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Former NSW South Coast resident Clare Bowen has cemented her star-on-the-rise status with an appearance on US talk show The View.
The one-time University of Wollongong student shared a lounge with co-hosts including Whoopi Goldberg last week to discuss her role in the US musical drama series, Nashville.
Bowen, 23, made her entrance wearing a wildly fringed set of tan cowboy boots, a girly white dress with lace-lined sleeves and a flower in her hair.
She appeared to win over the audience when she talked of her long-time admiration for Goldberg's performance in The Colour Purple.
"You were just luminous, beautiful and meeting you - I can't believe it," she said.
Bowen also told the hosts her Australian accent had helped her to master the southern drawl required of her character, Scarlett O'Connor, a waitress looking for her big break in America's country music mecca.
"I guess [in Australia] we're kind of lazy and laid back in the way that we talk so that kind of helps to get into the lilt of [the southern accent] - it's very musical actually. I love a southern accent," she said.
Bowen is the daughter of Tony Bowen, a Qantas Airways chef, and Kathleen Bowen, an interior designer. She travelled often as a child and went to primary school in Dulwich Hill.
Her family lived in the Illawarra's northern suburbs before they moved to Minnamurra. Bowen studied creative arts at the University of Wollongong from 2004 to 2007.
She won roles in Australian TV shows including Home and Away then, in 2009, was cast as the female lead in the Australian feature film The Combination.
In 2010 she received tutelage from Cate Blanchett when she was cast in the leading role of Wendla Bergman in the Australian theatre production of Spring Awakening.
Nashville was picked up by America's ABC in May last year and premiered in October.
The show's creator and main script writer is Callie Khouri, who won an Oscar for her Thelma and Louise screenplay.
Noted music producer T Bone Burnett also works on the show and it has developed a following as much for its music as its plotlines, which centre around tensions between ageing country music legend Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton) and bratty up-and-comer Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere).
The classically trained Bowen capped off her appearance on The View with a song, When the Right One Comes Along, off the show's spin-off soundtrack.
