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\u201cI didn\u2019t know how to unpack the pain, so I\u2019d mask it,\u201d Stevenson says of his inward struggles while at the height of his fame. \u201cI had to hide those demons that were inside.\u201dCredit: Kristoffer Paulsen<\/p>\n
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Huddled around their drinks, trying to stay warm in a corner of the rambling \u00adheritage hotel on an icy Saturday night in June, the group of otherwise nondescript middle-aged men and women barely receive a glance, let alone an inquisitive stare, from the other patrons. But back in the 1990s, when Home and Away was a hit TV soap, Mat Stevenson, Nicolle Dickson, Greg Benson, Sharyn Hodgson, Adam Willits and Les Hill were mobbed at shopping centres around the country.<\/p>\n
This get-together of old castmates last winter at the Bundanoon Hotel in the NSW Southern Highlands is the first time the group have seen one another since the death of their former co-star and friend Dieter Brummer, who took his own life in 2021 at the age of 45 after lockdown deepened his depression. But because some of the actors were overseas at the time, and the memorial service was live-streamed, this is the first time the entire group has met in the flesh for many years. There\u2019s lots to talk about: the strange and exhilarating experiences of being major TV stars (and the fodder of the tabloid gossip magazines) at a young age and the challenges of moving on with their lives after their stint with the show ended. This is their opportunity to lay some ghosts to rest.<\/p>\n
Standing in the centre of the group is Mat Stevenson, a slim, muscular middle-aged man with an unguarded smile. In his now-older features you can still see traces of the blond, sun-kissed youth he once was, when he smiled from the cover of TV Week magazine and was a star of a hit soap with an audience of millions across Australia and the UK.<\/p>\n
On TV, Stevenson was the epitome of the surfie-guy shtick that was a staple of the 1990s Australian soapie genre. Board tucked under his arm, his on-screen \u00adalter-ego Adam Cameron was either causing a bit of a ruckus around Summer Bay or charming the local girls at the surf club.<\/p>\n
Behind the dizzying success, however, Stevenson was battling his demons, the victim of a sexual assault that he never dealt with or fully recovered from. Some of his close friends knew, but most did not. In a less \u00adenlightened age, and without the right tools, nobody really knew quite how to deal with it. So they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
For Stevenson, the pain receded until it was a dull, inescapable ache. Over the years, the inner turmoil burst out in small ways that his family recognised only too well. A short fuse. Easily distracted. A sense of social anxiety \u2013 a persistent unease \u2013 that sometimes left him paralysed.<\/p>\n
Destined to be an actor<\/p>\n
Mat Stevenson, now 56, grew up in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Wheelers Hill, in the city\u2019s south-east, in the pre-everything 1970s. Like most middle boys, he grew up in the shadow of his brothers: James, two years older, and Chris, two years younger.<\/p>\n
His dad Walter was an insurance salesman, his mother June a full-time housewife. Nestled alongside the Dandenong wetlands, life in Wheelers Hill in the 1970s and early 1980s was Australiana writ large: the boys rode bikes everywhere and variously played \u00adsoccer, cricket and Australian rules.<\/p>\n
But home life was tough. Walter was a war orphan who had spent time in foster care as a boy. He was not demonstrably affectionate towards his sons and could be physically abusive. June, meanwhile, was wrestling with personal issues. \u201cWhen Dad got home, we\u2019d go upstairs and there\u2019d just be terrible stuff going on,\u201d recalls Stevenson. \u201cMum would take off, Dad would take off, and then three hours later when it was dark, our favourite aunt would come around and put us to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Mat (right) with brother Chris and dad Walter.Credit: Courtesy of Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n
Stevenson is at pains to add that despite all this, he loved his parents and his childhood was not without its sunnier moments (his father died in 1990, and he maintains a strong relationship with his mother). \u201cWe just saw a lot of stuff we shouldn\u2019t have seen as young kids,\u201d Stevenson reflects sadly, looking away. \u201cThat trauma as a kid is a really hard thing to wash off. It just sticks.