Teresa Palmer’s dream role
Actor Teresa Palmer on turning 40, why she’ll “never feel done” with kids, and the Adelaide dish she says is “the best in the world”
It’s difficult to imagine a Hollywood star at the top of her game ever experiencing “FOMO” (the fear of missing out).
But when South Australian actor Teresa Palmer speaks with SALIFE in March, she feels a pang of envy – she’d usually be at Adelaide Fringe.
“I never miss a Fringe!” cries Teresa, 40, from her temporary home in Vancouver, Canada.
“I’m having really intense FOMO, just picturing all my friends in the Garden of Unearthly Delights and Gluttony, getting the yummy vegan donuts and going to the shows.
“It’s really painful!”
You can take the girl out of Adelaide, but you can’t take Adelaide out of the girl.
Of course, Teresa jests. While she may be missing her favourite SA festivities, the actor’s good fortune – the product of determination, manifestation and grit – is not something she takes for granted.
February marked Teresa’s 40th birthday and she’s found herself in a state of reflection. There’s much to celebrate, from the birth of her fifth child to the growth of her wellness brand, Lovewell, and landing roles that allow her to juggle motherhood with Hollywood.
Or in this case, “Hollywood North”. It’s in Vancouver where she is now filming God of War – Amazon Prime’s series adaptation of the action game franchise. It’s a “dream job” for the Mercedes College graduate who has relocated with her director husband, Mark Webber, and children Bodhi, 12, Forest, 9, Poet, 7, Prairie, 4, and nine-month-old daughter, Lotus.
“I’ve never done anything as big as this,” Teresa says of the project. “It’s the sort of job I’ve really been calling in for the past couple of years.
“Each episode takes a while to film, so I get a lot of downtime; I shoot for a few days and then I have five days off. Shoot for a couple more days, then have a couple of weeks off.
“Plus, getting to be on this huge production that’s blowing my mind every day.”
Family — and specifically, motherhood — has long been Teresa’s driving force. Her own childhood years were somewhat fractured; her parents, former nurse Paula Sanders and investor Kevin Palmer, separated when Teresa was three, and she split her time between her father’s Adelaide Hills property and housing trust homes with her mother. With her first acting pay check, Teresa bought her mother a house.
When a career on camera came within reach, Teresa knew she’d have to work hard – but she refused to let it get in the way of becoming a mum. Upon signing with an LA agency at the age of 19, she made that clear to executives. Remarkably, in a world that expects mothers to put professional ambitions on hold, her intentions proved no hindrance.
“Ever since I was a little girl, my biggest dream was to become a mother,” says the Hacksaw Ridge star. “So going back and saying, ‘Oh, both those things. Both those dreams are going to come true.’
“I can recognise that I’m in a very privileged position. I can bring my baby to work, I can breastfeed on demand, and that’s not the experience for a lot of people. I have been able to straddle both worlds in a way that feels very balanced.”
Teresa’s showreel is notably diverse, from her breakout role in psychological indie film 2:37 (2006) to the zombie comedy Warm Bodies (2013), and biographical feature Ride Like a Girl (2019). More recent work includes the fantasy series A Discovery of Witches (2018–2022), four-part series MIXTAPE, currently streaming on Binge, and romantic comedy Addition, which held its Australian premiere in Sydney earlier this year.
Showing up as her authentic self has proven to be her super power.
“Who you are, that person; the goodness in you is enough,” she says. “And it’s enough to carry you through all the hurdles that you’ll face and the ups and downs and the insecurities and the vulnerabilities and the heartbreaks and the triumphs.
“I remember I tried on versions of myself in my earlier years, thinking that I needed to shapeshift to be taken more seriously. I am such a dorky, goofball at heart; I’m playful and silly, and I remember having someone tell me when I was younger that I had to tone that side of myself down. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh well, that’s a bit like an acting job, I’ll pretend to be someone else’, and in interviews, my authentic, bubbly, wild, silly, playful self would sort of burst out at the seams. I realised: I’m just going to be me, and it has really served me.
“Anyone trying to get into the industry, I always tell them, ‘Do not conform. Be who you are. And don’t dim your light for anyone.’”
Teresa’s light shines brightest when she’s with her children, as seen in the myriad candid photos she shares on social media and the tales she recounts on her podcast, The Mother Daze, which she hosts with friend Sarah Wright Olsen.
