Julian brings Crystal home by Igor Davis

Julian McMahon has slipped into Sydney with his beautiful young co-star to spend Christmas with family and friends.
Crystal Atkins, a nimph-like model-turned-actress from Perth- she coyly refuses to reveal her age but friends say she is just 18- is the young woman who has been comforting the handsome homesick actor in Hollywood for the past three months.
Lonely and on his own in the often-unfriendly film capital for the past six months, while wife Dannii pursued her own career 10,000 kilometres in work. Then he fell into the arms of willowy blue-eyed Crystal, also a newcomer to Hollywood.
The two met on the set of their new film, Magenta -a film Crystal describes as an erotic "Lolita for the nineties".
She plays the title role of Magenta, a straitlaced 15-year-old English girl who travels from her prissy all-girls boarding school in England to visit her sister in Malibu. The sister is a well-known photographer married to a successful, hard-driving American doctor (Julian). On the surface, at least, theirs is the "perfect marriage". They live on a sandy beach, drive luxurious cars and have a gorgeus daughter.
"But appearances are deceptive," Crystal says. "Their rich, happy marriage is a sham. Their love has no deep emotion. Magenta is looking for some sort of love she didn't find at school. She is sexually awakened, and is passionately attracted to her brother-in-law, who is 32. They fall helplessly and hopelessly in love with each other. It's a tragic story."
That's on screen, but off screen, friends of the couple say Julian and Crystal have become very close friends, although Julian, son of late Australian prime minister Sir William McMahon, is still married to Dannii. They were two years ago.
While julian and Crystal sit lunching in Sunset strip Hotel, where they've come to talk exclusively to Woman's Day, they insist on referring to their relationship as "a deep friendship".
"Crystal is just what Julian needed. She adores him, and he thinks she is wonderful," says a friend of the couple.
When the question of romance crops up, Julian - looking more like a busineeman than a Hollywood heart-throb in a grey suit, white shirt and tie-says: "I don't want to talk about my personal life- so let's drop it."
Crystal- in lack leather pants, black boots, and a tint T.shirt under a blue jacket- nibbles strawberries and icecream and looks like a young woman in love. Earlier she had picked a flower and tenderly put it in his hair.
But she chooses her words carefully. "I guess you could call it like a big friendship," she says in her soft, almost little-girl voice. "I love Julian's work and I think he is really cool as an actor. He's a good guy too... really sweet. We like acting together and messing around and having fun. It's like work and fun all at once."
Julian is all business: "I was blown away by her work on film and since then we have been attending acting classes together- and will continue to do so when we return to Hollywood in the New Year. I think she's incredibly talented and she was wonderful to work with. She keeps telling me she's very naive but believe me, when she's on the set she doesn't seem as naive as she says."
Adds Crystal: "He's just hepled me realise what I can do."
Rugged Julian, best known in America for playing a cad on the hit afternoon soap Another World for two years, risked it all by moving to Hollywood in mid 1995 to break into prime time TV -and movies. But it's been an uphill battle. He turned down a couple of TV pilot roles, waiting for just the right part. He has been going to scores of auditions and landed the starring role opposite Crystal in the $5 million movie after performing for peanuts on stage in Los Angeles.
How he got the part was sheer fate.
Crystal, who has criss-crossed the world as a model, got the lead role first. She had already worked in small parts in two films -in the horror sequel Children of the Corn, Part III, and then playing an angelic girl hooked on heroin in Which Way To Oz.
Producers were frantically looking for their Magenta -a fresh-faced, naive, innocent virgin. Crystal fitted the bill.
She recalls: "When I started the part, another actor had the role of the brother-in-law. But things were not working out. He was very cold and so very involved in himself. For me it was terryfing. It was my first big role and I was frankly scared. And he wasn't helping."
Producers, realising the sexual chemistry was not there, fired the actor and began a desperate last-minute hunt for a new leading man.
Julian, best known in Australia for Home and Away and the movie Exchange Lifeguards, was starring in a play called Women In Control. crystal and the movie's director went to see him.
"I knew Julian from his roles in Australia," admits Crystal, "and my parents knew he was the son of the former prime minister."
Julian was hired on the spot-and the two hit it off immediately.
"I'm new at acting and I needed someone to guide me a little. Julian has a lot of things to offer and made it easier.
"It was hard for me to be so real because you are nervous about the cameras and everything. It was great to be with someone who has done so much work. And thank goodness it worked out this way because with Julian I was able to do a good job, relax and just be me."
Julian says Crystal had raw talent, despite the fact she'd never tackled a challenging film role.
"She has great promise and talent. We hit it off," he says. "I think she has a terrific future. She is absolutely perfect for the role. But it's difficult. She's working at a very fast pace, 18 hours a day. She's got lots of dialogue. And there are all the things she needs to learn - coping with camera, lights, hitting her mark and things like that."
But producers were delighted because the older man-younger woman sexual chemistry was hot.
Smiles Julian: "we had one scene where we're playing with watermelons - and she is chucking the fruit in my mouth, and another scene where she starts off by just stroking my tie. It's all done with stuff like that."
"Don't forget, Magenta is supposed to be just 15," reminds Crystal. "And they didn't want to really shock the audience and get me naked. So it didn't happen. It was passion conveyed with our eyes and kisses and sensuality.
"It's important that Magenta is no sex kitten or blatant seductress. If I payed it that way my parents would die when they saw it," she laughs.
Off screen, even though they are very close, the couple keep separate homes. Julian has his own apartment while Crystal shares a large house with two other women and a man -"He's an actor- kind of like the Keanu Reeves of Germany", she says.
Since basing himself in Hollywood, it hasn't been easy for Julian. No doors have been opened for him and his political pedigree carries no clout or influence. He's just another struggling actor chasing parts.
But while stars like Demi Moore, Harry Hamlin, Willem Dafoe, Meg Ryan, Alec Baldwin - even Robert De Niro once trod the soap path to Hollywood stardom, Julian is a realist. He feels he's virtually starting from scratch in the film capital.
"Those afternoon soaps are not really a passport to the rest of the business," he points out. "In fact daytime soaps are a totally different ballgame. Once you come off a daytime soap it doesn't mean people are going to know exactly who you are and it doesn't make getting auditions any easier. Your best bet is to start again from scratch."
While he says he enjoys life in Hollywood and has no regrets about becoming an actor, he doesn't dispel the idea that one day he might head home - and return to the family's prestigious roots.
"I went to law school for a year and I got bored and decided to do something else. I was planning on going back to it but I haven't got there yet. I suppose in a way I was the black sheep of the family. Acting is pretty left of field when you come from a family like mine -unless you're one of the Kennedys. I guess I've chosen a business which is even more public than the life I've had before. But it's part and parcel of the work I do."
Then he smiles across the room at Crystal, who passes him some melon from her lunch fruit plate.
Home in Australia for the holidays, she will get to meet his family -mother Lady (Sonia) McMahon at her Palm Beach residence, as well as Julian's two sisters.
after a few days with the McMahons, Crystal plans to fly on to Perth for some time with her own parents and her older siblings -a sister who is a university student and brother who is in a rock band.
Both are looking forward to holidays with their loved ones.
Julian says: "I'm desperately in need of sun and sand and if I find myself on the back end of a surfboard I'll be very happy."