Jack Charles

Jack Charles (b. 1943), Boon Wurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung Elder, activist, actor, musician and artist, was born at the Cummeragunja Mission on the Murray River and taken from his mother when he was four months old. Raised in a boy's home in Melbourne, he was seventeen when he was jailed for the first time, his heroin habit and consequent regular resort to petty theft seeing him in and out of prison throughout the subsequent decades. Charles became involved in theatre and acting in the early 1970s and in 1972 co-founded Nindethana, Australia's first Aboriginal theatre group, at The Pram Factory in Melbourne. The ensemble was formed, as Charles phrased it, 'to put on plays where Aborigines have a chance to act … We want to do plays where the Aboriginal actors will play ordinary people – a milkman, a postman – because Aborigines do these jobs'. During the 1970s, Charles had roles in the television series Ben Hall (1975) and Rush (1976); and appeared in Fred Schepisi's 1978 feature film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and the 1981 mini-series Women of the Sun. Further film roles came in 1993 with Blackfellas and Bedevil, the latter directed by Tracey Moffatt. Since that time, having beaten addiction and reconnected with his cultural heritage, Charles has performed in a number of roles, including the 2012 Sydney Festival production, I am Eora, the TV productions Gods of Wheat Street, Cleverman, Black Comedy, Play School and Wolf Creek, and the films Mystery Road (2013) and Pan (2015). Charles was the subject of Amiel Courtin-Wilson's 2008 documentary, Bastardy, which chronicled seven years of Charles' life, documenting his experiences of homelessness, crime and addiction and witnessing – as Charles describes it – his transition 'from a rogue and a vagabond to a person of note and a role model in my community'. From 2010 to 2018, Charles toured the world with his one-man, autobiographical work, Jack Charles v The Crown, which won a Helpmann Award. He received the Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019. The following year he released his memoir Jack Charles: Born-again Blakfella.