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Peter
Cross was born in Napier New Zealand, a city
known for its earthquakes; a single child of a solo parent, Peter grew up searching
for a latchkey.
Peter studied with the Marist Brothers and played with
the boys at Napier Boy's High School. Eschewing rugby Peter found that
drama was his forte`.
Peter had a talent for drama, co-founding the youth theatre
company intuitively called "Mugwort Theatre", while only fifteen. The
group survived for three years and died a natural but painless death in 1975.
Heeding
the call of the greasepaint, Peter left school to join a travelling theatre in
education troupe called Children's Art Theatre (CAT), a subsidiary of the
highly acclaimed Four Season's Theatre Co., of Wanganui; and toured New
Zealand for a year performing in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
Bitten by the bug and wanting to travel to further his training Peter moved
to Sydney, Australia in 1977 and immediately was given the part of a "busboy"
in the Sydney Hilton's landmark café "The Market Place", or as
he later described it "How I Learned to Serve, Wait Tables While Hoping For
Tips."
Many minor roles in long forgotten soaps "The Young Doctors","
Arcade", "The Restless Years" and many times being cast as "the
skinny kid eating pizza" in more than a few Pizza Hut commercial.
Peter
had his heart set on movies. After six weeks of successfully playing Colin
Friels's stand-in in Ken Cameron's "Monkey Grip" soon found
himself reprising the role, except this time for Peter Weir as Mel Gibson's,
stand-in in "The Year of Living Dangerously." Ah yes "heady
days indeed."
Hollywood it seemed would soon be competing for "our
Pete", however dinner theatre at Bankstown Town Hall won the day with a seven
week season of "Some like it Hot" playing the Tony Curtis part
of Joe/Josephine.
Disenchanted with the "theatre" Peter gave it away
and landed that much yearned for "other" role as Head Waiter in a succession
of hugely successful long running restaurants with the late and great Anders Ousback.
Skip
forward a few years, a few operations and more than a few restaurants and Peter
is back to his first love theatre, although this time writing not acting.
Peter has written for: Spirit Today, Columns, The Sydney Morning Herald, SX Magazine,
The Sydney Star Observer, has had a short story published in a collection
of short stories called "I am a Camera."
Between writing reviews of plays, movies and envelope openings, Peter is currently developing
a feature film and a couple of shorts, films that is.
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