{"id":928055,"date":"2026-10-14T17:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/928055\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T17:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:06:09","slug":"gary-waddell-dies-aged-74-the-brilliant-australian-actor-who-turned-small-roles-into-great-ones-australian-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/928055\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Waddell dies aged 74: the brilliant Australian actor who turned small roles into great ones | Australian film"},"content":{"rendered":"

The great Australian actor Gary Waddell \u2013 known for his gooseflesh-raising ability to portray rough-as-guts characters so real you swear you\u2019ve met them before \u2013 has died aged 74. Waddell was a fixture of the Australian film and TV industry for decades, bursting on to the scene, bleary-eyed and angsty in Bert Deling\u2019s cult classic drug drama Pure Shit<\/a>, a production so notorious that its first public screening, in 1976, was raided by the vice squad.<\/p>\n

This legitimately great film \u2013 the best ever made about heroin addiction and subculture in Australia \u2013 was famously described as \u201cthe most evil film I\u2019ve ever seen\u201d by Melbourne Herald critic Andrew McKay (an example of hysterical overreach if ever there was one, although, as they say, those were different times). It remains a thrilling piece of social realist cinema, full of drug-taking, petty crime and tomfoolery, with the story revolving around Waddell\u2019s character Lou, who arrives five minutes in, grousing about how he \u201chasn\u2019t had a hit for 10 hours\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gary Waddell in Bert Deling\u2019s cult classic Pure Shit. Photograph: Melbourne international film festival<\/p>\n

Since then, Waddell went on to appear in countless productions, usually in small albeit often high-impact roles, in TV shows such as A Country Practice, E Street, Stingers, Blue Heelers<\/a>, Water Rats, Bad Cop Bad Cop, Home and Away, City Homicide, Upright<\/a> and Rake. His films included The FJ Holden, Chopper<\/a>, Dirty Deeds, Gettin\u2019 Square<\/a>, Black and White, Charlie\u2019s Country<\/a>, The Stranger<\/a> and 2022\u2019s The Survival of Kindness<\/a>, which featured his final screen performance.<\/p>\n

There were many more. Waddell was hired again and again because he was rock-solid reliable, bringing weight to even the smallest roles, though he was sadly rarely given the screen time he deserved. Waddell told me in a 2012 interview for Crikey<\/a> that in the early days this was partly because he \u201csabotaged\u201d his career, including with substance abuse. Then came self-doubt: \u201cI actually thought for a long, long time \u2013 until around \u201986, \u201987 \u2013 that my career was one of the greatest con jobs I\u2019d ever pulled off. I never thought I could act \u2026 I had no idea until an actor said to me \u2013 and he was a trained actor \u2013 that what I did on film was what most people go to school to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Carman, Gary Waddell and Bruce Spence in the 1976 film Oz: A Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll Road Movie. Photograph: Melbourne international film festival<\/p>\n

Another great actor \u2013 the inimitable David Gulpilil<\/a> \u2013 had lots of small roles and just one true leading performance: in Rolf de Heer\u2019s 2013 film Charlie\u2019s Country. Just as De Heer righted that wrong with Charlie\u2019s Country, he did something similar in his very fine, very wily 2012 black comedy The King Is Dead!, casting Waddell as the titular character \u2013 a drugged-up layabout with a weird gleam in his eyes.<\/p>\n

Dan Wyllie and Bojana Novakovic play a sensible, fairly strait-laced married couple who buy a suburban house, only to discover that the residence over the fence is a haven for ne\u2019er-do-wells \u2013 including Waddell\u2019s King, an astonishingly well-played fiend. He\u2019s charming, but also dangerous and weird; the kind of person you cross the street to avoid. I was so smitten by his performance that, as the film critic at Crikey at the time, I described Waddell as \u201cout of this world good\u201d and wrote an open letter to Aacta<\/a>, imploring voters to give him the gong for best supporting actor.<\/p>\n

I was far from the only critic to heap praise on this majestically odd and darkly comedic performance. Margaret Pomeranz<\/a> called it \u201chilarious\u201d, while The Australian\u2019s Evan Williams wrote it was \u201cwonderfully touching and humorous\u201d. Variety\u2019s Richard Kuipers<\/a> wrote that \u201cWaddell\u2019s spot-on performance keeps the character human, and even evokes a strange sympathy\u201d, while Fairfax\u2019s Jake Wilson<\/a> saw a \u201cperfect role for Waddell, who well and truly earns his place in the ratbag hall of fame\u201d.<\/p>\n

After I wrote that open letter, Waddell contacted me and was extremely grateful. We hung out in person, and went for beers at Melbourne\u2019s Young and Jackson hotel. We spoke on the phone several times and, in our last communication a few years ago, exchanged photos on Facebook of our jack russells. Waddell was humble, friendly, smart and down-to-earth \u2013 and as a screen presence, he was electrifying. He will be missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The great Australian actor Gary Waddell \u2013 known for his gooseflesh-raising ability to portray rough-as-guts characters so real…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":928056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-928055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}