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the soccer field, however, Stevenson discovered the kind of family he struggled to find at home as a \u00adrising star in the Victorian under-16 representative team. The single-minded nature of the game \u2013 to score goals \u2013 offered him a focus and an escape. In one \u00admemorable match, he scored an impressive six goals; pressing his father \u2013 who was also the team\u2019s coach \u2013 for a longed-for dollop of praise, he was simply told that he \u201cdidn\u2019t push back hard enough\u201d. Reflects Stevenson after a pause: \u201cMy father simply didn\u2019t know what love looked, smelled, tasted or felt like. He just didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Encouraged by his drama teacher, Stewart Bell, and propelled by a TV report on a performing arts high school, Stevenson was bitten by the acting bug at a young age. \u201cIt was like an out-of-body experience,\u201d he recalls. \u201cFrom that moment on, I just said, \u2018I\u2019m an actor, that\u2019s exactly what I am.\u2019\u2009\u201d The same year his dad brushed off his success on the soccer field \u2013 1985 \u2013 Stevenson landed an audition for an ABC telemovie, Breaking Up, written by Frank Willmont and directed by Kathy Mueller, about the disintegration of a couple\u2019s marriage, seen through the lens of their 15-year-old son. \u201cI remember crying in my audition,\u201d says Stevenson. But there was more going on. \u201cI felt like my head was in a washing machine the whole time. I was suffering from depression, and as a kid, I didn\u2019t know this. I didn\u2019t have the life skills to understand that. I was deeply traumatised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how much art suddenly imitated life, he nabbed the role. \u201cStewart Bell was a mentor to me in more ways than he knew,\u201d Stevenson says of his drama teacher. (Another of Bell\u2019s charges at Haileybury college, Adam Elliot, would become an Oscar-winning animator and filmmaker.)<\/p>\n
As his young working life found its footing, Stevenson\u2019s home life disintegrated. His mother needed to focus on her own recovery. His dad remarried, started a new family, and often left Mat and his brothers \u2013 aged just 12, 14 and 16 at the time \u2013 to care for themselves. It fell to the eldest, James, to raise the trio. As Mat\u2019s profile rose, a TV adaptation of My Brother Tom, starring Gordon Jackson, followed, and then another series, Dusty, with Kris McQuade and Asher Keddie, who was then a child actor herself.<\/p>\n
\u2018This other bloke came out of nowhere. I was paralysed, I was a strong young kid, I was a good sportsman, but I was paralysed.\u2019<\/p>\n
Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n
Not long after turning 18, Stevenson auditioned for a role on Neighbours. That involved a meeting with Jan Russ, the show\u2019s legendary casting director, at the Grundy Television (now Fremantle Media) office in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond.<\/p>\n
At about the same time, he attended a business \u00adpresentation about becoming a real estate agent. For a kid anxious to please his absent father, it sounded like a stable consolation prize, particularly if his career as an actor came to nothing, as his father had so often predicted. In a later meeting to sign off on a real estate \u00adlicence, he was offered a drink by his prospective mentor and \u201cthe next I knew, I became dizzy. This other bloke came out of nowhere. I was paralysed, I was a strong young kid, I was a good sportsman, but I was paralysed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two men raped Stevenson<\/a>. \u201cI blacked out, it was frightful,\u201d he says. \u201cI woke up the next morning in that room; there was no one to be seen. I was in a fair bit of pain, and I was late for work. I told my dad, I said, \u2018I think I\u2019ve just been raped\u2019, and he ignored it.\u201d<\/p>\n The topic was far too confronting for his father; the subject was never raised again. Instead, it became repressed in Stevenson\u2019s mind in a miasma of shame and anger. The next day, Jan Russ\u2019s office called. Stevenson had scored his big break: a role in Neighbours.<\/p>\n From Ramsay Street to Summer Bay<\/p>\n Neighbours had been on the Ten Network for two years when Stevenson joined the cast. Ditched by Seven and resuscitated by Ten, it had been spun into a smash hit by Ten\u2019s marketing guru Brian Walsh, who energised its youth appeal by adding Jason Donovan, Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue to its cast.<\/p>\n The role of Skinner \u2013 a local ruffian who nudged good-natured Todd Landers (Kristian Schmid) off the rails and, later, caused so much trouble that Ramsay Street matriarch Helen Daniels (Anne Haddy) suffered a stroke \u2013 put Stevenson in the spotlight. \u201cI just so badly wanted to be there that I suppressed that assault,\u201d he says. \u201cI was just \u2013 bang \u2013 straight down into denial.