ANNE TENNEY LIFE'S GREENER... Away from the spotlight!

THE AUSSIE ACTRESS HAS NO REGRETS PRIORITISING HER FAMILY OVER FAME

Anne Tenney was once one of Australia's favourite and most recognisable TV and film mums, turning heads and radiating warmth wherever she went.

A true national treasure, her much-loved A Country Practice character Molly Jones’ death scene devastated viewers, and garnered the highest-ever ratings for the Aussie series.

She went on to steal the show as true blue, rissole making Sal Kerrigan in the smash-hit movie The Castle opposite Michael Caton, before endearing herself with another matriarch role, Liz Taylor, in the early noughties drama Always Greener.

Then Anne just seemed to vanish. Despite many lucrative acting offers, she turned her back on fame to focus on family.

“I stayed at home and I was a mum for a while,” the actress once explained.

Marrying her former Wandin Valley husband Shane Withington in real life in the ’80s, the pair then welcomed their daughter Madeleine.

These days Shane is still front and centre in our living rooms, playing John Palmer on Home and Away. Maddie, now in her thirties, is also forging a career as an actress, writer and filmmaker.

Yet Anne barely raises a whisper or double-take when she ventures out in her Church Point neighbourhood on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

“You wouldn’t even know she was once the woman who played Molly,” one local says of Anne. “She’s very low-key, very natural. She and her husband are very environmental and political.”