Pamela Rabe

Pamela Rabe
Born	Pamela June Koropatnick (1959-04-30) 30 April 1959 Oakville, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian Australian
Occupation	Actress, Director
Years active	1981–present (film, theatre & television)
Height	183 cm (6 ft 0 in)
Spouse(s)	Roger Hodgman

Pamela Rabe (born 30 April 1959) is a Canadian / Australian stage, television and film actor and theatre director. A graduate from the Playhouse Acting School, in Vancouver, Pamela Rabe is one of Australia’s most highly regarded and awarded actors.^[1] She is best known for her appearances in the films Così, Sirens, Paradise Road and starring as Joan Ferguson in the television series Wentworth.

Early life

Rabe was born Pamela June Koropatnick in Oakville, Ontario, Canada in 1959. She graduated from the Playhouse Acting School in Vancouver. Rabe relocated to Australia in 1983 with Australian director, Roger Hodgman. They were married in 1984.

Career

Theatre

Rabe is a prolific contributor to theatrical life in her adopted country in acting and directing, across a wide range of genres - musicals, comedy and drama. Some of her high-profile acting roles include Amanda Wingfield in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, for which she won a Helpmann Award, Nora Boyle in Patrick White's The Season At Sarsaparilla, for which she won a Green Room Award for Best Actress,^[2] and Richard III in the Sydney Theatre Company production of The War Of The Roses, which also starred Cate Blanchett as Richard II.^[3][4]

In 2005 she performed a challenging, Croatian play called Woman-Bomb.^[5]

In 2010 she starred in the Melbourne stage production of David Mamet's play Boston Marriage.^[6]

In 2012 Rabe won a Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a musical for her performance in Grey Gardens.

On July the 27th 2015 she won a second Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a play for her performance in The Glass Menagerie.

Pamela Rabe is a long-standing collaborator with the Sydney Theatre Company and the Melbourne Theatre Company. She has directed several high profile plays for them, including the Australian premiere of In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), and Elling for which Rabe was nominated for a Green Room Award for best director on both occasions. In 2012 Rabe was invited to be a member of the guest triumvirate who programmed the Melbourne Theatre Company season for that year.

Film

In 1989, Rabe made her film debut with a minor role in Against the Innocent. Her second role came in 1993 when she was cast in John Duigan's romantic comedy, Sirens with Hugh Grant and Sam Neill. Rabe's first leading role was in the 1995 film Vacant Possession. Following this, she appeared in Così with Toni Collette, Lust and Revenge directed by Paul Cox, and Paradise Road, a film starring Glenn Close set during World War II. In 1997, Rabe was cast in the leading role of 1997 film adaptation, an adaptation of Elizabeth Jolley's novel The Well, for which she received an AFI Award for Best Actress.^[1] More recently she appeared in the Jasmila Zbanic drama film For Those Who Can Tell No Tales and she narrated the upcoming 2015 film, Symphony of the Wild.

Television

Rabe has appeared on several Australian television series throughout her career. Her first was in 1990, when she received a guest role in the soap opera A Country Practice. Then she featured in a number of recurring roles including the family series Ocean Girl and The Secret Life of Us and a lead role in the short lived series Mercury. In September 2013 it was announced that Rabe would be cast in the Australian prison drama series, Wentworth, a reimagining of the classic Network Ten soap opera Prisoner. She joined Wentworth in Season Two as sadistic prison governor Joan "The Freak" Ferguson, a role originally played by Maggie Kirkpatrick in Prisoner. Rabe as Ferguson is seen as intimidating and evil and often uses a clever, non-physical approach in a way to control and manipulate the prisoners and officers alike, with little need for violence, unlike Kirkpatrick's character who mainly resorted to violence. Rabe appeared in both Season Two and Season Three in a leading role, as it was finally discovered that Ferguson is unstable and her crimes are revealed. Rabe will reprise her role as Ferguson in Season Four of Wentworth in 2016.

Other work

Rabe served on the board of the Australian Film Institute from 1999-2002^[7] and is a former member of the Board of Directors of NIDA.

Filmography

Film

Television

Film, theatre and television awards

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

See also

• Cinema of Australia

References

Further reading

• Pamela Rabe in Melbourne Magazine, July 30, 2010
• A Woman of Substance, The Age, April 23, 1994

External links

• IMDb - Pamela Rabe