Australian actress and model Maddison Brown has been working since she was five years old. It’s fitting then, that across her grand oeuvre of projects — spanning film, TV, commercials, editorial modelling and beauty campaigns — she adds a true blue Australian classic to the mix.

“Being on Home and Away feels like such a rite of passage,” she says. “Everyone who’s anyone has done it,” she says. Brown started her tenure on the long-running Australian sitcom in June as Jo Langham, a member of the main cast, and was immediately hurled into the machine. The show shoots around 100 scenes a week. “Which is crazy!” she says. By comparison, her U.S. work — including her breakout as Dynasty’s Kirby Anders — averaged about 25 to 30. “But Aussies are generally more grounded, and it makes for such a pleasant work environment,” she says. “There’s none of the ego, the bullshit,” she says.

Leaving the U.S. to return to Australian shores was a bittersweet move — Brown had lived in West Hollywood and Atlanta for over a decade — but not necessarily a permanent one. “In this phase of life, I want to keep moving forward,” she explains. “And the best place for me was Australia.” Her family is based in Sydney; her SPF-beauty brand, Outside Beauty & Skincare is based here (as is her business partner, her sister Allyson) and it means that her fiancé, the New Zealand actor Simon Mead, is also closer to home. “I was a homesick puppy,” she smiles.

In this next phase, it feels like Brown’s world is expanding — not just geographically, but in what she imagines for herself. We’re sitting in the grand dining room at The Lavery in London’s Kensington, where she’s sipping tea after Pandora’s pre–Fashion Awards lunch. The next day, Brown will attend the Fashion Awards for the first time, in a dark, robe-like gown by Amber Keating’s artisanal label, Common Hours. Naturally, she’ll be glittering in lab-grown Pandora diamonds. “I’ve had an incredible life; I’ve gotten to do amazing things — I get to be here in London talking to you!,” she says. “But I’ve realised that life is long. Just because I’ve been doing this one thing, it doesn’t mean I have to do it forever.”

Launching Outside in January 2023 opened a new part of her brain — she loved the problem-solving; the ideating; “really making things.” It’s made her want to be a producer one day, to contribute to the film world off-camera as well as on. In the meantime, she’ll be putting that doer energy into Outside: “We’ve really grown, we’re scaling, we’re looking for retail expansion,” she says. There are “big” partnerships coming next year as well as some new products; all within the brand’s comfortably marked out SPF niche.

In September, she also stepped into her newest role, as Pandora’s first Australia and New Zealand ambassador. She fronted the brand’s Talisman collection campaign, a line inspired by ancient coins and their mythic symbolism, shot locally by photographer Manolo Campion. “I love that it’s accessible, I love working with a brand that friends of mine, people I work with — they see something of mine, and they can go out and get it, too.” The brand has been a part of Brown’s world since she was a teenager. “I’ve loved Pandora forever, I had all the charms, “ she says. “But it’s grown so much — there’s really something for everyone.”