Media and Press

Never ? Never !
Rachel Browne, Sun Herald, 03 May 1998

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Athlete Janine Shepherd's story has inspired many, not least - as Rachel Browne discovers - Claudia Karvan, who relives Shepherd's victory over death.

It took only a split second to change Janine Shepherd's life violently and irrevocably. On a crisp Autumn afternoon a utility truck knocked the cross-country skiing champion and Winter Olympic hopeful off her bicycle close to the end of a training run in the Blue Mountains.

Her wounds included a broken neck, back (in four places), five ribs, right arm and collarbone, a shattered right foot, massive internal bleeding and severe head injuries. The right side of her body was torn open from her ankle to her torso and filled with road gravel. She lost five litres of blood, her blood pressure was 40 over nothing, and doctors did not believe she would make it through the night.

But since that terrible afternoon 12 years ago, Shepherd's achievements have outstripped her injuries. Told she was unlikely to regain the use of her legs, have a full sexual life or bear children, Shepherd not only walked, she flew, after gaining her pilot's licence, married fellow pilot Tim Blake, and is mother to three children, Annabel, 7; Charlotte, 5, and Angus, eight months.

The 36-year-old also turned her trauma and remarkable recovery into a one-woman industry. There are two best-selling books (Never Tell Me Never and Dare To Fly), the motivational talks for which she commands about $4,000 each, and now the film based on Never Tell Me Never starring Claudia Karvan in the title role.

Meeting Shepherd at her rambling home at Avalon in Sydney's northern beaches, it's almost impossible to believe she was ever on death's door. Bright-eyed and bubbly with offers of tea and hot cross buns, she's one of those people you warm to instantly.

The only outward sign of her injuries is her slight shuffle and the cushion she reaches for to ease the pressure on a large ulcer on her thigh. "I get ulcers all the time," she says, sitting in her fresh flower-filled sunroom, "because I have no feeling in my legs."

When Karvan bounds through the door, the pair hug like long lost sisters. They giggle and chatter as Karvan helps herself to a cup of tea and hungrily eyes the hot cross buns: "Mmm. I'm starving. Can we have some of those later?"

Not only did Shepherd find the perfect actress to play her on screen, she also made a new best friend and de facto aunty to her children, on whom Karvan clearly dotes.

Although Karvan is 11 years younger than Shepherd and about 10cm taller, there are physical similarities - both are attractive, slim, green-eyed brunettes with clear skin and wide smiles - and they finish each other's sentences the way close friends do.

It's not surprising to learn they connected immediately at their first meeting after Shepherd fought for Karvan to have the role and, again not surprisingly, won.

Actress Claudia Karvan

"People had different opinions about the casting," recalls Shepherd, whose official title on the production notes is script consultant although it's obvious her input was much greater. "I was a little bit annoyed about that because if anyone knows what I'm like and what my friends and family are like it's me.

"When Claudia turned up to the screen test she was in an old T-shirt and her hair was bunched up, really messy. But she looked just like I would have looked."

Karvan shoots a look of mock hurt: "Are you saying I looked awful?" she asks before they both fall apart giggling.

"Yeah right !" Shepherd snorts. "But after I saw Claudia, there was no one else."

So keen was Shepherd to find out whether the producers, Golden Square Pictures, and network executives from Channel 10 had agreed on Karvan, she rang the production office straight after the birth of her son in August.

"I was so desperate ! I was harassing the production people, 'Have they made a decision yet?' They said, 'Where are you?'. 'I'm in hospital'. 'Have you had the baby, yet?'. And I'm saying, 'Yes, I had him an hour ago but have you made a decision?'. When they finally told me Claudia had the role I was so happy."

Karvan arrived at Shepherd's house days later with a big bunch of flowers and several hour's worth of questions. The pair sat on the grapevine-covered veranda eating quiche and talking into the evening.

"We had a lot to talk about," Karvan says of the first meeting.

Shepherd: "Then we moved to the study." Karvan: "To go through the secret women's business."

Shepherd. "Yes, we sat in there with the script and picked everything apart !"

Karvan: "We went through every scene and I'm like, 'What really happened there Janine? I wonder if we can change it'."

Shepherd: "It was so funny. I had missed not having a woman on the production team and as soon as Claudia was on board I felt I had someone I could talk to about personal things."

Perhaps it was a stroke of luck, good casting or testament to Karvan's considerable acting skills but Shepherd's first instincts proved correct.

