{"id":54415,"date":"2014-01-16T16:03:05","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T06:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=54415"},"modified":"2020-12-07T13:20:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T03:20:21","slug":"from-reluctant-student-to-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2014\/01\/16\/from-reluctant-student-to-star\/","title":{"rendered":"From Reluctant Student To Star"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
From Murgon to the world … award-winning actor\u00a0Leah Purcell urges all parents to send their children to school every day, on time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Marcus Priaulx<\/strong><\/p>\n

Award-winning actor and director Leah Purcell remembers the first day school finally made sense to her.<\/p>\n

She had written a story for her Year 7 teacher at Murgon and it came back covered in red ink with a big “See Me” scrawled across the page.<\/p>\n

Leah thought she was in trouble.<\/p>\n

But when she fronted Mrs Rosemary Bishop at the end of the day she was asked to enter her work into a Murgon Lions Rotary Writing competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked \u2018why?\u201d Leah said. \u201cIt was full of spelling and grammar mistakes. But Mrs Bishop said: \u2018It\u2019s a great story, I\u2019ll help you with the other stuff. You\u2019re a great storyteller.\u201d<\/p>\n

From that day on Leah went from being a child who walked through the front gate at school and over the back fence, to one who turned up at 8.30am eager to learn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d found something I was good at,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt home I was surrounded by people who could tell a great yarn and deliver a punchline better than any famous comedian. It may have been done over a carton at times, but it came from centuries of oral tradition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen there was Mrs Bishop and a couple of teachers at high school who encouraged me to put my head down and try hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Leah admits she was always a reluctant student.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a hardhead; more destructive to myself, a ratbag,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put a \u2018zero\u2019 on my maths test in Year 8 and went for a walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t a terrible kid or a bully, I just played on the fact I was a card and would bulls*it my way out of class and take half an hour to get a drink of water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Leah looks back wishing she had had a better attitude to her schooling when she was younger.<\/p>\n

She is now part of a Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council campaign to have every parent in the country send their children to school\u00a0every day, on time.<\/p>\n

Leah still has family members who live in Cherbourg and Murgon and is quick to let students know how difficult it is for her today because of the schooling she missed.<\/p>\n

Speaking during a recent visit home and to her former Murgon State High School, Leah admitted she can struggle at times because \u201cI missed a lot of the basics to build on\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s made life a little harder,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve panicked and put unnecessary stress on myself at auditions because I\u2019ve been asked to do a cold-read; read bits of scripts on the spot. I wouldn\u2019t know how to pronounce a word or what it might mean. I\u2019d go to the toilet and ring my mates back home to help me!”<\/p>\n

Leah would usually take hours to look through her lines at home with a dictionary close to hand before fronting casting agents.<\/p>\n

What would normally take somebody 10 minutes to read would sometimes take Leah an hour but she had to do it if she wanted to succeed and live a happy, productive life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to live a fulfilling life so I\u2019ve had to put in the hard yards,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how old you are, you can still learn. I\u2019m learning every day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI now want all children and parents to realise the effort they put in now will pay them in bucket loads; not always tomorrow, but maybe the next day, or even years down the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day does count to a happier future and I urge parents to send their children to school every day, on time so they can have a great life and be the best person that they can be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Award-winning actor and director Leah Purcell remembers the first day school finally made sense to her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":54416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,3],"tags":[1135,1131,28,35],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Reluctant Student To Star - southburnett.com.au<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2014\/01\/16\/from-reluctant-student-to-star\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From Reluctant Student To Star - southburnett.com.au\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Award-winning actor and director Leah Purcell remembers the first day school finally made sense to her.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2014\/01\/16\/from-reluctant-student-to-star\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"southburnett.com.au\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-16T06:03:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-12-07T03:20:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/20140116leah.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"620\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"385\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anne Miller\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Anne Miller\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2014\/01\/16\/from-reluctant-student-to-star\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2014\/01\/16\/from-reluctant-student-to-star\/\",\"name\":\"From Reluctant Student To Star - 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