Nicholas Hammond is yet to do a job that he does not enjoy.
Although it is easier to feel that way when your career includes playing everyone from Friedrich von Trapp in The Sound of Music and Peter Parker in live action TV series The Amazing Spider-Man, to more recent parts in Bruce Beresford’s Ladies in Black and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Unsurprisingly, it is those first two roles the 73-year-old American-born actor — who has lived between Washington, DC and Sydney since the late 1980s — is approached about most by fans.
“As they keep reminding me, I created the character of Peter Parker, and of course, at the time, thought, ‘Oh, well, it’s just another job on another TV show’ but it’s now spawned this multibillion-dollar industry and I’m proud of that,” Hammond, whose first film Lord of the Flies at age 10 led to a stint on Broadway, shares.
“Nobody had any sense while making The Sound of Music how huge it would be. We of course loved it, because you always love everything you’re in … but there were a lot of people that were saying, ‘This is the 60s, this is now when we’re doing edgy, dark, social conscious films, and you really want to do a film about singing nuns?’
“We didn’t know until the first premiere in Hollywood and then within 15 minutes of the movie starting, you could just tell from the audience, the audience was just going nuts.
“We kind of went from being a bunch of kids who felt really fortunate that we’ve gotten through the audition process, and we were the seven that got cast, and suddenly we were doing talk shows and being introduced as the seven most famous children in the world.”
Recently in Perth for Supanova Comic Con and Gaming, Hammond’s previous visit to WA was in 2013, joining his beloved The Sound of Music co-star on stage in An Evening with Julie Andrews.
“We had such a good time because obviously, she was lovely but there was a hierarchy in my relationship with Julie during the movie, since I was a child and she was an adult, whereas this time, we were just two performers together on a stage,” he recalls.
Hammond returns to the stage as the Narrator for Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show 50th anniversary production at Crown Theatre Perth from August 5.
Much like his most famous film, Hammond believes the show’s longevity is thanks to its fundamental themes that touch audiences and never get old.
“I mean, I know it’s mad, it’s silly, and it’s rock and roll, and kind of anarchic, but underneath all of that, it’s a show about acceptance,” he says.
“It’s a show about being who you really are, being true to yourself … Every night when he (Frank N Furter) sings Don’t Dream It, Be It, I feel like I can hear a pin drop in the audience. They’ve been hooting and hollering and screaming and laughing and yelling things out, but then when he sings that, you just think there are a lot of people in this room tonight, who probably for most of their lives, haven’t felt free enough to really be the person they wanted to be or live the life they wanted to live.”
Hammond relishes his role — written by O’Brien as a send up of a prim and proper BBC announcer — of holding the chaos together.
“You need some glue, at least that’s how I see myself in the role,” he says.
“I can’t sing the way they (the cast) can and I can’t dance the way they can, but I’m pretty good at telling a story. It’s very satisfying and I get to listen and watch all this wonderful stuff every night.”