\u201d<\/p>\n After a few months, as his popularity soared, Stevenson was enticed to rival Seven to star in its Neighbours-killing soap Home and Away \u2013 this time in quite a different role. He played the mostly good-natured Adam Cameron, and became a mainstay of the series over several years, entering the pop-culture history books as a member of the show\u2019s original cast. \u201cI remember him being a beach-blond-bomb \u00adhottie,\u201d fellow cast member Nicolle Dickson says now. \u201cHe was just so easy to be with. So much fun. Lots of energy and really natural.\u201d<\/p>\n Matt Doran, Mat Stevenson and Dieter Brummer in Home and Away.Credit: Courtesy of Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n Dickson played Summer Bay\u2019s bad girl Bobby Simpson, described by the show\u2019s writers as the town\u2019s \u201cpremier juvenile delinquent; the product of 16 years of emotional rejection by her parents\u201d. Dickson describes the experience of fast and furious fame for a cast of teenagers as \u201cpretty full-on. I don\u2019t think any of us ever expected to experience that sort of level of fame. We just wanted a job \u2013 and then everywhere you went, people were overwhelmed to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n If Neighbours turned up the heat on Stevenson\u2019s personal life, Home and Away became a furnace. A relentless publicity schedule had the show\u2019s younger stars working around the clock. Stevenson, who had moved from Melbourne to Sydney for the role \u2013 the show was filmed at Seven\u2019s Sydney studios, then in Epping, and Palm Beach \u2013 found himself spending weekends doing interviews with teen magazines or making appearances at shopping centres, a publicity staple of the era.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a very unusual experience, everywhere you go, that people stare at you, and it takes time to get at ease with that,\u201d Dickson recalls. \u201cThe boys got it more than the girls; teenage girls seem to make more of a fuss about the heart-throbs on the show. I remember the first time we did a shopping centre appearance; everyone was just full-on screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n At the height of his popularity in 1989, Stevenson was on billionaire Kerry Stokes\u2019 private jet with Dannii Minogue, John Farnham and Derryn Hinch, flying to the annual Perth Telethon. He was sent to London, where the series had sent ITV\u2019s afternoon ratings \u00adskyrocketing. Interviewed on British TV, Stevenson was told he had the world at his feet. \u201cEvery time I think about my success, I\u2019ve just got to stop and pinch myself,\u201d Stevenson replied.<\/p>\n \u2018It was like I was allergic to myself … I just couldn\u2019t handle life any more. I didn\u2019t have the skills to navigate my way through it.\u2019<\/p>\n Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n Off camera, though, he remembers \u201cgoing back into the dressing room and just breaking down in tears. Inside, I just felt like my soul was being ripped out \u2026 I wanted to scream.\u201d Stevenson pauses for a moment, adding: \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to unpack the pain, so I\u2019d mask it. I built a character around me, which was the character that people saw. He looks laid-back, he looks laconic, he looks like he doesn\u2019t care about much. I had to hide those demons that were inside. It was really painful, and I found that it would spike whenever I had absolute moments of success or joy.\u201d<\/p>\n When Stevenson\u2019s father died suddenly of a heart attack in 1990, he was given just three days of bereavement leave, such was the show\u2019s grinding production schedule. He had already resolved some of the earlier father-son conflicts, however. \u201cI was lucky enough to write him a letter before he died, just saying, \u2018Look, I know you had a tough life, I just want to thank you for everything\u2019,\u201d says Stevenson. But despite having made his peace with him, the grief proved a trigger point for the young man.<\/p>\n \u201cI was full of self-loathing,\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt was like I was allergic to myself. My dad\u2019s death really ramped up my high-risk behaviour: alcohol and gambling. I shut down. I put up this facade that I didn\u2019t give a shit. I just couldn\u2019t handle life any more. I didn\u2019t have the skills to navigate my way through it. \u201d<\/p>\n On TV Week\u2019s cover with Emily Symons.Credit: Courtesy of Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n Stevenson, who was living in a share house in Sydney\u2019s Lane Cove at the time, was wrestling with competing pressures. On a night out in Sydney he was targeted by street thugs, who called him \u201cthat faggot from Home and Away\u201d, and he wound up with a fractured eye socket, two broken ribs and three fractured ribs. \u201cI\u2019m not a fighter,\u201d he reflects on the encounter. \u201cI knew I was going to get flogged. I came out of that \u00adreally poorly. I was put into bed, and then I woke up, and then I was back out in the street, having a drink. I wanted to find the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n The incident proved to be no wake-up call. Because the show was on a production break, Stevenson never had to explain his injuries to network brass or the press. The downward spiral he describes as \u201cfull-blown self-destruction\u201d continued, leading him to miss an \u00adaudition that cost him a shot at a role in the Mel Gibson film Air America. Finally, in 1994, at the age of 25 and close to breaking point, Stevenson suddenly quit Home and Away. The teen magazines of the era noted only that Stevenson left the show \u201cto travel\u201d.