- Hi, I'm Courtney Act, you
can watch Courtney Act Christmas Extravaganza
but today I am here for Buzzfeed's first time,
(paper rattling)
s, first times. (people laughing)
(upbeat music)
I think my first actual real job
was as a door-to-door salesperson for Foxtel like,
a cable, cable, cable, cable TV.
(sighs) Cable TV company.
And that lasted a couple of weeks
'cause I got, ahem, look I won't say held at sword point
but I was kept in someone's house against my will
and she did have a sword and was sort of brandishing it.
It was kind of in a fun jovial way
but as an eighteen year old I did find
that quite confronting as soon as she turned around
I made a dash for the door and I no longer worked
selling cable door-to-door.
Well it was working into the workroom when I said,
Is this America's Next Top Model?
And I think the thing that you're really taken by
is that you realize it's actually a set.
I genuinely had always thought that RuPaul,
this sounds dumb, I just always thought that it was like
shot in the basement of RuPaul's house (laughs).
'Cause he sort of like walks down,
I always pictured him up in upstairs
in his sunken living room and sort of like,
"Alright, time to go down and see the girls."
And he sort of traipse down the steps into the basement,
the well-lit basement, but a basement none the less.
And then I was like, wait a minute,
these aren't real bricks!
There're just photographs of bricks printed onto fabric.
It's all an illusion.
That would've been at the Aubrey Hotel in the year 2000.
I remember being quite confused
because they were, you know, very draggy looking
in a Priscilla sort of way, like big makeup and big hair,
quite garish and quite masculine.
They all had what we call
(beeping)
corsets which was really high-cut tight corsets,
and just remember being quite fascinated
by the idea all of these men had
had their penises removed to do drag
and I later learned about the ancient art of tucking.
Which is sort of like something between gift-wrapping
and stuffing a turkey.
Well, in drag, was Dance Ten Looks Three from A Chorus Line.
♪ Tits and ass ♪
♪ Pop yourself a fancy pair ♪
♪ Tighten up the derriere ♪ ♪ Did the nose with it ♪
♪ All that goes with it ♪
That was a good one.
I wore, it was scarf but I wore it as a dress
and it was kind of furry and it had holes in it,
it was like a dress-scarf, I feel like it was like
not the infinity dress but like maybe it had a few options
and it was like a tube and it had sleeves in it
and my one wig which, what was she called, Gillian?
I think she was called Gillian.
Maybe Paris Hilton in 2003.
At the Matrix, the film the Matrix
launched at the Sydney Opera House.
We ended up hanging out all night
and dancing 'til the sun came up
and sort of hung out a bunch while she was in Australia.
There's other stories about Paris
that I talked about on Big Brother which I,
I not gonna say it was a cease and desist,
but I shan't be talking about any further, thank you.
Do you want all of the juice?
Oh sorry, juice, that really makes it,
that makes it perverted.
I remember during the Titanic movie
making out with my then-girlfriend and also.
So there's that movie Fear with Mark Wahlberg
and he and his girlfriend are the rollercoaster
and they're going up the rollercoaster
and he's doing something to her
and then when they get to the top she's like, "Ahhh!"
And go (buzzing), yeah that was
in Titanic with my girlfriend.
Also we both had braces
and she kind of kissed like a helicopter.
It was like (sighing) so it wasn't quite a rollercoaster
but it was like some sort of carnival ground ride
that I was going on.
This wasn't bombing, this was that I was singing,
♪ You gotta go back ♪
♪ Back, back to school again ♪
While stepping backwards, not realizing
that there was no back on the stage
and just fell off the stage
and sort of came to laying on the ground like, what the
(beep)
just happened?
That's a form of bombing.
It was the first time that I had ever been amongst
so many people who were like me but were also so diverse.
And so like 18,000 people and it's very queer
and very fun and I just remember like,
it's like sweaty, it's the middle of summer
and you're in this giant like exhibition hall
like dancing and it's just like, just like,
magical to be in a space where
there's like so many different people,
'cause normally when you go to a queer space,
the people often like, look like you,
they're the same age as you and so on,
but at Mardi Gras and pride events in general,
everybody is like different, everybody comes together
and that's what I love about pride and Mardi Gras,
and those sorts of events.
First pet stories never end on a happy note, do they?
'Cause they're all gonna be dead by now.
Unless it's like a turtle, like a Galapagos turtle
that lives like 400 years in which case
it will probably be telling a story how you died one day.
'Cause in the future sea creatures
will probably take over the planet once the humans are gone
and they'll find their own technology
and learn how to talk, I dunno.
This was before I had a phone,
but I remember being in the bike racks,
the place where the bikes are
where kids ride their bikes to school
and this kid sort of started bullying me
and like was shoving me.
My friend Scott Martin was there
and this boy was like shoving and I was like,
don't do that and he was like,
"Why what are you gonna do about it?"
And I was like, I'm gonna call the police
and he's like, "What on?"
And I'm like, my mobile phone and I was like,
Scott, get my mobile phone out of my backpack, thanks.
Bluffing, 'cause I didn't have a mobile phone.
And the kid was like, "Uh-uh, uh-uh" and ran off
and I was like, oh thank god
he didn't call my bluff calling his bluff.
There are several of these, I know it's first time but like.
The first official time was New Year's Eve 2000-2001.
My friends and I went to a circuit party in Melbourne called
Magnitude and my friend Linda who was a lesbian,
I think she like had a crush on me and kind of thought
that if I was in drag, then somehow it all made more sense
which oddly it did that night.
That was like the first official time of caught in the act.
Stripper heels, ahhh.
That's it I'm all out.
Oh, this bowl is dusty.