Elisabeth's killer Shorty comeback ‘I'M HAUNTED BY CARLA!'

The actress is set to put the psycho into psychotherapist with her return as Ferndale’s most memorable murderer

- SEBASTIAN VAN DER ZWAN

After filming her final scene as villainous nurse Carla Crozier on Shortland Street in 1996, actress Elisabeth Easther shaved off her character’s signature “orange helmet” of hair, got a job in radio and moved by herself into a small shack in Northland’s remote Taupo Bay.

“It was so cathartic getting rid of Carla,” enthuses the Hamilton-born star, now also a journalist, documentary maker and award-winning playwright.

“I had one of the show’s make-up artists give me a number two and when I was walking home from having my mop chopped, it rained on my actual scalp. I felt liberated and just super-excited for the future. Within months, I’d completely left Carla behind.”

But fans of the TVNZ 2 soap couldn’t move on from the memorable murderer. Even today, 25 years since she began her 18-month stint on Shorty, Elisabeth is regularly stopped by people who recognise her as the woman who beat her husband Bernie Leach to death with a candlestick during an earthquake.

“Everyone else has found her harder to let go,” she tells Woman’s Day with a wry smile. “It’s half my lifetime ago, but it’ll be on my headstone, I’m sure. It was probably the most defining thing I’ve ever done in my life and yet it’s not the most important thing to me by a long shot.

“Even when my dad died, the headline of his obituary was ‘Shortland Street actor’s father dies’. I’m glad he wasn’t alive to see it. It’s funny how something can be a modest blip of time, but that’s it forever.”