Robert Taylor has been acting professionally for over 30 years, but he's only just reached
that big open sky of American stardom by playing the lead role of the old-school Wyoming sheriff
in the hit series "Longmire." Let's explore the untold truth of how Taylor made it to the top.
Robert Taylor spent his later childhood years with his aunt and uncle in a western Australia
mining town after his parents split. He worked for a local company
like most kids do. Unlike most kids, though, that local company was a mine.
After working in the mines, you'd think he'd leave for something easier.
But when he did leave the mines, Taylor went for one of the most
roughneck jobs a person can take: He worked on an oil rig. As Taylor said in a Dispatch article:
"We were three guys covered in crap, in the middle of the ocean,
in the middle of nowhere — hotter than hell. You get hit by cyclones."
Dealing with the dirty businesses of mining and oil drilling no doubt got him ready to
navigate the tough road to Hollywood stardom. The irony can't be ignored,
though, that Walt Longmire has issues with lawless oil field workers. At least
it made him believable as a man who's not intimidated by a couple of guys with guns.
Speaking of that time as an oil roughneck, his time working in resource extraction did,
in fact, lead to his acting career. According to his interview with Dispatch, he said:
"One time, we sank the biggest ship off the west coast of Australia since World War
II [...] I was the youngest guy on board, and we got them all off because we breached
the bulkhead to the engine room — and if you do that, you're going down."
Taylor was injured in that crash and the ensuing castaway adventure, ending his harrowing tale of
survival in the hospital. Then he saw an ad to audition for a school of dramatic arts. He said:
"I had never met anyone who had a creative thought or an interesting haircut or anything like that.
But I saw this ad in the paper, and I figured I had gotten banged up pretty bad on the ship,
so they would be chopping me off, and so I thought I would audition. So I did."
The drama school Robert Taylor auditioned for
was Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth. Taylor told Dispatch:
"If you get in, you don't pay anything; you are on a full scholarship. I had classical training for
three years. I started that in '84 and graduated in '86, so I have done this for a long time."
Graduating from WAAPA put Taylor in the esteemed company of fellow alumni Hugh Jackman,
who's known not only for playing the savage Wolverine in the "X-Men" films,
but also for being comfortable as a singing and dancing musical star.
That makes sense, since WAAPA is known as a top incubator for musical theater.
As a 2014 Sydney Morning Herald article put it:
"Talented graduates of the leading performing arts
school WAAPA flow into musicals all over the country and world."
Of course, it does have a program just for actors.
According to the Herald article, quote, "the acting course accepts about 18 students,
from 700-800 applicants" — proof that Taylor obviously had some natural acting chops.
Robert Taylor's most famous role to this point is Sheriff Walt Longmire. It isn't a big surprise,
though, since he started his career playing cops. His early roles read
like a police station roll call. The shows and TV movies are unfamiliar to Americans
since they're mostly Australian and British, but the characters have names like Constable Hanks,
Constable Healy, and Constable Gottlieb. He even had a 7-episode arc as Detective Peter Marenta
in "Yellowthread Street." However, after landing a recurring role on a
soap opera called "Home and Away," he went back to playing detectives.
Almost as if he was moving up in the police department, Taylor went from parts with the
titles "officer" and "constable" to roles like Detective Barry Craig,
Detective Sgt. Mick Foley and Detective Constable Porter. Eventually he got the
big promotion every cop dreams of and became the sheriff of a whole county. A county with
3 deputies — which wouldn't even equal half the number of lawmen Taylor's played in his career.
Robert Taylor spent years acting in Australian shows and TV movies. But his big
Hollywood breakthrough was playing another man of authority, one who serves not-so-great overlords:
Agent Jones in "The Matrix." Yes, Agent Smith is the lead antagonist to Neo in the movie.
But Agent Jones has one of the most famous scenes: He's the guy who dodges every one of
Neo's bullets before Trinity dispatches him point blank with the timeless line:
"Only human"
"Dodge this."
