THEY had a troubled relationship, but losing his mother, Lady McMahon, forced Julian McMahon to revisit his childhood.
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"It's been a very difficult year for me," the TV and movie star told The Sun-Herald. "I was feeling a strange, austere pull to Australia because of what happened, and it just all fit. It tugged on a lot of things."
McMahon, 42, has not worked in Australia in 20 years, having forged a successful career in the US - where he moved with his first wife, Dannii Minogue, in 1990.
It was this marriage that caused the rupture between mother and son, according to the London-based Minogue, who told Britain's Glamour magazine recently: ''I hope Julian resolved things with her before she passed."
McMahon is reluctant to discuss his relationship with his mother Sonia, who died in April aged 77 after battling cancer. She was for many years prominent on the Sydney social scene, having been a style-setting wife to the former prime minister Sir William McMahon.
Julian McMahon's new film, the shark thriller Bait 3D, is being shot a stone's throw from where he holidayed as a child on the Gold Coast, prompting much-needed soul-searching and reflection on a tough year.
"It's fascinating that this happened the way that it did," he said on the set last week. "It's been a good place to come back to. We grew up just down the street - The Capri in Surfers Paradise. We spent three months here every summer when we were kids. And my dad and my mum spent a lot of time up here.
"I was a big crab fisherman, and I've been doing that these past few weeks. It's been good to get back to those kind of things, particularly with how the year has gone the way it has."
McMahon won't be staying in Australia for long. "I've had a very busy year," he said. "And I haven't spent as much time with my daughter as I should have - or would like to have."
Making up for lost time with Madison, 10, from his former marriage to Brooke Burns, won't include watching reruns of Nip/Tuck, which he finally wrapped last year after an eight-year run.
Nor is she likely to see her dad in his new Australian film, in which he plays yet another dastardly character, Doyle.
"Inside of all the characters, there's a little bit of you," he said.
"You get cast for a reason, you know? She's watched Fantastic Four, because that's a kids' movie. But she hasn't seen Nip/Tuck - and I hope she never will."
