‘My first three girlfriends all cheated on me’: Ben O’Toole on looking for love (2024)

This story is part of the July 21 edition of Sunday Life.

Ben O’Toole is an actor best known for playing Happy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Here, the 34-year-old shares his memories of his grandmother giving him the gift of cooking, why he’s very much a mamma’s boy and how he has healed after heartbreak.

My maternal grandmother, Nanny Bonnie, gave me the gift of cooking and the joy it brings. She loved to entertain family and friends. My younger brother Matt and I would visit her in Iluka [NSW] and learn how to make savoury dishes from Grandpa, while Nanny taught us all the sweet things. Her go-to was a jam drop biscuit.

Nanny is the reason Matt won the bake-off at primary school three years in a row. She got dementia and died during COVID. It was super sad that we never got to say goodbye.

Dad is one of eight children and my paternal grandmother, Betty, was a homemaker. She was warm, generous and with a great belly chuckle, almost cartoonish – her entire body would laugh with her. It was infectious and brought so much joy to others. She had a stroke later in life and became dependent on her family.

My mum, Debbie, has a huge sense of empathy and really feels other people’s problems. I am very much a mamma’s boy – I speak to Mum twice a week and have done ever since I left home to study at WAAPA [Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts] in 2008. We didn’t let the distance between Queensland and Perth get in the way of our regular chats.

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Mum used to volunteer, driving the elderly around when they didn’t have family to help them shop. It became quite tough for her, and the idea that these people didn’t have anybody became overwhelming. She now works in admin for my father’s drainage business.

Telling my parents I wanted to be an actor was as strange as saying I wanted to be an astronaut. Mum was 100 per cent supportive, but they were big advocates of having a back-up plan.

My brother’s wife, Roxanne, is like the sister I never had. They were high school sweethearts, getting together at 16, and she has been part of our family ever since. They separated for a few years when they finished high school, but as fate would have it were reunited in Sydney.

My high school drama teacher, Elizabeth Falconer, was generous with her enthusiasm and backed me to pursue a life of acting. It was while we were on a drama retreat in year 11 that she told me she had been to NIDA. That totally seemed beyond the reach of my young self, but hearing that Miss Falconer had studied there made it seem possible.

My celebrity crush was actress Olga Kurylenko – she was a Bond Girl. I got work with her in The Water Diviner and it felt weird, to be honest. I took her to lunch in Manly and she was nicer in real life than I could ever have hoped.

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My first three girlfriends all cheated on me. It happened after high school and in my 20s. Therapy got me through and I don’t harbour any ill feelings toward them. Sure, there was heartbreak when things didn’t work out, but no bad blood or anger. I took a break from dating after that until I learnt to deal with the hurt and self-blame. I am always open to romance, of course.

My best friend, actress Vanessa Buckley, is my rock. We go away every Christmas and New Year’s Eve together – we’re like brother and sister. We champion each other and I love her a lot.

Rebecca Gibney’s kindness has been invaluable to me in my career, especially when I did Halifax Retribution. She was the first to empower me to speak up on set and has a beautiful maternal quality. She taught me there is no such thing as a bad idea.

I’m not in a relationship now. I haven’t had the best run of luck. Every time I fall in love, it’s not until the next time that I say to myself, “Oh, this is what it’s supposed to feel like.”

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