Rachel Ward's dream team for An Accidental Soldier Beautiful Kate actors Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward. ONCE a major Hollywood star, Rachel Ward was never truly comfortable with her success. Voted among the world's 10 most beautiful women in the early1980s, her looks saw her secure a string of high-profile roles opposite Burt Reynolds (Sharky's Machine), Steve Martin (Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid) and eventual husband Bryan Brown (The Thorn Birds). But the former model admits her acting back then was "pretty mediocre" and says she felt unfulfilled. "In the end it's not entirely satisfying to feel you are somewhere just because of how you are put together," she says. It's hard for you to take responsibility for what you've brought to it. And until you bring something of your own heart, soul and head, it's never a very satisfying experience to be an artist. Since her last major acting role on ABC drama Rain Shadow in 2007, Ward has reinvented herself as a top-flight director of quality television, including Rake and The Straits, and art-house cinema with the acclaimed gothic tale Beautiful Kate. A mother of three in her mid-50s, she says her creative success as a director means more to her than empty celebrity. "It's why I enjoy being behind the camera so much, because I feel the way one looks is completely incidental, it plays no part in my storytelling," she says. For the first time in my career I haven't felt like I've got this shelf life hanging over me. In something of a coup for Ward, Ridley Scott's company has just chosen her to head up Antipodes in a Day, the local version of 2011 crowdsourced documentary Life in a Day. It's a massive undertaking. She'll have to sift through thousands of hours of footage uploaded to YouTube by users across two countries to paint a portrait of life in Australia and New Zealand on a single day, expected to be this January. "I've never been involved in something I haven't shot myself, but I think I'm quite a stickybeak, I love looking into other people's lives so I'll be very happy putting that together," she says. Her latest work though is telemovie An Accidental Soldier based on the novel Silent Parts. It tells the story of a gentle baker (Offspring's Dan Spielman) who signs up for a non-combat role, but soon finds himself amid the carnage on the front line. He makes a split-second decision to desert and is sheltered by a French farm wife (Marie Bunel) with whom he embarks on a passionate, complicated affair. When Harry is inevitably court-martialled, it's up to his advocate (Bryan Brown) to save him from the death penalty. For Ward, researching the war made her think about her own children in that position. "Having a 20-year-old son (Joe), I'm very aware of losing him as someone who might have been naive and not politically sophisticated enough to not be swayed by the bipartisan pressure about going to war," she says. They were so naive those boys, I don't think anyone had any idea of how horrendous it would be. Almost 1000 Commonwealth troops were executed for desertion. While many wanted to escape the horror of the battlefield, others simply did not wish to kill. "It was awful, and you cannot blame anyone for deserting," she says. The only way to keep the men on the front lines was to kill the ones who left. So they were stuck in hell. Brown delivers a commanding performance. "I guess he did it for me as it was a smaller part than he would normally do," she says. He wanted to spend some time in Western Australia with me. She's directed Brown before, in Beautiful Kate, and says it's always an interesting dynamic. "It's quite difficult in the sense that he kind of has to do what I say, and that's quite hard for him!" she laughs. But she adds she can bring out his best. Because I see another side of Bryan, I know what I can get from him and I know how far to push him for something that I want. An Accidental Soldier, ABC1, Sunday, 8.30pm