“Some people don’t want others to know they grew up in the western suburbs,” Shane Jacobson says. “Some say it under their breath or quietly so people don’t hear them. But I say it from the hilltops. It’s made me who I am.”
Dressed casually and sitting by the Maribyrnong River in Avondale Heights, Jacobson is flooded with pleasant memories.
He’s as warm and genuine as plumber Kenny, the role he is most known for.
Born in Essendon in 1970, Jacobson spent his childhood in Avondale Heights. Although his parents divorced when he was four, Jacobson’s blue eyes light up as he says growing up in the ’70s in what was the “tough western suburbs” was full of “laughter, mischief, magic and adventure”.
Endless days were spent swimming, canoeing, fishing and cheekily spying on a hermit living on a makeshift raft tied to the shore, surrounded by his old cats and enclosed in a fence made of wire and cans.
“He is one of my most vivid childhood memories. To me he was a part of the river and one of the many characters of my childhood.” Jacobson says the Maribyrnong River is like “another member of our family” that continues to weave its way in and out of his life. “I spent a lot of my childhood canoeing along the river and always found it fascinating that the river was connected to ocean and if I kept going I could end up anywhere in the world,” he says.
Jacobson’s father Ron, who was born into a family of carnival performers, grew up in a tent on the banks of the Maribyrnong in Newstead Street. For more than 50 years Ron, who now lives in Maidstone, has owned the Maribyrnong Boxing Gym. Jacobson’s mother Jill, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2002, still lives in the Avondale Heights family home. Since the ’60s she has run the renowned Avonde Calisthenics College.
“My father is the funniest man I know,” Jacobson says. “He has shaped me completely. My mother’s strength inspires me every day. My parents have always backed me no matter what and steered me in the right direction. Parents shape you, they carve you out and make you who you are.”
It was a family filled with laughter and love that sustained Jacobson and inspired him to perform. “My dad and my uncles were without a doubt the first comedians I met,” he says. “They were my real superheroes. I always felt when I saw Superman and Batman, yeah, you’re doing well but you just got to hope you don’t do the wrong thing to my dad or uncles because they’d be stronger than you.”
Jacobson’s journey to national stardom is almost as zig-zagging as his acting and singing career. Before he snagged the leading role in Kenny, which he made with his brother Clayton in 2006, he worked as a credit card fraud investigator, a medical supplies sales rep and a pyrotechnician for the likes of AC/DC and Guns N Roses.
It was while working as a festival event manager that Jacobson encountered portaloo suppliers Splashdown Toilets. Coincidentally, Clayton, who directed and co-wrote the film Kenny with Jacobson, had cleaned toilets to pay his way through film school. Jacobson says his encounters with the men who cleaned other people’s waste sparked the mockumentary.
The film attracted a cult following and became a surprise hit, grossing almost $8 million at the Australian box office. It was nominated for eight AFI awards, with Jacobson winning the award for best lead actor.
“The men doing this job are some of the most genuine, kind-hearted, honest people I’ve ever met. The thing about Kenny was that he resonated with a lot of people,” he says.
More than seven years later, Jacobson says people yell out “Kenny” to him more often than his own name. “I think some people still believe he’s a real person,” he says. “But I have always believed it’s far nicer to be remembered for something you did than forgotten for everything you’ve tried.”
From cleaning portaloos to co-hosting Top Gear Australia and starring in films including the father-son road trip film Charlie & Boots in 2009 with Paul Hogan, Surviving Georgia, Newcastle, Cactus and the short film The Apprentice, Jacobson continues to reinvent himself.
He has also made waves in musicals alongside Geoffrey Rush and Rhonda Burchmore in Melbourne Theatre Company’s The Drowsy Chaperone, and he won a Helpmann Award for best supporting actor in a musical for his performance as Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls.
In 2009, Jacobson was thrust into the spotlight again for his most challenging acting role – trapped miner Brant Webb in the TV mini-series Beaconsfield. It revisited the Beaconsfield mine collapse where miners Webb and Todd Russell were trapped nearly a kilometre underground in the rock fall that killed their colleague Larry Knight on Anzac Day in 2006.
“The first time I watched it, I had Brant and his wife Rachel sitting next to me and there I was re-enacting the 14 most terrifying days of his life,” he says. “Beaconsfield must be remembered as a tragedy because a life was lost. I spent a lot of time wondering if I was doing a good enough job. But after we had watched it, Brant shook my hand and Rachel gave me a kiss and that meant the world to me.”
Since then, Jacobson has found his largest audience on the small screen. This year he hosted The Great Australian Bake Off and starred as musician and father of two, Luce Tivoli, in the ABC’s Sunday night series The Time of Our Lives.
While Jacobson seemingly became an overnight star, his memoir The Long Road to Overnight Success, released this year, reveals he spent his life preparing for stardom. But his most rewarding role is fatherhood. His three children, a daughter and a son with partner Felicity Hunter and an eight-year-old son from a previous relationship, are “my everything, my world”. “Everything you do is in the hope you’ll provide them with a better life and in return you get love, and that’s a pretty good deal.”
He met Hunter six years ago and they have been inseparable since. “Felicity is my rock, my witness to everything I do,” he says. “She is the first person I come to see, ring or tell; she is my best mate. My life is her life and her life is mine.”
Never one to sit still for long, Jacobson has started filming for the series Fat Tony & Co, about the life of underworld figure Tony Mokbel, due out next year. Jacobson has been cast as Jim O’Brien, the former officer in charge of the Purana taskforce.
“I want to continue to entertain,” he says. “I want to continue to be a parent. I want my family and children to be proud of me and my partner to enjoy me as much as I enjoy her.”
