Deborah Mailman, Actor
Deborah Mailman (b. 1972), actor, is the daughter of a Maori mother and an Aboriginal father who met when he was touring New Zealand as a rodeo rider. In 1995 she co-devised and appeared in the one-woman stage show Seven Stages of Grieving, subsequently staged at the London International Festival of Theatre. Three years later, for her performance in the film Radiance, she became the first Aboriginal woman to win the Best Actress Award at the AFI Awards. She played Helena in the indigenous production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for Sydney's Festival of the Dreaming in 1997, and Cordelia and Rosalind in the Bell Shakespeare Company's King Lear and As You Like It. In 1999 she won a Critics' Choice Award. She has earned great popularity on Australian television in Playschool (1998-2001) and The Secret Life of Us (2001-2006); her films include Rabbit Proof Fence (2002) and The Book of Revelation (2006). Mailman was named NAIDOC's Person of the Year in 2003.
Biography sourced from http://www.portrait.gov.au/static/coll_883Deborah+Mailman.php