.
Reference > Erinsborough News > I'm Very Calm, And Then I Explode!

Underneath Sarah Vandenbergh’s cool blonde exterior lies a hot-headed woman...

The arrival of Lauren Carpenter in Ramsay Street last month has really set the cat among the pigeons. Just as Brad and Beth looked set for a rosy future together, the chemistry between Lauren and Brad looks set to blow their romance apart.

“The thing though,” explains newcomer Sarah Vandenbergh, “is that Lauren and Beth become really good friends. They’re really compatible and they just click, so when Lauren realises what’s going on between her and Brad, it gets really tricky.”

“It’s a very interesting love triangle,” she promises. Off screen, however, there’s no such rivalry between Sarah and her co-star Natalie Imbruglia. “We’re really similar types of people,” Sarah explains. “We’re both very spiritual. Natalie’s into crystals and things and I’m really into meditation.”

But the similarities go deeper than that. “We’re both very good at giving the impression that everything’s alright, when in fact we’re just bottling things up.”

“People always think I’m coping, but that’s because I only ever explode on my own. I think my release comes when Lauren gets upset – I’m very good at turning it on for the camera,” says Sarah who is also good pals with Kimberley Davies, who plays feisty Annalise. And it’s just as well that they get on – because as well as living together on screen, they’re also flatmates in real life! “Living with Kimberley has led to a few problems,” Sarah reveals. “People follow us home or feel they can just knock on our door and invite themselves in for a chat. Usually you can spot if someone’s following you, so I just drive past the police station a couple of time until they get the hint!”

Sarah also had problems with Neighbours’ fans at her local cinema.

“If I’m at the movies by myself, guys come and sit right next to me and talk to me as if they know me. It gets to the point where you think ‘Hey hang on a minute – you don’t have a right to do this’. But you have to be nice to them though,” she says.

When things do get too much for her, Sarah goes home to Sydney to visit her family. “I’m really close to my folks. My parents are very level headed and they’ve managed to bring me and my brother up to be strong enough to stand up for ourselves. So if the producers of the show want Lauren to do something stupid, I’ll just say ‘You know, a girl nowadays wouldn’t do this sort of thing’ and I make sure that they change it.

Sarah also has another special ‘family’ in Melbourne with the cast of Neighbours. “I’m really bad at going to anybody for advice – I like to find answers, not ask questions – but with these guys I don’t have to ask anybody anything.”

“Tom Oliver who plays my screen dad, Lou was so lovely to me when I first started. He’d come over to me, put his arm around me and say ‘Have you thought about doing it this way sweetheart?’ So when it came to doing scenes with him, it was like he was my real dad.”

One thing this screen father and daughter don’t share though is a love of horses. Tom’s the one who’s really happy in the saddle (in fact the horseriding storyline was brought in because of Tom’s passion for them) but Sarah was so unused to the animals that she had to have intensive horseriding lessons.

“The week before I started on the show I had an accident and the bruising on my leg was the size of a football!” reveals Sarah. “There I was having to ride a horse on screen when I could barely walk on to the set!”

This article originally appeared in Inside Soap magazine, dated March 1993, and was written by Josephine Monroe

Article submitted by Steve