<\/p>\n Within a year, he was homeless. \u201cI was just in freefall, suffering in silence, spending what little money I had left and finding solace in the bottom of a schooner glass.\u201d His enemies were \u201calcohol and slow horses\u201d, he adds with a wry smile.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in an extraordinarily large amount of pain. Not sure if I wanted to die, but really sure I didn\u2019t want to live.\u201d An acquaintance from the local TAB offered him a small room. \u201cHow does a bloke who is so driven end up $40,000 in debt, living in a broom cupboard, just destitute?\u201d he asks. When he approached one of his brothers for a loan, he was given some tough love: \u201cAren\u2019t you tired of making shit decisions?\u201d they asked.<\/p>\n Crunch time soon followed. \u201cI walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge; it was pissing down, and I remember standing there and thinking, \u2018Righto, if you want to do it, now\u2019s the time,\u2019\u2009\u201d Stevenson recalls. \u201c\u2018But if you don\u2019t do it now, it\u2019s time to move out of pity town. It\u2019s time to move on.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n At his lowest ebb, it was TV that offered a flicker of distraction. Having found a place to live, Stevenson began to obsessively watch Survivor. \u201cIt resonated with me,\u201d he says. \u201cAll those skills that you need to be \u00adsuccessful in that show, just endurance on all levels \u2013 social endurance, physical, mental \u2013 were the skills that I abandoned when I self-destructed. It became an \u00adanthem for me.\u201d<\/p>\n The parenting embrace<\/p>\n In 2000, when he was 31, Stevenson and his then-\u00adpartner Janine became parents to Grace, but not long after the birth, they separated. Still in Sydney at the time, Stevenson returned to Melbourne so the family unit could at least live in the same city, if not for long under the same roof. The following year, Stevenson put acting on hold, started working in a range of hospitality gigs and met his wife Marlene.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was the most beautiful person I\u2019d ever seen, [and] I\u2019ve got no doubt she saved my life,\u201d says Stevenson. \u201cShe comes from a staunch, loving family, and she didn\u2019t go anywhere. I tried to push her away because I still hadn\u2019t reconciled my depression. I was still drinking a lot. I was still medicating. But she hung in there while I dealt with my abandonment issues.\u201d The pair had a daughter, Madi, in 2003, and finally wed five years later. Marlene, he says warmly, is \u201cthe love of my life\u201d.<\/p>\n I meet Marlene for the first time on a video call. Speaking over a cup of tea in her kitchen, she exudes clarity and sincerity. It\u2019s easy to see why Stevenson fell in love with her. In the early days of their courtship, it was difficult to break down his barriers, Marlene tells me. \u201cThere were times where I could have gone, \u2018See you later,\u2019 but you hang in there, and you just have to. He\u2019s still \u00adworking on it, but he\u2019s come a long way. You\u2019ve got to admire someone who does that.\u201c<\/p>\n Stevenson and his wife Marlene, whom he calls \u201cthe love of my life\u201d.Credit: Courtesy of Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n It was Stevenson\u2019s younger daughter Madi, now 22, whom he describes as \u201cstrong and courageous\u201d, who finally put voice to what everyone was thinking. \u201cDad, your head\u2019s not right, you need to talk to someone,\u201d she told him straight.<\/p>\n So, he did. He spoke to his wife. He spoke to his friends. He spoke to a therapist. And then, based on a trust which we had slowly built over time, and a kind of unspoken understanding because our professional trajectories had crisscrossed many times over the years, he decided to speak to me.<\/p>\n Before the courts<\/p>\n In 2008, a breakthrough in the investigation into one of Stevenson\u2019s rapists led to two other victims being \u00adidentified. The case was headed to court. Stevenson confided in a golfing mate, Anthony Hart, who had \u00adbecome a good friend. \u201cHe did not [share much of \u00adhimself] to start with because obviously, he\u2019s a product of his celebrity status,\u201d Hart says. \u201c[He would] put on a facade and sort of try to make everyone happy, and he didn\u2019t let anyone in because he didn\u2019t know anyone and what their intentions were.