"The Matrix" was Robert Taylor's first appearance in front of the big American movie crowd,
and his strong jaw and authoritarian bearing made him unforgettable — even while playing a
faceless virtual agent who doesn't have a whole lot to say. Other than "Longmire" it's still one
of his biggest roles, and was even mentioned as his big credit when he landed "Longmire."
And given the many times Walt Longmire's been shot,
I bet he wishes he could dodge bullets like Agent Jones.
Ayisha Davies is kind of a big deal down under. She's been working in production since 1999,
but her big producer credits are for several shorts and a few features. Those features, "Coffin
Rock" and "What Lola Wants," coincidentally star — you guessed it — Robert Taylor.
As with everything else connected to Robert Taylor, details about their
private life together are scarce. At least one website claims they've been dating since 2002.
Most media sources mention they have a daughter named Scarlet, and as with
all the other details it's tough to find fully confirmed information about her beyond her name.
It can be confirmed that Taylor and Davies were married in 2017, on a ranch in Wyoming. The photo,
a simple Facebook post from HF Bar Ranch, shows the Taylors and what looks to be a young girl,
presumably their daughter. Based on the fact that she's standing up there,
she was likely born before they got married.
But since the Taylors obviously want some privacy, it's best not to pry beyond that.
Robert Taylor is a man of many talents and interests, from a youth spent surfing,
lifeguarding, playing Australian rules football, and roughnecking to his long and illustrious
acting career. He can add one more thing to his CV, however: community garden organizer.
In St. Kilda, Australia, Taylor is president of Veg Out. While this isn't mentioned in much
official press for the community gardens organization, an article in The Age
specifically made the connection, describing a place where local farmers had been, quote,
"transforming a former bowling green in St Kilda into an inner-city oasis called Veg Out."
The article confirmed the actor's role, saying:
"Actor Rob Taylor, who is the star of Netflix hit 'Longmire,' is the garden's
long-standing president. When he's not playing a sheriff in the US crime drama,
Rob can be found strolling down the tanbark paths in Blundstones,
with a handful of weeds in his hands. This is where he feels at home."
Author Craig Johnson has written quite a few Walt Longmire novels.
If you think Taylor's turn as Walt Longmire has him reading up on his character to get all
the nuances of the character right, well, that’d be a no. He did it all on his own.
"I don't think so, I know so."
As the actor said in a Seattle Times article:
"I have been waiting for a long time for a show like this.
You always work hard to get a part that you want."
As the article also explains, he hasn't read all the Longmire adventures.
The actor read the first two books before realizing there were enough differences
between the books and the show that he should stop reading. According to the article,
Taylor planned to read all of the books in the series when the show was over.
Now that his time is up and "Longmire" is no more,
you have to wonder if Taylor has finally cracked the other 15 spines yet.
It's tough for an Aussie actor to audition in America given that the
two countries are separated by the Pacific Ocean. But increasingly,
actors from overseas have auditioned over video, which was perfect for Robert Taylor.
As he explained in a Collider interview, Hollywood sends out creative briefs all over
the world to the main acting hubs, including Australia. Taylor was drawn to Walt Longmire
so he decided to audition remotely. He said in the interview that he simply had
a friend film his audition with a camera and then sent it off to the United States,
eventually forgetting about it as time went on. Elaborating further, he said:
"I remember, after a month or so, I thought, 'Oh, I never heard back. Oh,
well, that happens all the time.' And then, that day,
I got a call and they said, 'They want you to go to L.A. and do another audition.'"
Apparently, video auditioning is Taylor's M.O. He confirmed:
"That's the way I like to audition. I prefer to do it privately and secretly.
I've sent stuff to London, and then flown there. One time, I flew over there and went
in the room for the final audition and they said, 'Congratulations, you've got the job!'"
Classic Walt Longmire, staying home on the ranch as much as possible.
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