Jack Charles (actor)
| Jack Charles | |
|---|---|
| Born |
5 September 1943 Cummeragunja Reserve, New South Wales, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | Actor, musician, potter, Aboriginal elder |
| Home town | Box Hill, Victoria |
Jack Charles (born 5 September 1943) is an Australian Aboriginal actor, musician, potter, and Aboriginal elder. His screen credits include the landmark Australian film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Bedevil (1993), Blackfellas (1993), Tom White (2004) and Pan (2015), among others.
Born to a Bunurong mother and Wiradjuri father at Cummeragunja Mission on the Murray River, Charles was a victim of the Australian Government's forced assimilation programme which took him from his mother as an infant. He was long of the mistaken belief he was a Koori. He was raised in the Salvation Army Boys' Home at Box Hill, suburban Melbourne, where he was the only Indigenous child and where he was sexually abused.
Charles received a Christian education from the Salvation Army and continued to observe Christian values into his 70s when he told Geraldine Doogue,
"I've employed my Aboriginality as my religion now ... instead of God, I've found that the Godhead is within me ... I'm solely directed towards making an accommodation between Black and White."
In 1970, the director of the New Theatre Melbourne, Dot Thompson, cast Charles in Athol Fugard's The Blood Knot and this was followed by a non-Aboriginal role in Rod Milgate's A Refined Look at Existence.
Charles was involved in establishing Indigenous theatre in Australia. In 1971 he co-founded, with Bob Maza, Nindethana ('place for a corroboree') at The Pram Factory in Melbourne, Australia's first Indigenous theatre group. Their first hit play was called Jack Charles is Up and Fighting, in 1972, and included music composed by him.
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