Not just a pretty face

Emily Dunn and Elicia Murray
September 5, 2008

Gemma Ward adds acting to her CV.
Photo: Mark Rogers

This week she denied rumours that she had ditched the catwalk for the silver screen, but adding acting to her CV paid off big-time last night for the top-earning Perth model Gemma Ward, 20, who won a cinema industry award that has previously gone to Geoffrey Rush, Eric Bana, Heath Ledger and Russell Crowe. Ward was named Australian Star of the Year for her first film, The Black Balloon, about a family with an autistic son.

The warm-hearted drama also starred Toni Collette, Erik Thomson, Luke Ford and Rhys Wakefield, but it was Ward's performance that the film industry decided was the stand-out from all the roles in all the Australian films released in the past year.

One of the film's producers, Tristrim Miall, accepted the award for Ward (who is in the US for her day job) during a Venetian masquerade at the Australian International Movie Convention on the Gold Coast.