for many years. It was also important to me that the character takes back her power and that she’s not a bystander. So that was important in the narrative too. And there’s a lot of women picking up men in this film because I was really proud of the fact that I could piggyback a guy who was a hundred kilos, and that Lily can sling a six-foot-four Māori boy over her shoulder - so why not show that? [Laughs].
How much of the Yui and Silvia characters were developed around the actors who played them, Mei Ichinose and Lily Riley? Were you willing to adapt the characters if either of these two actors had to pull out for any reason?
We were not willing to adapt them. They were them. I wrote Yui Takahashi and accidentally realised that I’d written Mei — or at least a version of her. I’d known Mei for about a year and had started incorporating a para-athlete, and then had just accidentally started writing her. There was this stage where I knew I had to sit down with her and tell her that I’d accidentally written her as a character in a film. Then I asked her if she would be open to playing her, or if I needed to go back to the drawing board and rewrite this character. We sat down and discussed the character and where I saw her going. I knew Mei very well by this stage. I knew her advocacy for disability, and she needed some time to think about it — because that’s who she is. She’s a very exacting person. And she went away, and she called me and said, “I’m in.” Lily was a little bit the opposite. I wrote this character, Silvia, and it was just pure imagination, but there were aspects based on me, aspects based on other people I knew, or aspects based on amazing First Nations athletes here and there. I just wrote this real badass of a character and then was trying to find a First Nations powerlifter who was also LGBTQIA+. And everyone kept telling me I’d written a way-too-niche character. People were telling me that I’d never find the right actor to play her. And then, after about six months of looking, I got sent Lily’s Instagram and I went, “This almost looks too good to be true. Surely not.” And then I met her, and she’d read the script before our first meeting, and she said, “She’s me.”
You manifested these actors through your writing.
[Laughs]. That’s what it felt like. I don’t want people to think playing someone so similar to yourself is easy. In many ways, it’s hard - because it’s holding a mirror up to yourself. And so I really think Mei and Lily did a terrific job.
Did either of them require much acting coaching?
Neither of them had done any acting. They were in acting classes for about a year. We had an on-set acting coach, and we also did acting coaching in a one-on-one group with them the year before they filmed. I don’t think either of them fully realised what would be involved. But they were both up for the challenge. And I think, as well, being athletes and having that athlete mentality, they wanted to do the roles justice.
Have either of them expressed any interest in progressing with a career in acting? They’re both very good here.
Not really. I think Lily is really focused on finishing her powerlifting career. She was breaking world records before, during, and after the shoot. So she’s just on a high from that. Mei has since retired from Paralympic swimming, but she’s such an advocate. She’s an amazing public speaker. She does a lot of great work in that advocacy space for disability and is really invested in the world of performance art and modelling. So there are definitely aspects of that she’s pursued, but I’m not sure about acting.
What did it mean to you to have Sally Pearson in the film?
Sally’s amazing. I’ve actually been on relay teams with Sally before, as a sprinter. So I called in a little bit of a favour and said to her, “Hey, would you mind?” And she said yes. I did much the same thing for Riley Day. We travelled together in 2018 to Finland, and we’ve caught up intermittently since then, and I called in a bunch of favours. It meant the world to me that they agreed to come down. I mean, even dedicating a day on set is more than people think. It was the middle of summer - it’s hours upon hours. All credit to them. They were very generous with their time and talent.
It’s often the case that indie filmmakers will limit locations to suit a film’s budget, but this film’s locations are quite sprawling. Was it as sprawling as it looks on screen, or were the locations in close proximity to each other?
Yes and no. I didn’t realise what I was asking of the cast and the crew at the time. The University of the Sunshine Coast has an elite athletics track. They have the Olympic 50-metre pool, the recovery centre, the classrooms, and a high-performance gym — so that’s all one location. I think we were very fortunate in the sense that we got multiple locations almost within the one.
But we also trekked RED cameras with their heavy batteries and lenses up Mount Ngungun. I remember there was one particular day where the camera team hated me. They were just looking at me, and I was like, “But it’s going to be such a pretty view at the top. Just think about the end shot.” [Laughs].
Were there many risks involved in filming so many scenes involving athletic activity, and if so, what did you do to make sure everyone stayed safe?
We were really lucky that we worked with a health and safety officer. We worked with stunt coordinators, and we worked with an intimacy coordinator. All of those experts ensured as much safety as possible. There were a couple of stunts that got cut from the script — that was for safety, time, and budget. But also, me running all day every day — I was very used to that, especially at the time. And all the extras, like Riley, who’s a character, and all the other people who were a part of it — they were all elite athletes, so it was also their bread and butter. Similarly, Mei in the pool is beautiful to watch. Lily was actually injured prior to shooting. She told me it was very important for her that none of the weights were fake. I think she was deadlifting 200 or 210 in the film, and she can do 250. So for her, she was taking it light, and we had to take her injury into consideration on that day. It’s always hard when you want to showcase a person’s strength. A couple of the grips tried to pick up the weights after her, and it took two of them to lift one.
Mental health is a very important issue when it comes to filmmaking. You give a very physical performance here. You also wrote it, and you were directing it and producing it. How did you manage your mental health throughout the process of making this movie?
I’ll be honest - probably not that well. I really, really struggled. There’s post-set blues, which is commonly referred to with actors. That’s the period of time after you’ve been on a set when you were on such a high. And I was used to very similar things. When you come off the competitive athletic circuit, you’re used to this really intense, powerful sort of existence — and then suddenly, you just return to normality. For me, I would never want to do something quite in this way again, but I hope that I’ve learned from it, and that means we do what we need to do. But I wish we had another producer on board. I wish that I’d maybe been a bit kinder to myself. I had been kind to the cast and crew, so why not myself? I also needed sleep. I also needed hydration. And I think that’s something that a lot of athletes learn in the process too. They learn that there’s a point in injury where, actually, it’s not smart to push it anymore — and then there’s just being silly. And I think it is a little bit funny that I didn’t apply that to filmmaking, but I will next time. I’d say to myself, “You’re allowed to call it a day if you need to go home and have a nap.”
The Edge will screen at the Gold Coast Film Festival this Friday, 2 May and Tuesday, 6 May. Details here. A general release date is TBA.
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