Philippa Northeast grew up in a world where creativity wasn’t a side note; it was the foundation.
“I went to a Steiner school for primary and high school,” she says, smiling as we speak on the day of The Weekly’s Leading Ladies photoshoot with fellow rising screen stars Yerin Ha, Mia Morrissey, Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn and Miah Madden.
“Steiner is like an alternative form of education.” At this small, arts-focused school, creativity wasn’t extracurricular; it was central. Students painted, performed, wrote and explored the world beyond academic outcomes.
“A huge part of the emphasis of the curriculum is around creativity and the arts and outdoor education and your responsibility as a human in the world, not just for whatever specialist profession that you want to go into after school.”
It wasn’t that she declared she would be an actress. In fact, she initially enrolled at the University of Melbourne to study criminology. “I thought I was going to go a different way, a really very different way,” she laughs. But the throughline was always there: curiosity about human behaviour.
“So many actors say this, but [I was interested] in the psychology of humans… how minds work and why people do the things they do.” Acting, she discovered, offered something even more immersive. “I found more enjoyment through embodying that and putting that on stage or on screen.”
There is something quietly philosophical about the way Philippa speaks about her craft. For her, acting is not simply performance; it is investigation.
“I remember thinking when I was young, how amazing is this profession? Because you can, hopefully you’ll get a chance to play 20 different careers, and you might learn the skills of the top and tail of each of those… We get a taste of it all, which is such a dream.”
That appetite for immersion has defined her recent work. In Territory, she threw herself into the physical reality of life on a Northern Territory cattle station, learning to drive a manual ute, training as a personal trainer, practising butchery skills and spending weeks riding horses in sweltering 45-degree heat.
“I was so excited to do anything that I could to portray someone realistically that would be living and working on a cattle farm,” she says. “I went as full into it as I possibly could.”
But she is quick to clarify: “Definitely not method at all, but I deeply research. Deeply research.”
For Philippa, preparation is an ethical responsibility. “If you’re going to play people that are not you, that are going to be someone in this world, that someone’s going to see and see themselves in, then there’s a deep responsibility to do that research.”
On Territory, location became more than backdrop — it was an active force. “We lived on the station… we got to meet and see and live with and breathe with the people that we were portraying.” The environment itself shaped the performance. “It was 45 degrees every day, 90% humidity. So our body language and our physicality were that of those characters.”
She describes Tipperary Station as “one character on the show,” while the landscape was “another much bigger, more sacred entity.”
If Territory was an exercise in grit and endurance, her role in Netflix’s upcoming revamped adaptation of My Brilliant Career was something closer to destiny.
When she calls it her dream role, it is not hyperbole.
“Everything,” she says, when asked what made the character so compelling. “The courage of this particular character, 145 years ago, at a time when women had no rights… Yet this was a young 18-year-old, full of spirit, full of life, saying I want to live life my own way.”
Sibylla, the heroine first written by Miles Franklin, is a character who refuses confinement. For Philippa, that defiance is electrifying.
“She rides horses, she sprints, she sings, she dances, she writes, she uses everything in her arsenal as a woman to lead her own life… And so risky, but for the sake of your own life.”
To prepare, Philippa began where she always begins when working from an adaptation: with the source material. “Book is queen, script is queen.” But she went further, gaining access to the archives of the State Library of New South Wales, where Franklin’s journals are housed.
“I held the most beautiful little journal, Miles Franklin’s last journal… Her last words ever, written in grey lead were “returned to bed”, and then she passed away.”
The experience was almost overwhelming. “It was really, I was almost too much to hold… It felt really dreamlike and surreal to be in that position.”
That reverence translated into stamina on set. My Brilliant Career demanded near-constant presence. “We do a lot of six-day weeks. I didn’t have one shooting day off… She was in maybe 96 per cent of scenes.”
Rather than resist the intensity, she embraced it. “There’s something about working at that capacity… You just throw yourself off into the brink, and you really start to hone your instincts.”
Even now, Sibylla remains a guiding force. The story’s central message? “Definitely live your life on your own terms.”
Philippa admits she is still learning to embody that bravery herself. “I try to live with it, but I’m nowhere near as brave as Sibilla. So she’s been an inspiration to me.”
Before leading major productions, she honed her craft on Home and Away, which she calls an “apprenticeship.”
“We created a feature film worth of content a week for the entire year,” she says. “The technical skills that I learnt on that show really have come in handy now.”
Soap operas, she believes, are invaluable training grounds. “I feel like they’re such important institutions as a training ground for young actors. And I feel so fortunate to have come up in that way.”
Behind her resilience is family, particularly her sister Bridget, creator of the mental health podcast The Imperfects. “Everything that she does is to serve the greater good of others,” Philippa says. “She’s definitely a leading lady in my life.”
When asked what advice she would give her younger self, she jokes first: “Remember that the crew give out crew merch at the end of every job and that’s why you’re in it.”
But her true answer is something she has clearly lived by. “There’s no meeting, audition, interaction, encounter, that’s too small… They will accumulate.”
Careers, she suggests, are built on kindness, patience and unseen connections. “You don’t know what’s going to stick with people or how you made them feel until you give it time.”
In an industry often obsessed with instant momentum, Philippa Northeast believes in the long arc: in preparation, presence and purpose.
And like the heroine she so admires, she continues to carve a path defined by only herself.
An excerpt of this interview originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
Check out the rest of our leading ladies: Miah Madden, Mia Morrissey, Sophia Wright Mendelsohn, and Yerin Ha.
