She tried everything to talk him out of it.
She might be a Gold Logie-winning actress, but that’s not the fate Rebecca Gibney ever wanted for her 10-year-old son, Zac Bell.
Until she was left with no other choice.
The 50-year-old mum has revealed that Zac will be making his debut on Channel Seven’s crime drama, Winter. Rebecca says she “tried everything” to talk him out of an acting career, but gave in when he impressed producers all by himself, having stayed out of the casting process.
Zac had been begging his mum and set designer husband, Richard, for a job since they launched their own production company last year. Talk about impressive goals for a 10-year-old.
“Ever since he was little, even when we lived in Tasmania, he absolutely idolised (the late Crocodile Hunter) Steve Irwin. He would go out on his own and go ‘right, we’re in the Tasmanian wilderness and looking for the wild wombats’ or whatever it was he was pretending to stalk. Seriously, he’s always been like that and wanted to have his own nature show,” Gibney told News Corp Australia.
When Zac scored his role as the nephew of the show’s murder victim, he immediately began practicing lines with his mum to prepare himself. “I said to him, ‘okay, darling you have to do this by yourself, I’m leaving...and they cast him. The director said ‘he’s a natural.’”