I’m racing towards Hyde Park to interview Terry Pheto when my phone chimes. It’s her agent, with an inauspicious message. He’s delaying our interview so that Terry can prepare for an audition in Rosebank. Bugger. Now if only he could’ve let me know before I picked up that speeding fine.
A few hours later, I’m mulling over my cappuccino at trendy Santorini, where Terry suggested we meet. Did she get the part? She won’t be drawn on the subject when she floats in, looking like a deeply remorseful cherub. But she does gesture towards her tresses – camouflaged by a trendy flapper-style felt hat – and mentions that she’s hiding “audition hair”.
“I’m here [Santorini] almost every day,” she says. Not surprisingly, as she lives a stone’s throw away in Dunkeld.
Known as a teetotaller though, she rarely kicks up her heels and paints the town red, preferring intimate dinners with galpals to debaucherous dalliances. “I’m boring, hey?” she says, rolling her eyes heavenwards, “but I just love the way my life is.”
Her abstinence does not hold Terry back from having a roaring social life, though. She’s known to hang out at the bohemian Gypsy Lounge in the Blubird Centre in Athol Oaklands, a restaurant-cum-cocktail-lounge. She tells me about how she celebrated her last birthday there in style, with the girls.
But not before she did one of her regular rounds amongst the ill youngsters at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.
“I went to Bara [Baragwanath Hospital] and had lunch with the kids,” she says. “I often visit the sick kids; it’s a personal thing. I lost my brother when he was four. It was an asthma attack. It makes such a difference because those kids get excited, and once their spirit is lifted, their chances of recovery are better. You’re actually helping a child who’s lost hope by saying: ‘Hey, today’s my birthday. Let’s have cake! Let’s sing!’ Some of them only see their parents once a month, so you go there and give them a hug and read them a story.”
Soweto still stakes a special spot in Terry’s heart. It is where she was first discovered back in 2003. Despite her fame, she is still an active member of Soweto’s Positive Arts Society Theatre Group and is now co-directing a production starring five of the troupe’s actors. She herself was plucked from the troupe herself, by her agent – the infamously fierce and maternally protective Moonyeenn Lee – and a year later dispatched to the Tsotsi casting. The rest, as they say, is history.
So what has she done since Tsotsi? “I did Catch A Fire with Australian director Philip Noyce, who also did The Bone Collector and Patriot Games, and I did Goodbye Bafana.” Mmmm – the one with hottie Joseph Fiennes? Indeed.
“Then I did a short movie, as well as the second season of Zone 14 for SABC1. I also did Justice For All, Jacob’s Cross and Hopeville for the Heartlines Project.” And to top it all off, she became the spokesperson for cosmetics house L’Oréal Paris.
She clearly has several irons in the fire, both here and internationally. Would she ever consider going to Tinseltown for good?
“I don’t know, actually,” she says. “I’ve been so blessed. I’ve got my family here, and I’m proudly South African. Working overseas would be a blessing, but relocating is not something I would do right now. I think about it, obviously, but things are happening for me in this country. I’m busy. I appreciate the love and support I get in South Africa, and maybe it’s about time we focus on our own ‘Jollywood’.”
Reflecting back on her clutch of roles, Pheto reveals that her best part so far is undoubtedly as Tsotsi’s leading lady, Miriam.
“I had no idea when I started that it was going to be so great, that it would be the highlight of the South African film industry,” she says. “I mean, for the first time we now have an Oscar.”
She speaks of how the part bore a resemblance to her own tenuous upbringing: “Tsotsi was something very close to my heart because of my background. The dream that I had, the life that I lived and the character that I played… these were so similar to my own life,” she says.
But she admits that the press exaggerated her rags-to-riches story, as she would not describe her childhood as poverty stricken.
“Yes, I was born in Sebokeng, and I lived in a shack for two years, but then my mom bought a house,” she says. And boy, did she have some explaining to do to her mom when the media quoted her out of context! It’s clear that her mom continues to have a big impact on Terry. There’s the ambition she inherited but also the knowledge that she cannot only rely on her star status for her future success. For this reason she has formed what is widely known in South Africa as a stokvel, a kind of revolving credit-union club formed with friends and family members. The ambitiously named “Billionaire Ladies’ Club” counts Terry and a few like-minded girlfriends among its 11 members. They put away money each month, with each member taking a turn to claim the cash for her own aspirations. “We also invite people to help us, whether it’s with writing business proposals or just simply providing inspiration. At the end of the year we each have the capital to start whatever business we want to start. Right now we are actually thinking about taking it to another level... consortium level,” she says, and you can see the excitement in her eyes.
One of Terry’s friends walks into Santorini, and we interrupt our conversation for a moment. As she turns back, I see the excitement has now been replaced by mock anger… “My friend is very dear to me... but I’m going to kill her because she went shopping without me!” she laughs.
And so ends my very brief chat with one of South Africa’s biggest screen stars. She had to run off to the next appointment, and I am still wondering if she got the part she auditioned for that day – silently hoping that it’s another local project so we can keep her here at home for ourselves. ¢