Paul Mercurio makes a dancer’s confidence convincing without letting the steps do all the acting. In Strictly Ballroom, his warmth with Tara Morice matters as much as his skill; we recommend the romance more readily than the surrounding caricatures.
Fi1m perspective
In Strictly Ballroom (1992), Paul Mercurio makes Scott Hastings’s confidence convincing before there is much need to explain it. He can dance, and Scott knows he can dance. That gives the rebelliousness a firm basis: we can see why this young man might trust his own judgement over the rules. Mercurio also gives us enough feeling between the routines to care when the music stops. We rate the performance warmly, with more reservations about the broad comedy that surrounds it.
Baz Luhrmann lets people look silly without making their devotion to dancing seem foolish. Mercurio benefits from that affection, but Tara Morice’s Fran matters just as much to the performance. Fran has enough determination that Scott never seems to be doing her a favour by dancing with her. We were moved by their growing ease together in the dancing, because both performers make it feel like two people learning to trust one another. The familiar romance works even when the caricatures become tiring.
His decade as a principal dancer and choreographer with the Sydney Dance Company helps explain that ease in motion. Strictly Ballroom was his feature debut, and he also worked on its choreography. Exit to Eden (1994), his first major Hollywood role afterwards, met poor reviews; the title role in the biblical miniseries Joseph (1995) took him further from the dance romance. Later work spread across Australian television, choreography and presenting. It is a less tidy screen career than such an assured debut might have led us to expect.
The caution with Mercurio is not to mistake the pleasure of watching him dance for the whole achievement. Luhrmann gives him a film that takes learning seriously, and Morice gives him a partner whose determination keeps the romance from becoming a display of his talent. The surrounding noise can test our patience, but it never quite drowns the couple out. Start with Strictly Ballroom, and allow the people around Mercurio and Morice to be rather louder than they need to be.
Biography
Paul Joseph Mercurio is an Australian actor, dancer and choreographer. Born on 31 March 1963 in Swan Hill, Victoria, he began ballet at the age of nine and became a principal dancer with the Sydney Dance Company, where he performed and choreographed works from 1982 to 1992. His father was the actor and boxer Gus Mercurio.
Mercurio made his screen debut as Scott Hastings in Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom (1992), for which he received an Australian Film Institute Award nomination. He later starred as Joseph in the television miniseries Joseph (1995) and appeared in films including Exit to Eden (1994) and Cosi (1996). He has worked as a choreographer, served as a judge on Dancing with the Stars, and since 2022 has been a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly representing the electorate of Hastings.