Shepherd's friends had shivers up their spines watching Karvan learn to ski wearing Shepherd's old snow gear, so uncanny were the similarities. And when she invited them to watch a screening of Never Tell Me Never, "they told me it was like watching me play me".

"Claudia would sometimes ring me and say, 'I had this scene today and they wanted to do it like this but I knew that this is the way you would have done it so we did it this way'," Shepherd continues. "And I would think, thank goodness, because her instincts were generally spot on. She really made the effort to get into my head which was so important."

While Karvan could connect with her subject on an emotional level, she says she reached a stumbling block on the physical side. Shepherd, was, after all, an elite athlete who represented NSW in netball and softball and was a NSW triathlon champion before turning to cross-country skiing. Her nickname was Janine the Machine.

Exercise for Karvan is the more serene pursuit of yoga. She had all of three days to master skiing as well as learn how to do aerobics and ride a racing bike.

"One of my friends who was teaching Claudia how to ski rang me and said, 'She was amazing ! She just picked it up straight away. She reminds me so much of you'," Shepherd remembers, laughing. "I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said, 'She's so bloody stubborn and determined'."

Karvan adds, "I had tears in my eyes, going, 'I hate Janine ! I hate skiing !'. I was hyperventilating. Then suddenly, after about two days, it clicked and I loved it."

Shepherd picks up the story: "She was amazing. She had never ridden a racing cycle before either and they are really difficult because they have really thin tyres."

Karvan rolls her eyes, "Yeah, like spaghetti. It was like learning to drive in a grand prix racing car."

Shepherd: "She hated aerobics but had to learn aerobics."

Karvan groans: "Despised aerobics !"

Shepherd smiles: "She had to run, she hates running. But she's so believeable. She's a natural athlete. She picked up all these sports within a day. If she had wanted to be a cross-country skiing champion she could have been !

Karvan cringes: "Yeah, yeah. That's right Janine. Not ! I don't have the same amount of tenacity I don't think."

Despite all the bumps and bruises endured during the shoot at Perisher Valley, Gilgandra in western NSW, Bowral in the Southern Highlands and Sydney, Never Tell Me Never was an inspiring experience for Karvan.

"I'm used to working on fiction, basically," Karvan says, thoughtfully. "But because this is a factual story it made me feel as if I had a purpose. Instead of just making a piece of entertainment, I was doing justice to a really magnificent story."

Now it's Shepherd's turn to cringe. Despite her extraordinary spirit and strength, she appears genuinely baffled as to why her achievements have attracted so much attention.

"People go on about it being a remarkable story but there are lots of similar stories, there are lots of people going through similar challenges," she reasons. "We all have difficult times and challenges in our lives. I feel honoured that it happens to be my story but there are lots of stories like mine which give people hope."

Karvan, too, has overcome her fair share of obstacles. A former child star in films such as Molly and High Tide, she developed into an arthouse darling with credits such as Exile, Lust And Revenge and Broken Highway to her name. She swam in the mainstream with Heartbreak Kid, then spent two years in the acting wilderness before Dating The Enemy in 1995.

Today she is one of Australia's most in-demand actresses, having spent the past year working on consecutive projects: the Channel 9 miniseries, The Violent Earth; the feature film, Paperback Hero, opposite Hugh Jackman; and she has just commenced work on a new film, Passion, with Richard Roxburgh and Barbara Hershey.

Despite Karvan's career struggles, it was the prospect of Shepherd losing her sexuality that affected her the most deeply.

"Janine had to come to terms with losing everything that defined her as a woman and that really broke my heart, that really made me cry," Karvan says.

"She was told she wouldn't be able to have children and she was fearful of love. The prospect of denying yourself love indefinitely, I found incredibly challenging."

For director David Elfick, who managed to convince Shepherd to let him make the film after she had turned down several other filmmakers, Never Tell Me Never is on a par with other despair-to-repair films such as Shine, My Left Foot and Chariots Of Fire.

As he writes in his director's notes, these uplifting tales are "thematically bigger than their actual subject matter".

Elfick chose to shoot Shepherd's recovery scenes at Prince Henry Hospital where she herself spent six months wondering whether she would ever walk again, let alone ski.

Working with quadriplegic and paraplegic people at the hospital's spinal injury ward had a powerful resonance to the cast and crew.

"It made us realise," Elfick recalls, "That this could have happened to any of us."

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