Richard Roxburgh

Richard Roxburgh (b. 1962), actor, completed an economics degree at the Australian National University before gaining a place at NIDA on his second attempt. Having played Hamlet in Sydney’s Company B in 1994, with Jacqueline McKenzie and Cate Blanchett as Ophelia and Geoffrey Rush as Horatio, he starred as a dishonest detective in the television miniseries Blue Murder in 1995, winning AFI and Logie awards for best actor. He acted in Australian films including Thank God he Met Lizzie and Oscar and Lucinda, won the AFI award for best actor for Doing Time for Patsy Cline (1997) and played Percy Grainger in the biopic Passion (1999). By 2000 he was cast as the villain in the Hollywood blockbuster Mission Impossible: II and in 2001 he appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. Over the next few years he played Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles; Moriarty in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Dracula in Van Helsing. At the same time, he was directing Romulus, My Father, the award-winning film of the memoir by Australian academic Raimond Gaita. Returning to television he starred in East of Everything for the ABC and won the AFI best actor award for his title role in Bob Hawke. In 2010 he played opposite Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and John Bell in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Uncle Vanya; in 2011 he won the Logie for best actor for his work in the television series Rake, which ran for four seasons until mid-2016. His recent stage roles include Gogo opposite Hugo Weaving in the Sydney Theatre Company’s Waiting for Godot in 2013, and Cyrano de Bergerac in the play of the same name in 2014. The Present, in which he starred opposite Cate Blanchett, opened on Broadway in late 2016 with both actors’ performances praised by critics. He also figured in Mel Gibson’s film Hacksaw Ridge, released in 2016.

Gift of the artist 2017. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Nicholas Harding