Kate Mulvany has a Bachelor of Arts degree and honorary Doctorate of Letters from Curtin University, Western Australia. She is an award-winning actor, playwright, screenwriter, librettist and dramaturg. In 2020, Mulvany was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to the Australian arts.
Mulvany is one of Australia’s most respected and sought-after theatrical artists. She has performed for almost every major Australian theatre company, including roles as Antigone, Lady Macbeth, Cassius (in Julius Caesar), Dorine (in Tartuffe), her highly acclaimed turn as Richard of Gloucester (Richard III), for which she won the 2017 Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor In A Play, and which she won again the following year for her performance in the one-woman show Every Brilliant Thing for Belvoir.
Mulvany’s rich character work caught the eye of Baz Luhrmann, who cast her as Lucille McKee in The Great Gatsby. Other feature films include The Final Winter, Griff The Invisible, The Turning, The Little
Kate Mulvany has a Bachelor of Arts degree and honorary Doctorate of Letters from Curtin University, Western Australia. She is an award-winning actor, playwright, screenwriter, librettist and dramaturg. In 2020, Mulvany was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to the Australian arts.
Mulvany is one of Australia’s most respected and sought-after theatrical artists. She has performed for almost every major Australian theatre company, including roles as Antigone, Lady Macbeth, Cassius (in Julius Caesar), Dorine (in Tartuffe), her highly acclaimed turn as Richard of Gloucester (Richard III), for which she won the 2017 Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor In A Play, and which she won again the following year for her performance in the one-woman show Every Brilliant Thing for Belvoir.
Mulvany’s rich character work caught the eye of Baz Luhrmann, who cast her as Lucille McKee in The Great Gatsby. Other feature films include The Final Winter, Griff The Invisible, The Turning, The Little Death (for which she was nominated for an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award) and The Merger.
Mulvany has appeared on television in All Saints, Blue Heelers, The Chaser’s War on Everything, Chandon Pictures, The Hamster Wheel, the telemovie The Underbelly Files – The Man Who Got Away, Winter, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and the highly acclaimed series Secret City. Mulvany also starred in a leading role in the Foxtel series Fighting Season opposite Jay Ryan and directed by Kate Woods and as Frankie in the lauded Foxtel series Lambs of God, directed by Jeffrey Walker. She recently completed filming the first season of Hunters for Amazon Prime Video, produced by Jordan Peele and created by David Weil, in which she plays Sister Harriet.
Kate’s life story has been covered onscreen in the documentaries Australian Story and One Plus One and on Australia’s current affairs show 7:30 Report.
Mulvany is also an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. The New York Times voted her adaptation of the Greek myth Medea as one of the best Greek adaptations to hit the London stage in 2015. Mulvany also wrote four episodes of the Emmy-winning animated television series Beat Bugs. Her stage adaptations of Craig Silvey’s novel Jasper Jones, Kit Williams’ Masquerade and Ruth Park’s The Harp In The South trilogy have had sellout seasons across Australia, with her Harp trilogy of plays being awarded the esteemed David Williamson Prize at the Australian Writers Guild Awards. In 2019, Mulvany became the first female playwright to adapt Mary Stuart for the stage for the Sydney Theatre Company.
Later in 2019, Upright - a series Mulvany developed with Tim Minchin, Chris Taylor and Leon Ford - screened internationally.
She is currently writing a new play for the Studio Theatre in Washington DC and adapting her award-winning autobiographical play The Seed into a television series.