Motherhood, it seems, comes naturally. She describes the birth of her firstborn, Bodhi, as “the most profound experience of my entire life” – and, having Lotus 12 years later “almost feels like I’m back having the first-time baby experience again”.
“I’m so in the season of parenting and I’ve been in the season for 12 years,” she says.
“There’s a bigger age gap between Lotus and Prairie – they’re four years apart. So, the other four are off interacting with one another from the moment they wake up to the moment we go to sleep – they’re running amok, skateboarding, on the trampoline, playing golf – for hours on end. I’m having a lot of one-on-one time with Lotus and that’s so precious.
“And of course, she is surrounded by all these children who love her more than anything. They all grab her in the morning, choose her outfit, they carry her around the house – no one can make her laugh the way her brothers and sisters can.”
Teresa says she’s not ruling out more children.
“I feel like I’m going to be so similar to my gorgeous nanna Dora, who had eight kids and said she never felt done,” she says. “She never felt complete and her last baby, baby Elizabeth, was stillborn. I distinctly remember my nanna saying, even after Elizabeth and that experience, her heart still craved more. Her heart grew bigger and bigger with every baby – and that’s how I feel.
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“I feel content and whole, but absolutely, if it’s meant for us, then of course we would welcome up our arms and hearts to another little one.”
Sharing in this beautiful family chaos is Mark, who also has an 18-year-old son of his own, Isaac, from a previous marriage. Mark and Teresa famously connected through social media in 2012 — three months after Teresa penned a 10-page list describing her ideal partner. Teresa’s a firm believer in the law of attraction.
Of course, raising a big family – raising any family – is not without its challenges.
“Ensuring every child feels seen and heard – that takes a lot of brain power,” she says. “The way you communicate with your 12-year-old is going to be different to how you communicate with your four-year-old. And I often will say, ‘Hey guys, remember there’s one mummy, five kids’.”
Adding another layer of complexity, Teresa is homeschooling her kids while living abroad.
“Oftentimes there’ll be three children coming at me, asking questions,” she continues. “When you feel spread thin, that’s the challenge. Because I really want to show up with all of me, for each of these individual people who need me. And I just give it
my everything.
“What I would say to anyone embarking on that parenting journey … is to not strive for perfection. Some days the homeschooling goes out the window – it’s like, ‘you know what, we’re just going to go to the skate park, and we’ll just call this
a PE day’.
“Sometimes it’s going to be messy, and it’s ordering takeout at 7pm because you forgot an ingredient and can’t be bothered going to the grocery store … those days are really what makes it functional. It’s when you’re in flow with parenting; the ebbs and flows.”
Teresa and Mark sold their idyllic Adelaide Hills property in Scott Creek at the end of 2024 – the same property owned by the Palmer family for 30 years – to live in Byron Bay. The NSW coastal town’s laidback lifestyle and nature-led energy is where she feels most grounded.
Jerusha Sutton Photography
However, Adelaide still “feels so much like home”. She returns often, not least for her fix of a dish she claims to be the “best in the world”.
“The first thing I do is eat at Pickle in the Middle at Unley — the smashed avo there is the most delicious — I have not found a competitor yet, in the world!” Teresa says.
“The other place that really feels like home is Stirling, because I’m an Adelaide Hills girl. I grew up going to the Organic Market — Bronwyn and Graeme Murray, the owners, were my neighbours growing up, so I used to play [there] with their daughter Lucy. It seems so much smaller now that I’m an adult, but it was a huge playground for me as a young girl. So, we always go there, get a panini and walk around Stirling.”
Looking ahead, Teresa is excited for the growth of her Lovewell line, which currently includes plant-based protein powder, kid-focused blends (think, a chocolate-flavoured powder full of good stuff) and trace mineral supplements.
“I’d love to find some great South Australian cafes that we could stock Lovewell in, and do Lovewell smoothies,” Teresa says. “It’s something I’m really passionate about because it’s helping busy mothers in particular.”
But the high achiever is also conscious of not “continuously moving the goalpost”.
“Now that I’m 40, one of the big things I’m focused on doing is sitting in the presence and gratitude of what I have right now, and not striving for more,” she says.
“Just being where we are, looking around and taking stock. I’m just so grateful, getting to do something I’m so passionate about for work, whether that’s in front of the camera or behind the mic, or doing our wellness products. But mainly, for my family and my health.
“Having these children is the best thing I could have ever imagined.”
This article first appeared in the June 2026 issue of SALIFE magazine.
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