\u201d<\/p>\n Hart says Stevenson found strength in the realisation that other people had fallen prey to his attacker, and chose to testify in a closed court. His attacker was tried on three charges, including the assault that had haunted Stevenson for two decades. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years\u2019 jail. His subsequent fate is unknown.<\/p>\n The experience was confounding for Stevenson. The police had persuaded him to downgrade the charge to more effectively secure a conviction. One of his schoolmates, Wes Byrns, was called as a witness because, critically, Stevenson had confided in him at the time. \u201cFor Mat, there was a bit of closure in that, maybe,\u201d says Byrns. \u201cBut I also don\u2019t know if you ever get over anything like that, or if you do, how you do.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite his frustration, Stevenson was able to close the chapter in his mind. And for the first time in his life, now as a husband and father, he felt like he was standing on terra firma, and better able to pour his energy and focus into others.<\/p>\n Stevenson\u2019s older daughter Grace, 25, came out as trans in 2012, aged 12. (Grace is now a social influencer using the Instagram handle @grace.hylandd<\/a>; her journey has been well documented, including an interview that father and daughter gave to The Project in 2021<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Stevenson and older daughter Grace, who came out as trans in 2012.Credit: Courtesy of Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n Grace\u2019s sister Madi lives with a number of tissue disorders as well as ADHD. \u201cShe\u2019s so vulnerable, but so strong,\u201d Stevenson says tenderly. \u201cIt was she who said to me, \u2018Dad, your head\u2019s not right, you need to go and see someone about it.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cFor their early lives, all Grace and Madi knew of me was an angry dad who was discontent, who was drinking and gambling too much,\u201d he adds. \u201cMadi was the catalyst for me to really, really address those issues, to get help to actually understand how my head was working. That was the last piece of the puzzle for me.\u201c<\/p>\n Madi describes her father as a complex figure in her early life. \u201cAs I\u2019ve gotten older, and I\u2019ve understood things more, we actually understand each other on quite a deep level,\u201d she reflects. \u201cHe\u2019s always the person that\u2019s cheering the loudest and always telling us to follow our dreams and to do what makes us happy.\u201d<\/p>\n Death of a former co-star<\/p>\n If there is one event that still haunts Stevenson, it is the death of his former co-star and friend, actor Dieter Brummer. At just 45 years old, Brummer, who had played Shane Parrish, one of Summer Bay\u2019s seemingly unending supply of \u201cbad boys\u201d, took his life. It made front-page headlines across the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n In isolation, the event was devastating for Brummer\u2019s friends, his former workmates at Home and Away and the legions of fans he had accumulated in just four years on the popular soap. In the context of Stevenson\u2019s experience \u2013 Brummer was the seventh of his male friends and acquaintances to take his own life \u2013 the news was almost incomprehensible.<\/p>\n Dieter Brummer in 1995.<\/p>\n It was a key moment for Stevenson, who began to realign his life around the issue of mental health: fixing his own, and resolving to help others with theirs. He had been in the process of giving a series of talks on diversity, inclusion and mental health in his day job \u2013 he now works in the public sector \u2013 and began to incorporate fragments of his own life into those presentations.<\/p>\n \u201cI tell all my mates I love them now. It was awkward at first but we all now tell each other we love each other. It\u2019s a generational thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Mat Stevenson<\/p>\n Stevenson rolls off a series of statistics: we lose \u00adalmost nine people a day on average, or 61 a week, in Australia to self-harm; members of the trans community are 36 times more likely to self-harm; and there is a distinct correlation between self-harm and lack of support.<\/p>\n Brummer\u2019s memorial service in 2021 was \u201ca cathartic moment for us\u201d, Stevenson says, referring to the show\u2019s cast and crew \u2013 scattered across the world and isolated because of the pandemic. He organised a video call so they could reflect on Brummer, while also \u00adhelping each other come to terms with their grief. \u201cI tell all my mates I love them now,\u201d Stevenson says. \u201cIt was awkward at first, but we all now tell each other we love each other. It\u2019s a generational thing. We\u2019re getting better at it. I couldn\u2019t imagine my dad telling his mates he loved them.