Colin Friels (b. 1952) arrived in Australia as an adolescent with his Scottish parents, both blue-collar workers. After a stint as a bricklayer in Melbourne, he won a place at NIDA (Judy Davis, a fellow student, became his wife in 1984). His first appeared on film in the powerful drama Monkey Grip (1982), his role a marked contrast to the persona he had established on Play School in 1980. In 1986 he won the AFI award for best actor for the film Malcolm; he won the AFI award for best actor in a television series in 1995. His many films include Kangaroo (1987) High Tide (1988), Cosi (1996), The Man Who Sued God (2001), five telemovies in the Black Jack series (2003-2007) and The Book of Revelation (2006). He won a Best Actor Logie in 1997 for his work in Water Rats, in which he starred for three years. Despite serious illness, he persisted with stage and film work through the late 1990s; he won a Helpmann Award and a Mo award for Copenhagen in 2003 and a Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Tom White in 2004. Believing that it is the responsibility of the actor to engage with politics, he has spoken publicly on topics as diverse as the necessity of subsidisation of the Australian film industry and American policy in the Middle East. His most recent films are The Eye of the Storm (2011) and Mabo (2012).l
