The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 152

RISTIAN Schmid and Sally Jensen had never met or had any acting experience when they arrived at a small suburban hall a two-hour ABOVE: Tutor Marita Wilcox helps Kristian Schmid and Sally Jensen keep up with their school work. RIGHT: Great mates and Sally on Ten's Neighbours' set. I Jim ft drama lesson a year ago. Today the youngsters are firm friends and, as the brother and sister team of Todd and Katie Landers, they are veterans of 200 episodes of Neighbours. The day they went to the drama class, in Box Hill.

Melbourne, the Grundy Organisation scouts were on the look-out for a likely pair for Channel I0s top-rating soap. Overnight, Kristian, 13, and Sally, 1 1, as Todd and Katie, moved into Ramsay Street and as regulars in Neighbours, they have signed on for a further 200 episodes. What has child stardom meant to them? Such is the importance of Kristian and Sally to the series that courtesy of Grundy's they have their own full-time tutor, Marita Wilcox. Grundy's have also built them their own schoolroom, just behind the huge Neighbours' studio. And when Sally went to a cast function, she travelled in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven, red-carpeted Rolls-Royce, eating her favourite food honey sandwiches.

Away from Neighbours, spikey-haired Kristian is doing Year Eight at a private boys' school in Geelong and long-haired Sally is in Year Six at her local school. If they have a 25-hour working week in their TV roles they must have eight hours of private tutoring from Marita. If their scripts demand a 40-hour working week as they often do Marita gives them lessons for up to 12 hours a week. Marita said: "Kristian often spends only one full day a week at school. In the cast he works as hard as those with adult roles.

There isn't much glamour for either Kristian or Sally. They have to learn their lines and are expected to deliver them as professionally as the other actors in the show. "In Sally's case, she had not even acted in a school play before she went to the drama class last year. I George Wilson visits Ramsay Street to talk to two young Neighbours stars who have their own classroom at the Channel Ten studio. NR.

WJl Si NEIGHBOURS FRIENDS ANE.