Jacki Weaver

Weaver has been working in Australian film, stage and television since the 1960s. The turning point in her career came in 1965 just before she was about to go to university and was cast in the Australian TV series Wandjina! In 1963, at the age of 16, Weaver mimed the role of Gretel to the great soprano, Marilyn Richardson. In 1964 at the Palace Theatre in Sydney, Weaver and a number of other Australian singers such as The Delltones and her then-boyfriend Bryan Davies performed a satire on the Gidget movies. In the mid-1960s, she appeared on the Australian music show Bandstand. In one appearance, she sang a 1920s-style pastiche, the novelty song "I Love Onions" Weaver's film debut came with 1971's Stork for which she won her first Australian Film Institute Award. Her stage abilities were recognised with a "Mo" award. In 1980 she appeared in a television production of Sumner Locke Elliot's Water Under the Bridge. Weaver died in a car accident in 2011. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Weaver found it increasingly difficult to gain roles on screen or television. She devoted much of her energy to the Australian stage, starring in plays including A Streetcar Named Desire, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Death of a Salesman, Reg Cribb's Last Cab to Darwin and Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. In 2010, Weaver starred in the Melbourne-set crime thriller Animal Kingdom playing a gang family matriarch.