It's the frame not the name for rising filmmaker

Melissa Kent August 23, 2009

AT FIRST blush, Gracie Otto seems destined to wear the ''It girl'' tag. Tall, gangly, blonde and blue-eyed, she also comes with an impeccable pedigree - her dad is legendary thespian Barry Otto, her half-sister is blockbuster star Miranda Otto, and her brother-in-law is actor Peter O'Brien.

Oh, and then there's her filmmaker ex-boyfriend, the progeny of another Australian showbiz family, Matt Newton.

All this, plus regular social page appearances, makes it all too tempting to file Otto in the party girl pigeonhole.

But this ambitious 21-year-old actor and director is determined to show she has more strings to her bow than good looks and a famous surname. She's making considerable headway, receiving rave reviews for her debut feature film performance in Three Blind Mice, a low-budget drama written and directed by Newton, and in which he also co-stars. The seemingly improvised flick follows three navy officers on a wild night of shore leave before they sail for Iraq.

Otto plays Emma, a waitress who lures Sam, one of the sailors, on a reckless adventure. The performance has put her on track to another potentially treacherous label - the ''next big thing''. One critic called it ''outstandingly memorable'', another observed: ''Gracie Otto displays all the physical and technical gifts required to be the next major Australian export a la [Abbie] Cornish.''

Otto is proud of the film, though dismissive of the hype.

''A lot of my friends who've seen it were like, you were just playing yourself!'' she laughs on the phone from the Otto family home, a rambling inner-Sydney manor, where she still lives.

''I admit, yeah it was me. Emma is very like how I am. Some people say it's harder to play yourself, but I think it's easier. I wanted a production assistant role or something, but Matt talked me into it.''

While the couple survived the media tsunami over Newton's 2006 assault charges stemming from his messy break-up with actress Brooke Satchwell, they parted last December after a year together.

Both say they remain on good terms. When asked, Newton has nothing but praise for Otto.

''Gracie was completely untrained, but that brought a real immediacy to her performance, which was perfect for the part,'' he says. ''There was something about having her energy on set that was really important.''

Otto is equally effusive: ''Matt really helped with great direction. I found that he was good at giving me direction and giving the other actors something completely different. You know, we don't go out any more but he's still a good director.''

Remarkably, Otto also edited the film, a skill she picked up at Sydney Film School. In fact, it is not acting but filmmaking - writing, directing and editing - that is Otto's true love.

''Some people say being an Otto is an advantage, but it can be a disadvantage …there's a pressure to live up to the high expectations that come with having the name Otto and being Miranda's sister.

''But Miranda and I do have a big age difference, so I don't think people do compare me to her. She's done a whole body of work and had an amazing career, and she was 18 when I was born, so there's no competitiveness there at all. She was more like the cool aunt than a sister when I was growing up.''

At school (Sydney's Burwood Girls High) Otto was initially more interested in sport than the arts. She was a state softball player and represented Australia and NSW in indoor soccer. She still loves soccer, recently playing with Anthony LaPaglia in a celebrity match in Los Angeles to raise money for the Victorian bushfires.

Then, in her final year of school, she discovered filmmaking. For her HSC she made Kill Blondes, a short film that starred her dad and brother-in-law, Peter O'Brien. It received a perfect score from the HSC examiners.

In 2007, she was the youngest-ever finalist in Flickerfest with her 18-minute short La Meme Nuit, a frenetic farce in which Barry again starred, as a concierge, and future boyfriend Newton played a partner-swapping swinger.

Now she is working on a feature called Rue de Tournon, about her experiences living in Paris with her best friend, actress Ashleigh McDonald, for eight months in 2007. Within weeks of arriving, Otto met a charming man who took her to dinner, stole her credit card, and bought himself $5000 worth of designer clothes.

''So many awful things happened but it was the most amazing experience of my life,'' she says.

If it took ambition alone, Otto would undoubtedly make good on those next big thing charges. Last month she made the gossip pages when she threw herself into Quentin Tarantino's limo in Sydney to deliver a DVD of Kill Blondes. ''He took it,'' she Twittered triumphantly.

''My ultimate goal is to direct my feature film and that's what I'm most interested in, but at the same time I really enjoy acting.''

Three Blind Mice is now showing.