\u201d<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n Stevenson doesn\u2019t miss being in the spotlight. \u201cI had to park my acting career because I didn\u2019t have the skills to navigate trauma,\u201d he says. \u201cIf my 18-year-old self knocked on the door and asked to take one of my daughters out, I\u2019d kick him up the arse and send him away. I wouldn\u2019t let him near my daughters, let alone any other girl.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I had to start loving my younger self. When the clinical psychologist said, \u2018I\u2019m surprised you\u2019re not dead\u2019, she gave me validation to go, OK, I didn\u2019t have the resilience to push through, but there was a tipping point, and my dad\u2019s death was that tipping point. I just faced one mountain too many.\u201d<\/p>\n Though he has a day job, Stevenson never quite left acting behind. In 2020, he landed a small role in the miniseries Informer 3838. And then in 2021, he wrote and directed a short film, A Small Punch in a Little Town. It was not a return to showbiz, but Stevenson seems to enjoy dabbling in the craft that brought him out of himself as a struggling teenager.<\/p>\n His relationship with his now 79-year-old mum is also a source of gratification. \u201cMy objective is to heal, not to hurt,\u201d Stevenson says, reflecting on the complexity of their relationship. \u201cShe\u2019s the most courageous woman in the world because she went to the brink, where not many people come back from, but she came back.\u201d<\/p>\n He says that laying his cards on the table in our conversation might finally put to rest the generational trauma that, in his darkest hour, he feared would end up being passed on to his own children.<\/p>\n For Marlene, however, the telling of Mat\u2019s story was initially confronting from a privacy perspective. \u201cI\u2019ve always been very private,\u201d she confides. \u201cBut I feel it\u2019s an important story for him to tell because of what he has gone through. If he can help one person, then I think it\u2019s a great thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevenson and his \u201cstrong and courageous\u201d daughter Madi, who was the first to challenge her dad, telling him he needed to talk to someone.Credit: Kristoffer Paulsen<\/p>\n Madi echoes the sentiment. \u201cI knew it was going to be confronting, and I think I was a little bit nervous about our family being put out there and into that kind of spotlight,\u201d she says. \u201cBut seeing even just the way that this has changed him, I think it\u2019s helped him in a way that this has caused him to reflect so deeply on not only how that trauma had affected him, but how it affected the people around him as well.\u201d<\/p>\n In a way, too, the reconnection with his Home and Away graduating class, and other cast members including Craig Thomson (Martin) and Amanda Benson (Narelle), seems to have brought him full circle.<\/p>\n Dickson describes the reunion at the pub in Bundanoon late last year as \u201cawesome. It was just so warming and heartfelt, and it\u2019s just really special\u201d. The depth of Stevenson\u2019s turmoil surprised her. \u201cI never had any understanding or inkling that he was going through a rough time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n \u201cFor most of us it was our first big show, and we were late teens, early 20s, and we experienced something remarkable in our lives together,\u201d she adds. \u201cI think it\u2019s very noble of him and great that he can come out and not be ashamed or embarrassed. And I think it\u2019s always good when people can have open conversations that make people feel safe.\u201d<\/p>\n And for Stevenson himself? \u201cI love what I see in the mirror,\u201d he says of himself. \u201cIt\u2019s not always been like that. I can\u2019t be philanthropic financially because I don\u2019t have the money, but what I can do is be philanthropic emotionally.<\/p>\n \u201cThe word \u2018survivor\u2019 sums it up. And I couldn\u2019t say that before. I would\u2019ve given you some bullshit excuse about, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve had a few things happen to me\u2019, but I now know that I had to deal with a fair bit. And when I look at myself in the mirror, I give myself space to go, \u2018You know what? You\u2019ve come a long way and you should be proud of yourself.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Lifeline<\/a>: 13 11 14; Beyond Blue<\/a>: 1300 22 4636; 1800 RESPECT<\/a><\/p>\n To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald<\/a>, The Age<\/a> and Brisbane Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Matt](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/6112079014305d843d861ca671a9966b9675a804.jpeg\")
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