Florence: What do Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Cara Delevingne, Billy Bob Thornton and Wallabies scrum coach Petrus du Plessis have in common?
They all appeared in the same Hollywood movie.
“What? I didn’t know that,” Wallabies prop Allan Alaalatoa says. “It doesn’t surprise me. Petrus is out there.”
You’d never know that the bloke at Wallabies training in Italy, hovering around the team’s big forwards, forensically analysing scrum after scrum, can boast to his mates that he’s featured in not one, but two movies.
Du Plessis even has an IMDb profile – a popular online database for everything you need to know about movies and TV series.
Prepare yourself for a one-of-a-kind yarn that few people in the Wallabies set-up are even aware of.
Du Plessis walks off the training pitch in Florence to verify the second-hand version of events about his short cameo in a film called London Fields, which featured some of Hollywood’s biggest – and most controversial – figures.
“I actually took my son to an audition and he was supposed to play in the movie,” Du Plessis tells the Herald. “Marmaduke is the young character who is a psychopathic young kid.
“The director asked me to play with my son in the audition. When we walked out, he said to me, ‘Could I have your telephone number because I think I may have a role for you’. I was laughing.”
The movie tagline reads as such: “Clairvoyant femme fatale Nicola Six has been living with a dark premonition of her impending death by murder. She begins a tangled love affair with three uniquely different men: one of whom she knows will be her murderer.”
Next thing, du Plessis, with a few acting lessons under his belt to get the confidence up, tells his UK rugby club, Saracens, he can’t come to training.
The front-rower, with long blond hair all over the place, was told filming would take place in South London over three days.
While it was a short cameo, du Plessis wasn’t going to pass up the offer.
“The rugby club wasn’t too happy with me because I missed three days of training,” he says.
“Johnny Depp wasn’t there but Billy Bob Thornton, Theo James and Jaimie Alexander were. Jaimie is a megastar now. It was just hanging three days with them. It was a cool experience.”
You can purchase the film for about $5 on Amazon Prime. As du Plessis explains, if you’re expecting to see an Oscar nomination for a rugby player-turned-coach, don’t hold your breath.
“I was a carer for the baby,” du Plessis says. “I run in and grab him. No words, just a lot of noises. If you pause it and freeze-frame it, I was probably in the film for 0.3 of a second.”
He’s not wrong. Du Plessis runs into the room, grabs the child, and runs out. It’s all over in a flash.
The film, however, was mired in controversy after a delay in its release. The film’s director, Mathew Cullen, sued producers and accused them of fraud.
Producers also sued Heard for $US10 million ($13.4 million) following allegations she conspired to sabotage the film by removing her sex scenes and any nudity without permission. They settled the case in 2018.
Shortly after shooting the film, Heard filed for divorce from Depp, after allegations of abuse.
Things got even uglier during their high-profile defamation trial.
Once London Fields finally premiered and went to theatres, the film took in roughly $160,000 to begin with, making it the second worst opening for a wide release, behind Proud American.
“With a cast like that, to be fair, it wasn’t a great film,” du Plessis says.
“The best thing about it was watching them work. Billy Bob Thornton … he’d be dead relaxed, really nice to everybody, and then as soon as he sits on the sofa when the cameras go ‘action’, he just changed. It’s really good to see how they flick the switch.
“It’s similar to when we flick the switch in rugby. When we cross the white line, we flick the switch. They do the same. It’s brilliant to watch. I was more impressed with that than just hanging around with them.
“I wasn’t nervous. They are dead relaxed. There was three people in a scene and 80 people behind the cameras. There were people everywhere. It was Hollywood standard, which was pretty cool. That’s why I did it.
“I didn’t care if I was in the film or not.”
A few years later, du Plessis featured in another movie, on a much lower budget, playing a Russian gangster.
Du Plessis says his acting days are well and truly behind him. Life on the Gold Coast, as one of Dave Rennie’s Wallabies assistants, is a dream come true.
“This is the best job I’ve had so far outside of playing,” du Plessis says. “It’s a young group of guys … who are unbelievable to work with and have massive potential. We always critique ourselves on how we can get better.
“I love the life in Australia. The Gold Coast is superb and the family love it as well. I’m as happy as can be.”
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