Deborah Mailman AM

Deborah Mailman AM (b. 1972), Bidjara and Māori (Ngāti Porou and Te Arawa) actor and singer, is the daughter of Maori and Aboriginal parents who met when her father was touring on the rodeo circuit. Having grown up in Mount Isa and studied drama at Queensland's University of Technology, in her early twenties Mailman co-devised and appeared in the one-woman stage show Seven Stages of Grieving, which was subsequently staged in London. In 1998, for her performance in the film Radiance, she became the first Aboriginal woman to win the Best Actress Award at the AFI Awards; five years later she was named the NAIDOC Person of the Year. On stage she has appeared in diverse productions including Shakespeare plays and the hit Small Poppies (2001); she was named a member of the Sydney Theatre Company's inaugural Actors' Company in 2005. In 2012, she won Best Lead Actress for her role in The Sapphires (2011) at the AACTA Awards. She has appeared in several films, including Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), Bran Nue Day (2009) and Paper Planes (2014). Her television credits include Playschool (1998–2001), The Secret Life of Us (2001–2006), Offspring (2010–2014) and Redfern Now (2011). For Mabo (2012) and Redfern Now: Promise Me (2015), she won Most Outstanding Actress at the 2013 and 2016 Logies. In 2019 she starred in the ABC series Total Control, for which she won the AACTA Award for Best Lead Actor in a TV drama; the second series was filmed in 2021. A role model to many young First Nations people, Mailman supports various Indigenous literacy awareness projects.