The important lesson athlete-turned-actress Jane Larkin learned on the set of a Chris Hemsworth film

The Queensland sun beat down on Jane Larkin’s blonde head as she lingered on the set of Spiderhead, eager to watch Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller at work.

It was November 2020 and she had one thought running through her mind.

”I remember being like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve made it,'” Larkin tells 9honey, already laughing.

Watch the trailer above.

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“I don’t think I’m even visible in the film! I think I’m visible for like a second.”

But Larkin wouldn’t be where she is today – just one week away from the premiere of her own filmmaking debut – if not for the lessons she’d learned on that set four years ago.

About 30 at the time, Larkin spent every moment she wasn’t on camera learning from the crew, memorising everything they said about camera lenses, lighting and how each shot was set up.

She picked picked up even more on the set of Thirteen Lives and Boy Swallows Universe, two more recent projects.

Now Larkin has put all she learned to use in her filmmaking debut The Edge, for which she was a writer, director, producer and actor.

The film follows three female athletes navigating the world of elite sport and all the personal and professional struggles that come with the territory.

It’s a deeply personal story for Larkin, who based much of her character Annie’s story on her own experiences as a former Australian representative sprinter.

“People commented on on certain aspects [of Annie’s story], like, ‘Is that real?'” she says.

“And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, we used to throw up all the time in training from the lactic acid!'”

She was also sexually abused by someone in a position of power, an experience too many female athletes have lived through. It’s a reality The Edge doesn’t shy away from.

Larkin envisioned the film as a way to shift the narrative around what it means to be a female athlete in Australia and shine a light on some of the darker parts of the industry, from body image issues to the myriad sacrifices required of women at the top.

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Nearly 21 per cent of professional women athletes have experienced sexual abuse as a child in sport, according to UN Women.

Safeguards to protect women and girls from abuse in sport are chronically underfunded, violence against them is common, and many sporting institutions have covered up harassment and abuse for years.

When they’re not being victimised by those within the sport industry, female athletes face attacks from spectators.

A study found that 85 per cent of online abuse before and during the Tokyo Olympics was directed at women, and a BBC survey of elite women athletes found that over 30 per cent had experienced serious abuse online.

And women are still underrepresented in leadership positions in sport, especially in sports that have been historically viewed as ‘masculine’, such as powerlifting.

It’s one of the reasons she insisted on including a female powerlifter in the film, even though she was met with some pushback at first.

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“When I was writing the script and wanted a power lifter, they said, ‘What about a dancer?'” Larkin recalls. She refused to change the script.

“It’s not that I don’t respect dancers, but I’ve seen them on screen before. I want the underrepresented sports.”

That’s how she ended up hiring powerlifter Lily Riley and Japanese Paralympic swimmer Mei Ichinose to play Sylvia and Yui, The Edge‘s other two leads.

Neither athlete had any acting experience prior to joining the project but Larkin didn’t see that as an issue.

”We worked in reverse, we got the athletes first and then they spent a year training up to be actors,” she laughs.

It was a risk but Larkin believes it will pay off when audiences finally see The Edge premiere at the Gold Coast Film Festival next week.

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Arriving less than a year after Australian female athletes dominated at the Olympic Games Paris 2024, she hopes the film will spark conversations about the unrealistic standards female athletes are held to even now.

“I think people will realise – or at least, I’m hoping they do – that athletes are not always the gods we hold them to be,” she says.

“They have things going on in their personal life, they have their bad days […] but we’re also not robots. We’re human beings.”

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