What I did on my vacation#3

Celebrated with the LA-based Aussie film industry at the 2007 Breakthrough Awards, held on May 3 at the Avalon Hotel in Beverley Hills...each year a golden boomerang is given to three Australians who have made significant breakthroughs in Hollywood in the past year. This year, the trio included teeny-weeny actresses Isla Fisher and Emilie de Ravin and the slightly more substantial director of Wolf Creek, Greg McLean. It's an event that might be called "intimate" - not too many of us could fit around the pool at the former nursing home. But that's its charm and what struck me was how damn sexy the crowd looked - especially the young Aussie actors, like Kick Gurry, who scrubbed up a treat in their slick LA suits. As an added bonus, heart throbs Chewitel Ejoifor and Michael Vartan could be found lurking among the cabanas. Talk about flying pheromones! One sour note was the conditions Isla Fisher's fiancee Sacha Baron Cohen put on his appearance at the event, although he seemed affable and relaxed on the night to me. Chatted to the Countess von Bismark-Schonhausen, actress Laura Harring, about her new film, Mike Newell's Love in the Time of Cholera, and Persian director Ramin Niami (married to Australian powerhouse entertainment lawyer Karen Robson) about his forthcoming feature to be partly filmed in Iran. All in all, a bit of a shock to the system to find so many people in LA - and all in one place! - who were so engagingly intelligent and sartorially splendid.