David Wenham

David Wenham AM (b. 1965), actor, studied drama at the Nepean College of Advanced Education (now the University of Western Sydney), graduating with a BA in Performing Arts in 1987. Through the late 80s and early 90s he scored bit parts in soaps such as A Country Practice, Sons and Daughters and Blue Heelers and appeared in features including Idiot Box and Cosi (both 1996). He won Best Lead Actor in a Television Drama at the 1997 AFI awards for Simone de Beauvoir's Babies. His chilling performance as the darkly malevolent Brett Sprague in The Boys (1998) earned him an AFI Best Actor nomination and garnered considerable critical acclaim. Concurrently, he had begun beguiling audiences as the raffish Diver Dan in the first season of ABC Television's Sea Change. Wenham appeared in a string of films throughout the noughties, among them Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001) and Australia (2008); The Bank (2001); Van Helsing (2004); The Proposition (2005); and The Two Towers (2002) and Return of the King (2003), the second and third episodes respectively of Peter Jackson's blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy. Some of his recent film credits include Lion (2016) and Pirates of the Caribbean: dead men tell no tales (2017). Wenham won his second AFI award in 2006 for his role in Answered by Fire, a mini-series set in East Timor in the lead up to independence. His many subsequent television credits include The Code (2014), and Jane Campion's disturbing drama Top of the Lake (2013 and 2017). Wenham made his directorial debut in 2017 with the film Ellipsis.

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