Rachel Ward Swaps Hollywood for Cattle Farming Life

Rachel Ward may be best known for her iconic film and television roles, but these days, you're more likely to find her out in a field than on a film set. 

The British-born actress, who calls Australia home, proudly calls herself 'a cow hand' as she manages her 350-hectare property in the Nambucca Valley. 

The 68-year-old shares the farm with her Aussie actor husband, Bryan Brown, 78, with the two screen legends enjoying the lifestyle it provides. 

Despite the hard work it takes to run a farm, Rachel feels 'free' there, it's revealed in an upcoming episode of Australian Story. 

A major motivation for starting the farm was offering organic meat, with Rachel inspired to adopt a paddock-to-plate method to alleviate some of the environmental concerns around cattle farming. 

'You can go, "I like the way they're treating their animals, I like what they're doing with their land",' Rachel told the program.

'You can buy that meat that has come through a system that you approve of.

'In the cities, we're so disconnected from where our food has grown and how it's grown that we've just put the blinkers on and we've stopped looking.'

Rachel says that a bout of depression following the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020 led her to worry about climate change and the world she was leaving her grandchildren, and prompted her to commit to sustainable farming. 

Rachel lives at the Nambucca property full time, while Bryan, who is still a working actor, commutes back and forth. 

Bryan told Australian Story that while the couple's life on the farm is a change of pace, it's not a slower lifestyle by any means. 

'She's bloody loving it and fully involved,' the actor said of his wife. 

'I can't get over how much she does, but she loves it. That's all that counts.'

The actress, who these days only occasionally appears in film and television projects, says that the glamour of her acting career is the least of her concerns.